The 1 Key To Breaking Addiction

This Will Free You Once And For All

Someone I know quit smoking overnight.

For them, the process was quite simple, and deadly effective. Well, perhaps not deadly. The opposite, actually, as it broke a lifetime poisonous habit.

Many people insist that cold turkey is the only way. Tough it out. To some degree, they are right. But if they miss this one key aspect, all of their efforts will go to waste.

Two Stories, One Truth

So how did my friend achieve their smoking sobriety so quickly, you are probably wondering?

She visited a hypnotherapist.

The idea of hypnosis is to plant new ideas into your subconscious through repetition. First, the hypnotist gets you to relax and count backwards, putting you in a receptive state of mind. From there, they ‘suggest’ that you associate smoking with unpleasant outcomes, such as stinking up your clothes, having a constantly-dry mouth, or the desperate cravings you get on a long-haul flight.

Or worse.

I know another person, a life-long drinker, who will never, ever quit alcohol, let alone overnight. How do I know this? Because they told me so. On every birthday, they get bottles of whiskey from their loved ones. If you suggest they drink too much, they quickly dismiss you and claim they ‘only’ have two glasses of Scotch and the odd beer each day. They almost always send a whiskey glass emoji with their chat-group message. In short, they see absolutely nothing wrong with their drinking. In fact, they see it as a good thing. It is a part of who they are, and it makes them happy.

For one, the smoker saw their habit as a bad thing, and was willing to make the effort to quit. That willingness to admit reality and do something about it is the key to quitting, you might think. But how many people do you know who admitted that their addiction was bad, took steps to quit, and failed?

The real answer is staring us right in the face, both when we look at the smoker who successfully quit, and the alcoholic who never will.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Addiction

The alcoholic from earlier is completely shielded from the reality of their actions. On the surface, they seem high-functioning and normal. They get up for work on time, they never do anything stupid while drinking, and they never turn violent. They are efficient in their day-to-day, and, knock on wood, have yet to face any physical illness from drinking.

Yet what would their life look like if they had never picked up drinking? One could question the impact that alcohol has had on their cognitive ability, and their capacity to perform at a higher level than they currently do. While they have not faced the worst effects of alcoholism, having perhaps been blessed with genetics which protected them, this person never came close to facing the best in themselves. They are intelligent, disciplined and hard-working. How much of that potential was wasted due to the dulling effects of alcohol on their body and mind?

We will never find out. This person spent a lifetime telling themselves that alcoholism was good, and that they had no problem. Their environment reinforced that story. In short, they believed that alcoholism was fine, and did everything in their power to reinforce that belief.

The smoker, on the other hand, came to believe something else. While they had an inkling that smoking was harming them, both in the short and long term, it was hypnosis which allowed them to internalise that belief.

So there we have it: The key to breaking addiction is to expose our false beliefs about addiction, challenge them, and then internalise new, realistic beliefs which make quitting possible.

Creating A New Mythology Around Addiction

Luckily, I never had a problem with alcohol or smoking. I’ve smoked a single cigarette my entire life, and never felt the urge to have another. I’ve had phases of drinking socially for weeks on end, but always quit without a second thought. Alcohol currently plays almost no role in my life.

Yet everyone has their vices.

For me, it began with four cans of Coca-Cola a day, which eventually morphed into regular sugar consumption along with five coffees a day. And you guessed it, I had my stories which kept that habit in place.

As a writer with ADHD, coffee helps me focus. Before I started drinking the black stuff, I would launch into a book or writing habit, and then quit within a few weeks. After coffee, the habit stuck. So coffee became a staple of my day. It began with one cup, then two, and often would involve as many as five strong coffees well into the evening. As the creativity flowed, I told myself that coffee in any amount was good as long as I was producing.

Over the years, that story became reinforced by my success as a writer, and I never bothered to question it — even when I was waking up with heart palpitations, and forced to roll around for hours unable to fall back asleep. Sometimes I would be so wired I would stay awake writing until 5:00 am. There were phases in winter when I would not even see the light of day, having become fully nocturnal, falling asleep in the late morning and waking up after the sun had set. So did I have a problem? You bet yourself I did.

Eventually, I was forced to face my belief that coffee was good in any amount. Being someone willing to face their shortcomings, I admitted my problem and began to dial back. I settled in at three cups a day before 4:00 pm, allowing my body some time to release the caffeine before bedtime.

