Addictions come in all shapes and sizes. You can be just as addicted to Lego as you can be addicted to XTC. A physical addiction, such as smoking, can start innocently but have serious consequences. If you find that you are addicted or want to quit a mental addiction, mindfulness can help.
In this article, I discuss how mindfulness can be a weapon against addiction.
Research(1) shows that the development of addiction has many similarities to the Buddhist view of the cause of human suffering, namely wanting something and being attached to something.
Precisely something mindfulness can bring reduction in, reducing the craving for the object and the value attached to it.
Beginning of an addiction
Addiction can start very innocently:
Almost everyone who smokes started it in high school. Older "cooler" schoolmates once invited you to smoke with them and you gave it a try. It's gross and for some people that's enough to not continue with it.
But if you are prone to addictions, the idea that smoking is "cool" and "tough" can cause you to keep smoking despite the foul taste. Then you will naturally find that over time smoking becomes a relaxing activity.
Smoking helps relax nerves.
As a result, every time those nerves get tense, such as when you get a scolding from your boss, a relationship breaks up, or you're even just standing in a traffic jam (which you don't want to be in) you reach for a cigarette.
The solution to any negative event that causes your nerves to get upset has become a cigarette.
This same pattern can develop with drug or alcohol addiction. Drugs or alcohol are cool, over time you find that it is also a way to relax and then that becomes the solution to everything. This is also called the addiction cycle.
This is obviously not a healthy way to deal with addictive substances that can cause deadly diseases, dependency and depression in the long run. Then you will be even further from home in the end.
Current treatments for quitting addiction
Smoking cessation is now mainly done through nicotine patches and chewing gum. Actually, only chewing gum works to break the addiction cycle and then not light a cigarette, but very factually a circle remains in place and so this is not actually the real solution. You still have to put something in your mouth and you still want something.
With smoking and other addictions, it is recommended that you avoid moments that remind you to light up a cigarette or continue the addiction again.
A while ago, I was watching television and two guys who had been game addicts came on screen. The show showed what those games actually looked like, and in doing so, one of the two boys looked straight down and just barely covered his ears so as not to get the trigger all the way through.
This is obviously a good first step, but gaming is a leisure activity that is becoming increasingly popular, and online games are also widely advertised on television. So are you in time to avoid the trigger?
In addition, people who want to rehab are also encouraged to make an effort to be in a good mood, such as by exercising. At the risk of becoming sports addicted.
In addition, it is also difficult not to give in to a trigger every time. This depletes your willpower, so to speak, so you can always have a relapse. It is not for nothing that the saying exists that someone who has been an addict is actually an addict for the rest of his life.
Actually, there are only two types of treatment namely taking a substitute or avoidance behavior.
Mindfulness against addiction: stop the craving
Mindfulness is based on Buddhism. In Buddhism, the solution to suffering is to let go of wanting the product or valuing the object. By stopping the craving instead of creating a new craving, the addiction is truly removed and the suffering is truly removed.
Mindfulness about your thoughts and feelings can make you realize that you can also have pleasurable feelings that have nothing to do with your addiction.
With mindfulness, you can realize that you don't need the product of your desire at all.
By being mindful of your own reactions and emotions after certain moments and after taking certain products, you find out if the subject of your craving is worth that craving. This is a way to break the cycle of addiction. Becoming aware of your thoughts and feelings also allows you to distance yourself more from your addiction. In the process, the improved discernment of emotions can cause you to react in a different way. Not every nice conversation with someone of the opposite sex means lust is involved, as someone who is sex addicted might think.
Normally, your reaction to a certain event is determined by certain things you have in your memory. Earlier you reacted in a certain way and so you are going to do the same now, even though the situation may have just a different angle and context. By being mindful you are more in the here and now and you can respond more appropriately. You have disconnected, as it were, emotions belonging to similar situations in the past from the current situation that would previously cause you to get triggered, but mindfulness allows that desire to stay out.
You may suddenly realize that you're smoking because your boss is ticked and that this doesn't solve the actual problem (a deadline perhaps). This realization allows you to get to the root of the problem faster to solve it.
Only since 2008 has the effect of mindfulness on addictions, especially smoking, been scientifically studied. In these studies, 2 things are important namely:
- Being in the here and now with your attention.
- Accepting the situation as it is.
The second step is all about having an open attitude to experiencing. So it's not like you're doing something wrong if you can't do it, as long as the intention of acceptance is there. If you still get thoughts like "I wish I had a cigarette right now," you can accept that thought too, without acting on it. You do this by then naming the thought and then shifting your attention back to the here and now. This is a form of mindfulness meditation.
Studies also show that mindfulness often works more effectively against addiction than substituting the addictive substance for something healthy, such as a carrot instead of a cigarette.
In an initial small exploratory study on the effect of mindfulness on cocaine and alcohol addiction, the results of mindfulness were as good as those of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which at that time was still considered the standard treatment for those two types of addictions. In addition, this study found that in a test that allowed the subjects to show that they could adapt psychologically this was better in people in the mindfulness group than in those in the CBT group.
Also, the long-term effects (after 4 months) were also more promising compared to standard treatments.
Now you probably want to know what mindfulness techniques these people learned to get rid of addiction. These were the same techniques for reducing stress, namely:
- Mindfulness meditation
- Mindfulness body scan
- Mindfulness yoga
- Mindful walking
- Mindful eating
In addition, there are multiple ways to help yourself use mindfulness throughout the day to find pleasurable moments outside of addiction. That way, you can adjust your beliefs about what is fun to what is truly fun.
Want to learn more about how mental changes can help you improve your life? Then come to a seminar or check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training programs.
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