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According to Jean Kilbourne, “Addiction begins with the hope that something out there can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.” Addiction is a state in which a person is engaged in the use of habit-forming substances or behavior. Here the question arises that what exactly causes addiction? It is the repetitive use of a particular thing, or it is something else? Most of the people will agree with the former, but in reality, the thing that causes addiction is fear of emptiness. Addictions are usually distractions or escapes from this fear.
Now that it is clear what addiction is, the next questions that come to the mind are, how to overcome it? There are many ways to overcome addiction, and everyone will have a different opinion regarding it. It is seen that the practice of punishing the addicts is one of the most common ways but, is it the best way? The short answer to that question is no. Ways in which addicts can control their addiction is by being more social and working on bettering themselves.
Connect With People
As mentioned earlier, the feeling of a void is what causes addiction so, the most important thing is trying to be as social as possible. Humans are social beings, and they need to be around someone to be happy. It is commonly noticed that when someone is alone in some place that is the time when he or she looks for things to do. They start doing something to get rid of their loneliness but as the time passes, it becomes their habit, and they cannot stop. However, if we have friends and people, we trust around us we do not have to look for ways to prevent the feeling of loneliness. In the late 1970s, professor Alexander tried to explain that it is not the drugs that form the addiction, but it is the cage that does.
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In this experiment, he placed rats in a rat park, placed regular water in there as well as water with cocaine mixed in it and no rat went close to the cocaine water. While in an experiment conducted before this a rat was placed in a cage alone with both the types and it only drank the cocaine water. Not only this, rats who were addicted to cocaine water were placed in the rat park as well, and they stopped drinking cocaine water once in rat park. (Leo, (2016, April 17) Overcoming Addictions: The Root Cause of Every Addiction). Through this experiment, it became clear that if we have someone with us, we do not form the addiction to something. Not only this, having someone around can even stop an addiction.
Work on Yourself
Although social connections are essential, one thing that is more important than that is working on yourself. Even though one has friends, but those people will not be around all the time. So, to be in control during those lonely moments try to engage yourself in doing something that you love. Try out different things like exercising, reading, painting, etcetera. If not new ideas, work on your hobbies. Set your goal and try to achieve it. However, one important thing is to get emotionally connected with that thing. One of my friends was addicted to his mobile and could not stay without it for a moment.
However, it was affecting his health. He started gaining weight. At first, he ignored it, but soon he realized that and tried to stay away from his mobile as much as he could. It was difficult in the start, and slowly he started becoming his old self. Then he decided to join a gym, and it changed his life. His mobile addiction decreased, and he realized that he loved exercising and lifting weights in general. In a similar way, addicts should try out different things, should find the thing that they enjoy doing or develop a hobby, and try to do that thing rather than the one they want to quit. In this way, an addict can move past the addiction with time and dedication.
Conclusion
From the above paragraphs, it is clear that there are many ways in which addictions could be controlled. Even though it is difficult to stop the addictions, it is not impossible, the only things a person fighting an addiction need is patience and dedication. If addicts do not have these two things, they will quickly fall back and go back to being a slave to their addictions. Moreover, according to me, the best way to do that is by first working on yourself. If you know about yourself, you do not need any other sources to help you. So, try to stop because being addicted to something not only harms you physically but has an emotional and mental effect on you as well.
