how to permanently quit addictions

I am a reformed alcoholic. I am a reformed chain smoker.
I am an ex fat person. I am also not selling anything.
My only wish now is to help people by passing on my
knowledge, I guess this sounds too good to be true.
When you have really nearly died a few times, money
takes on a sort of reduced role in your thinking.
Make no mistake about it, we are all going to die,
even you will die one day. When you are young this
seems a long long way away, I'm fifty now, and it
sure seems a little closer to hand than it did.
So it makes sense to make the time I have left
quality time, free of drink smoking and obesity,
after all it is easier to get older if you feel fitter,
than if you are ruining your body daily.
I wish I had started earlier in life, YOU CAN.

You may think I have superhuman will power to
quit drinking and smoking, and gambling and all
other excesses. To a certain extent that is true,
I have a great deal of will power, but I also have
a method, a way of thinking, which helps.

For some reason, and it may have been a good
one at the time, you have a craving, an overpowering
addiction. You love something more than you
love yourself at the present time.

Think myself or my health.

In this New Labour Tony Blair type world,
certainly in Britain, everything is explainable in terms
of something else more convenient. It doesn't detract
from the plain fact that the Emperor really hasn't got
any clothes on at all. In short, it's not stretching the
truth, it's really a very big lie.

This is what you are currently doing to yourself,
you are living out a lie in order to placate yourself,
in order to make what you are doing palatable.
What you are really doing is killing yourself a
lot quicker, and a lot more painfully than is
really necessary, and by and large no one gives
a damn whether you do or you don't,
they are too busy with themselves to really and
truly bother about YOU. By and large this is correct.
The few people that possibly do care either haven't
a clue how to help, or are simply hampered by the
realisation that it is only YOU who can cure it.

There are really no excuses
If you are drinking too much you are a pain of a drunk.
If you are smoking too much you are a pain of a smoker.
If you are gambling too much you are a liability,
just as you are if you are on drugs.
You probably nodded to all these, and felt agreement,
so why don't you realise that you are putting an intolerable
strain on the people around you, to say nothing of the
strain on the Health Professionals.

WHY?

Because you are too self indulgent to stop for a minute
enjoying yourselves to see if you are bothering other people,
too wrapped up in yourselves to care about others.
There is no magic formula to giving up an addiction,
You stop doing what it is that is costing you, and every
one around you a fortune. You stop paying out what you
haven't got on things YOU DON'T REALLY NEED.

To break that down further, in order to do this you will
need to change your whole way of life, permanently.
Make no mistake, if you are really and truly HAPPY
with what you are doing, then fine, go ahead and do it,
but acknowledge that most things you really enjoy
overdoing kill you slowly, and painfully, and most things
done to excess bring attendant guilt.
Stop reading now if you don't want to quit for good and
all or else you are wasting someone else's bandwidth who
has what it takes when you have not got the moral fibre.

What it takes is a modicum of will power combined with
a hell of a lot of common sense. I have had a lot of addictions,
I am an excessive natured person. I find the first step in
losing any of them is to look at them as a phase I have
grown out of. I have matured to such an extent I no
longer need their crutch to carry me onwards.

Generally speaking, most addictions are to make up
for or act as a distraction from the world as it is.
We have to learn to face up to life instead of running
away from it, and hiding behind false barriers built
up on the shaky foundations of fleeting happiness
bought at great actual and mental cost via addiction.

We have to move on and grow up and mature,
Much as we ourselves look at kids and feel,
that's wrong, but they'll grow out of it in time.
And they usually do, don't they, because they see
that long term they are better off without doing what
they are doing.
Why don't we tell them at the time?
Because we know they'll tend to do the opposite,
and that only they can learn to be wise in the fullness
of time. We can but advise, and sow the seeds.

Thus it is with ourselves.

We have established that we can expect NO HELP
FROM OTHERS. Why should anyone else help us
anyway, it's our problem. If someone came to you with
Ive got a terrible problem with my lawyer, and my cat isn't eating, my mother in law is being funny and I've got
the results of my x rays tomorrow you might well be
a little concerned, but I bet your first thought would
really and truly be how can I get away as quickly as
I possibly can without causing offence? .

So why the hell should others be expected to listen to you
bleating on about helping you to quit your problem.

IT'S YOUR PROBLEM.

Also you will never stop doing anything you really LIKE
DOING. You have to really want to stop for good and ever,
not just when you attain a certain level, because you will
only gradually go back to what you were before, a PAIN.

If you hear an alcoholic say after a year off the booze
I'm ok for a pint now, what do you REALLY think
will happen if he or she has a pint or short?
You know as well as I do.

So really you have to

a) Realise it is just you that matters and does anything
b) realise you have to really WANT to quit
c) Realise no one else is going to do it for you magically.
d) realise that it was a phase you had to live through
e) realise that it will definitely kill you, very very painfully
f) realise that you will have gained from your descent into hell

There are many ways to quit addictions for different people.
If you are reading this they have probably all failed.

Wrong.

YOU HAVE FAILED.
MOST of the methods work if you WANT them to work.
I suggest that you treat it as a phase of your life, and
you have learned from this phase and wish to move on
and prove to everyone that you aren't stupid. Because
anyone who knows that something is killing them
and alienating people, and still does it, is stupid,
has not learned one iota from what they have done
have not progressed one jot in their mindset.

Water, pure little tap water, fills you up and
is needed more than you think. Eighty per cent of
the human body is water, so it makes sense to drink it.
This is a good start to purifying your body and mind.
Drink a few litres a day. And KEEP BUSY.

Remember, I make zero money out of this article,
but it is probably the best common sense you'll ever
read.

Most articles you will read have a hidden agenda,
TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF ADDICTED PEOPLE.
If you quit forever, they'd lose your
money in the future, wouldn't they?
They plan on you quitting EVERY YEAR.
Why not just do it ONCE. I sure as hell would not
want to quit smoking and drinking on a yearly basis

WHAT I GAIN

I just get to have a few more people visiting my website,
if you stop for a second or two to read this article,
as I get a kick out of getting visitors from all over the world,
and seeing my site visitor numbers rise.
I guess you could think of it as an obsession,
or a phase I'll probably grow out of in time

But it is also very nice if you can help people, and I've
been places you really do not want to go, and had things
done to me you really and truly WOULD NOT LIKE.
I SHOULD BE DEAD, I am not.

We all KNOW what we should and shouldn't be doing
by and large, and no one can make a difference but ourselves.

It is a sad fact of modern life that everyone expects to be
able to do what the hell they like and then someone will
bail them out at the last minute.

Fact is, if you don't quit, you'll die young, in pain and alone.

YOUR CHOICE, YOUR LIFE,

but you WILL die sooner than most.

malco may 2003


About the Author
I am an ex alcoholic, ex chain smoker, ex gambler, ex compulsive spender. I am now fit and healthy, you can be too.