What Does Addiction Feel Like?

An Addiction Metaphor

You know when you get into your new favourite series, and you watch it all hours of the night, much longer than you should? Isn’t it wonderful while you’re doing it? You’re in a bubble, right? While the show is on the world has disappeared. Everything is simple. You don’t have to think, or do, you can check out. 

That’s what addiction is, and what it’s like. Disappearing into something, but longer, and more, until the negative consequences mount up enough for it to get a label. You can be addicted to anything - drugs, sex, TV, sport, food… You hurt your life by disappearing from it. But that’ not the real danger, you hurt your spirit even more.  

Because while the show is on you are disconnected from yourself, and disconnected from others. You are disconnected from connection itself. You begin to decay. Your spirit does. And what is left is a shell, fuelled by a TV show.

Making A Change

The treatment for addiction is very simple: re-connection. With self, with others, and with the natural world. Turning the TV off and walking outside, feeling the sun, the breeze, and listening to the feeling of once again connecting with someone real.

Do you relate? What was your moment of turning off the TV, and opening the curtains to let the world back in?

Further Reading: What Causes Drug Addiction?

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