I carried on like that for another couple of years before I was able to get to the true heart of my addiction. After October 7 and the American-backed genocide in Palestine rolled past a year, my fury at the empire was raging. I directed it into the boycott movement, swearing off Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonalds, and any brand linked to the Zionist movement. ‘Quitting’ in this regard was simple, even when my blood sugar was low, and an ice-cold Coke was inches from my fingers.

I now saw it clearly. Something fundamental had shifted inside me. I knew that these brands were linked to an empire that had grown genocidal and evil. I believed with absolute conviction that if I supported those brands, I too was supporting evil. That new belief-set was engraved in my psyche, not by hypnosis, but by the endless videos and images of Palestinian babies with caved-in skulls, tens of thousands of headless and lifeless bodies, and apocalyptic death and destruction. Nobody had to gently ‘suggest’ anything to me. How I viewed the world had changed forever, a shift brought on by the immense pain I felt within.

The Stories We Don’t Tell Ourselves About Addiction

As I was considering how easily I had boycotted so many lifelong habits in an instant, I began to question my coffee addiction again. My sleep had improved immensely, but it was still not perfect. A coffee did get me going for the day, no question about it, but did I really need three? What was the sweet spot of my necessary dosage?

I began by quitting cold turkey for two weeks. The results were fascinating. For one, my bedtime went from midnight to 5:00 pm. My brain was dissociating and skipping beats, no doubt aggravated by my ADHD. One time I almost put the salt in the fridge instead of on the spice rack. My ability to drive was affected.

After two weeks of no coffee, I decided to try one cup in the morning. To my surprise, it was all I needed. One strong cup of coffee allowed me to come into the day, get a solid 6–7 hours of writing done, spend meaningful time with my family, and be asleep by 11:00 pm. The quality of that sleep was also greatly improved, and my energy dips during the day were resolved. One strong cup of coffee. That was all I needed.

This realisation heralded an enormous shift in my belief about myself. It was not the coffee which wrote all those articles and books — it was me. Coffee was the bridge, yet I was the one who had walked over it. And I did not need to wire myself up every day. One cup got me going, and I could handle the rest.

From there, as the baseline of my nervous system gradually lowered, and I was able to relax into the moment, I began to understand the stories about my addictions which I had refused to confront. Coffee not only enabled me to write, it also kept me from feeling my emotions. Once I understood this, my cravings for approval faded.

When we break down the false stories which keep us caged in our addiction, the true stories begin to arise. We realise we had been gaslighting ourselves.

Gabor Maté famously posited: Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. Admitting and facing the tragedy which created our addiction is not necessary to quit, but it is compulsory if you wish to transform beyond your addiction. Childhood abuse. Intergenerational trauma. Rupture from your homeland, God or community. In all of these, I came to understand that I had much to confront. Behind all of the false stories I told myself about my neurotic and addictive personality, I was in pain. And that pain had a story to tell.

The Three Pillars Of Addiction Recovery

Life circumstances which create addiction can be unbearable, yet rather than admit the truth and feel it, we numb ourselves. The years I spent travelling and living in Europe allowed me to make enormous strides in my personal growth. The insights I gained and the opportunities I discovered enabled me to pursue my childhood dream and undertake a hero’s journey into the centre of my being. Self-knowledge, enlightenment and mind-bending transformation were my rewards.

And yet, I was still unable to break free of my addictive personality.

Exposing and challenging the false stories around my addictions brought me to the door. Introducing new, more realistic beliefs handed me the key, allowing me to cross through the threshold and face my pain. What allowed me to survive that pain, however, was a willingness to invite God into my life. To accept the help of my family. To explore my roots, and re-integrate them into my being. God. Homeland. Community. These are the pillars for wholeness, which immunises us from addiction.

For some people, myself included, homeland is inaccessible. Mine is currently undergoing systematic destruction and ethnic cleansing by the West. The pain I feel around that comes both from my past and the present. And yet, I still have the other two pillars: The people around me, and the God above me. The Palestinians have all three, which sustains them even through genocide. Such is the power of the pillars. For me, two has to be enough for now.

So where will your journey toward addiction recovery take you? Will it be as empowering and transformative as it is unique? If you are brave enough to hear the stories your heart is yearning to tell you, while cradling its pain, you might just find out.

Buy Me A Coffee or Become A Paid Subscriber to support my writing.