Through my years of practice I’ve had numerous addicts express the same curious concept to me: their addiction had a limit. Not all addicts have the same limits, so while one person might be able to do one thing, another could do something else.
One alcoholic couldn’t stay sober unless there was an event important to her daughter. In another case, another alcoholic couldn’t stay sober even for a wedding, and yet they could if they were going to church. There’s all sorts of variations on these sorts of limits.
They include crack users that stopped at using needles even though they fully believed the next high would be even better. Or people who will crave painkillers but they won’t touch the one that killed their mother even if they’re jonesing. Or people that think they can’t control their eating and yet all day long they control their eating by making choices. I’ll give you a great example of that last one.
I like to travel by mixing with the locals and trekking etc. I think I’ve tried everything else except a cruise. I was once on a bus trip in Europe. We arrived at a hotel where we picked up some other Canadians who had just landed late the night before.
I was seated behind a woman who could be fairly described as obese. She got on the bus with a very large purse/bag, and in it she had an assortment of snacks like chips and cheezies and candies, and she shot through them very quickly.
Throughout the drive the woman was telling her seatmate all about her various attempts to lose weight. Each time she said she just did not have the will-power necessary to succeed. Keep that statement in mind for later in the trip, when she’s run out of cheezies.
As an inexperienced traveler she was shocked that all the brands and items she would expect to see at home were not in Europe. Everything looked different. She was fickle, so when she looked at the European brands she curled her nose in distaste. No. No, none of this will do. She’ll eat at the next stop.
What’s important is, that happened stop after stop. She would go in, not recognize any of the packages for the foods that she ate, she would turn up her nose and she would leave without eating.
It’s important to point out, there were other foods she recognized —like many chocolate bars— but she didn’t like those. She was craving a bag of Old Dutch chips or Hawkins Cheezies but they —especially back then— didn’t have stuff like that in Europe. Europeans had their local brands.
As a result, she went all day without eating. Not because there wasn’t crisps or chips or whatever. And not because there wasn’t chocolate in various forms and shapes. She didn’t eat because her thoughts told her not to.
Her thoughts told her that those other foods weren’t foods because she didn’t know them. And so that proves that she does have will-power against food. She just doesn’t have it when it comes to her own thinking.
The simple fact is, that woman was hungry and there was food all over the place and yet she stopped herself by simply telling herself a story that there was no food she would accept.
Of course, if she stayed in Europe long enough, eventually she’d get hungry enough and she would try some new things and she would eventually develop new favourites. And then she would have the same problem she has now, only with European foods. But a valuable point is made by this example.
The point is, on that bus trip her barriers to those foods are were made purely of thought. She didn’t believe those were foods for her so they weren’t. And until she changed that belief, turning those foods down was easy for her.
If you’re battling an addiction you’re not really battling the substance or behaviour. You’re battling your thoughts about it. You see yourself as an addict and everything is weighed against that. That identity holds you back. Instead be no one.
Study your thinking. Study your addictions and your restraints closely. Get to know them so well that you can see that they are subtle forms of the same idea. If you engage in these meditations, your thoughts will lose power and control over you, and you will be able to exercise more volition over what you do with your time on this Earth.
Thinking we have no control is having no control. Knowing that we are capable of control means that it is simply a matter of enactment. So it’s merely a matter of turning our wisdom into a verb.
As Yoda said, “Do or not do. There is no try.” You don’t try to quit an addiction. You simply no longer see it as yours. Change who you think you are and a different life will simply seem more appropriate for you to live. Enjoy.
peace. s
