When You Are Addicted, You Are At War With Yourself
When you are struggling with an addiction – no matter what it is – you are constantly at war with yourself. You don’t want to be addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, or gambling, yet you are addicted anyway.
An addicts will tell themselves that they are going to stop, but they can’t. They convince themselves that they will moderate, but they find themselves going on binges in spite of their best intentions. They promise themselves that they won’t devote any more time or money on their habit. Only to empty their bank account in pursuit of the next fix. When you are hooked, no matter what you say to yourself, you will always end up engaging in addictive behavior. This ultimately leads to remorse and regret afterwards.
It is important to recognize that addiction is a powerful force that drives people to do the things they don’t want to do. Addiction has a way of hijacking your brain and taking on a life of its own. Though you want to control it – and try to – it will always lead you down dark roads and leave you feeling completely powerless.
Most people who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or other behaviors stay in their addiction for a considerable amount of time before they come to terms with it. This is what denial is all about. Denial tells you that you don’t have a problem, that you can control it, or that next time will be different. As long as you continue to lie to yourself about your condition, you can not recover from it. And – the war will wage on. You will continually be stuck in the cycle of battling yourself.
Ready To Win The War? Surrender Is The Answer
The only way to win the war against yourself and your addiction is to surrender. Surrender is what happens when you stop fighting and give up completely. This may sound like a foreign concept. It’s certainly a difficult one to wrap your mind around. Most people resist the idea of surrender because they have been taught that giving up is a sign of weakness – but this is not the case.
It takes incredible courage to surrender. By relinquishing your illusion of control, you open yourself up to receive the help that you need to overcome your addiction. The truth is, you are NOT controlling your addiction – it is controlling you. You are running around trying to fix everything and hold on to everything because you are afraid that if you stop doing that. You will drown in the sea of your own consequences. The truth is, when you admit that you can’t manage your own life as a result of your addiction, you finally find the strength to recover from it.
Surrender To Win
There is an old saying in recovery: “Surrender to win”. This is a paradox indeed, but one that offers you a way out of your addiction. When you surrender, you stop fighting yourself. You admit defeat. You accept the fact that your addiction is killing you and ruining your life. Although you wish you could overcome it with your own willpower, you can’t – and you know it. Only when you come to the end of yourself and surrender do you open yourself to victory.
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