Addiction recovery. How to get over your addictions in 12 steps!?

What is addiction?

Understanding addictions and how they develop is the first step in the challenging journey of addiction rehabilitation. Addiction is the result of a habit or a substance-related mental or physical yearning

Addictions are poorly understood by the majority of individuals. When people think of addicts, they typically picture either inebriated or drugged-up individuals, but addictions may be far more complex than that.

An addiction is a condition of the brain’s reward system that develops over time as a result of behavioural patterns brought on by prolonged exposure to an addictive stimuli at high doses. This could involve the food you consume, the usage of narcotics, engaging in sexual behaviour, betting, etc.

Most people in the modern world suffer from an addiction of some kind. Do you have any examples from your life that would meet this criteria?

Here are a few common addictions that people have that aren’t related to alcohol or drugs.

• Coffee
• Gambling
• Shopping
• Internet
• Junk-food

12 steps to overcome addiction

Each stage in this recuperation routine gets harder and harder the further you go. Addiction recovery is a challenging process because, at its core, it involves going up against the identity that you have worked so hard to establish.

There is a lot of resistance to every step in the rehabilitation process. The following are based on 12-step fellowships, which are employed in extreme situations of alcohol and drug addiction for the purpose of addiction recovery. The Russell Brand book Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions taught me about them.

1) Acceptance-based rehabilitation from addiction

Accepting the issue we are facing is the first step. The more severe our addiction problem gets, the more it is killing our life, and we need to accept that.

2) Belief in the viability of addiction rehabilitation

We all unknowingly use programmes to live, as was previously explained. These unconscious programmes take control of our lives when we aren’t living deliberately since our life experiences act as a code imprinted in us.

However, since we now understand that our mental habits are what generate addiction, a better programme will also be required to provide a cure.

3) Accept the superior addiction rehabilitation programme.

Now that we are aware that the addiction was a result of our social training and mental habits, we must acknowledge that our way of life will not be able to eradicate it. If we knew the solution to the issue, we would already have done it.

4) Compile a list of everything that is contributing to those patterns.

Doing this will be challenging. In essence, you are telling yourself the truth about how you truly feel. As soon as you start doing it, you’ll feel incredibly awkward.

It is much simpler to give up and continue as you are than to dig deep and list your concerns. You are discovering your inner critic through this.

Make a list of everything that has made you feel humiliated or separated from the world.

5) Share your list of the things that hurt with a reliable person.

Some issues may be trivial or frivolous, while others may be quite serious and unpleasant. Things that have happened to you or actions you may have taken in the past that you really regret

Sharing those things may be challenging, but once you muster the bravery to do so, a weight will be lifted off your shoulders.

We do not have to live in a shame-based identity by ourselves while carrying the weight of our past because we are social beings.

6) Are you prepared to break the patterns that are preventing you from overcoming your addiction?

If you have completed all the other phases, you might have discovered the astounding fact that our psychological patterns keep repeating themselves.

You might put off completing duties at work in the same manner you put off completing homework when you were in high school.

Your unconscious tends to repeat the little things until you take control and make a change. That is the freedom of choice and free will that you possess.

7) Avoiding self-centeredness in order to recover from addiction

We need meaning and purpose in our lives as people. The experiences in life start to lose their lustre when we live a life that is fundamentally focused on meeting our own needs above all else.

Our job must positively touch the world in some way in order for it to be meaningful. The work you do must satisfy the needs of the world in order for it to be rewarding, as we said in our blog post on Ikigai (purpose to live).

8) Be prepared to express regret to those you have wronged.

It’s possible that your addiction or your self-centered behaviour hurt and damaged a lot of people in your immediate vicinity. You must ask for forgiveness now that you are aware of these tendencies.

This serves to remind yourself that you have changed and that the behaviours that led to the harm are not ones you ever wish to repeat. Forgiveness also helps you cope with your regret.

9) Make apologies to those you have offended, unless doing so will put them in danger.

There could have been some actions on your part that would have done more harm than good. Aside from those situations, make an effort to make amends and seek for forgiveness as much as you can.

They will notice a shift in your character when you start making genuine efforts to make apologies rather than just saying sorry.

Additionally, it will assist you in using your free will to defy old habits, which is essential for addiction recovery.

10) We continue to be aware of the habits we had and admit them to ourselves when they do.

Here is where a positive relationship with our ideas is important. We need to be careful of our thoughts and actions as well as self-aware.

11. Maintain your fresh outlook on addiction recovery.

When the detrimental patterns recur, it will be simpler to spot them because we already know them. If they ever recur, be sincere with yourself and acknowledge your error to avoid falling into the trap of repeating those actions.
You can prevent yourself from succumbing to an emotional response to your current external situation in this way.

12) Always be nice and willing to lend a hand. Give up your ego and selfishness.

This also refers to step 7, although it is much simpler to assist others if you have already completed the previous steps. You will be able to help others overcome their addictions using the lessons you learned through overcoming your own.

Genuine happiness, the kind of happiness that has been disregarded in the modern world in favour of pleasure, can be found in acts of kindness and compassion. That will assist you in developing satisfying relationships with those around you.

To summarise

We can therefore conclude that addictions are means of distracting ourselves from the suffering we feel, which are perpetuated by frequent repetition.

By repeating an act or ingesting a substance on a regular basis, we create a pattern of behaviour that, when it surpasses 20 days, manifests as an addiction.

To recover from addictions, we must break harmful ties and instead develop healthy bonds with others around us and with ourselves.