Not too many people strive to achieve the goal of being an “addict”. It denotes a certain way of being and doing life. Merriam-Webster defines an addict as a person who has a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity-despite its harmful physical, psychological, or social effects- which cause well-defined symptoms upon withdrawal or abstinence. An addiction starts out as a newfound activity that can influence your thinking and attitude and over time becomes an unhealthy habit that leads to unproductive and unintended consequences, both personally and socially. After awhile, the habit of doing the addictive activity has distorted your thinking, skewed your attitude, corrupted your behavior, disrupted your intimate relationships, altered your reputation and reoriented your reality. Even long-term consequences are sacrificed for short-term satisfaction sabotaging life goals. After you finally realize you're hooked or addicted and your behavior is unproductive, the strength of the habit that has been formed leaves you stuck doing what you no longer want to do. There is no special order to the way addiction affects you, but there is a universal truth to it's impact: What you do impacts your attitude and limits your future opportunities.

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Take Sue as an example. Sue started drinking alcohol with her friends when she entered high school. She drank on weekends. She liked the feeling of being accepted into a group. She also liked the temporary relief she felt from the negative feelings she had about herself and the stress of her home life. By the time she was a senior, she was drinking every day and was experimenting with other drugs because she liked the way it made her feel, and it distracted her from the sign that something was not right in her life. She started to think she should drop out of high school and spend more time with her drinking buddies. With continued practice, Sue unconsciously prioritized these psychosocial* behaviors and they became a habit, a part of her normal “standard operating procedures” (S.O.P’s). Sue’s future decision-making became tied to these behavioral habits because they were now part of her routine and were etched into her memory, becoming a cycle of behavior that became her normal routine. *Psychosocial-the interrelation of social factors with individual thought and behavior.​

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When you are attracted to drinking, drugs, shopping, gambling or another activity that has piqued your interest, and partaking in the activity has become a customary, not to mention all consuming, part of your routine, not only do these habits take over your schedule, but your thinking is impacted and this re-orders your priorities in life. When you are swept away by the euphoric feeling that the activity brings, it's addictive thinking**, not logical thinking, that drives the direction of behavior, impacting the well-being of your life.

 

Sue did not realize that finding a new group of friends would lead her away from purposeful living - which aids in the development of self-worth and confidence. Sue didn't plan to be an underaged drinker, but the short-term satisfaction she derived from being around others who also enjoyed this activity of drinking, coupled with the relief she felt from the acceptance/belonging to a group of friends, formed a new, comfortable, social environment. To maintain these friendships, she continued to repeat behaviors and soon they became a repeated pattern of behavior - habits - she became accustomed to.  Sue consciously ?(or may be even unconsciously because of her skewed perception of the connection between reaping what you sow) prioritized these psychosocial* behaviors and they became not only repeated, unproductive habits, they became her new normal “standard operating procedures” (S.O.P’s). Her new habit of underage drinking and lying to her parents became her "new normal". When she moved out of the house, the lies she told them were now her own self-talk so she could maintain her self-worth (which is fragile because it was built on faulty foundational beliefs).

 

This skewed decision-making altered Sue's reality without her really knowing it (at least consciously), despite what feedback she may have been getting from her parents, old friends or even societal consequences. When you are attracted to drinking, drugs, shopping, gambling or another activity that has piqued your interest, and partaking in the activity becomes a part of your routine, not only do habits take over, but your thinking is impacted which is what re-orders your priorities in life (an unintended consequence of bad habits). When you are swept away by the euphoric feeling that the activity brings, addictive thinking**, not logical thinking, drives the direction of behavior, impacting the well-being of your life.   

• *Psychosocial-the interrelation of social factors with individual thought and behavior.​

• **This cycle of unproductive behavior has neuro/biological consequences (neuroscience studies the mind/body connection) that makes behavioral habits harder to break; thus the popular term addictive thinking. Read more at: https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/education/bcr/addiction-research/brain-disease-model-ru-316#:~:text=Conclusion 

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​When priorities in life are mismanaged, the logic of cause and effect becomes distorted. This alters the alignment between your goals and your decision-making. Your emotional cost of this mismanagement (one of many) is stress which creates a subconscious uncomfortable feeling that you want to numb or do away with. Addiction turns stress into anxiety. This is a second dose, if you will, of the stress you feel upon making a decision that doesn't solve the initial, underlying problems or misaligns with your life goals. (By choosing an irrational solution to address your anxiety, you fall deeper into your addiction and you continue - often, but not always, blindly - with the same behavior that caused the initial goal misalignment in the first place.) Because of this illogical reasoning, you get stuck in a cycle of dysfunction. Only when something happens to disrupt this cycle will you awaken to see the destructiveness of the addiction and turn your attention towards a goal with purpose and significance. 

  

What's your goal?

• Is it to mask and / or dull your bad feelings of past or current pain? 

• Is it to make yourself feel better because you now are accepted and belong to a group?

• Is it to discover why you are drawn to continue your bad habit and get to the root cause so you can face the responsibility of your own performance?

• Is it to face the disconnect between your attitude, behavior and consequences? If so, do you turn and look at all your available options for help?  

How you define the problem determines the effectiveness of the solutions generated during the brainstorming process of decision making. Do you have any hidden biases that cancel out unfairly certain alternatives?

 

​Every person makes a choice in how to respond to certain stimuli. Decisions are the force behind change or sameness. Decisions vary but the common denominator is that they are all prone to some risk (as we don't have the luxury of foresight). In addition to risk, another factor influencing decisions is attitude. These, like fearfulness, timidity, denial, and even over/false confidence weakens the alignment between the goal setting and decision-making process. This can generate anxiety which opens the door to more problems and soon your misalignment sabatoges any worthy goal you may have you in the future (because of misaligned steps taken in a dysfunctional behavioral cycle) can lead to lowering your expectations further impacting your attitude.

 

Routines are efficient but may need to change so you can maintain peak performance steps that lead to your goal. When unexpected or unintended consequences occur, this is a natural indicator that routines need to be adjusted. Doing the same thing and expecting different consequences, prevents frustration and effective change. It's important to strive to be resilient; to be a life-long learner that can adjust their behavior based on both knowledge and the consequences of action. 

• For more opportunities to explore your goal alignment, check out the self-evaluation worksheets in "Capture your Vision" section of this program. 

• If you are trapped in unwanted behaviors and feel anxious because of this, read more about the psycho-social theory, as applied to addictive thinking, in the first 2 sections of this website.

• In section 3, there are a variety of anxiety exercises for self-reflection to help you find the root cause of your anxiety.

• In light of what you discover about your anxiety, embrace the need to change by adjusting your behavioral habits until the anxiety dissolves and new routines become habits.