Addiction-in your own words

I have always struggled with the term alcoholic. I never identified with it, I never called members of my family by that term, I never realized how powerful that term seemed. Something that is more powerful than this term is Recovering Alcoholic. Anyone can be addicted to anything. Too much t.v. sure, too much porn? Yup! Too much Social media? Believe it or not, it is a thing…..and increasingly so as our generations preceding us have so many more outlets for this.

Reflecting on a recent meeting, the topic was what is addiction in your own terms. What components are required to be considered an addict. Take a little while to think about what YOUR definition of addiction is. Don’t look it up first! And after you are satisfied with your answer, check out 3 resources for addiction. Wikipedia, Websters, the internet in general. Look up the term. How close are you to that definition? Does your definition matter more to you or less to you now that you have looked it up? Does your definition make more sense than what you read?

Apply that to other things in your day to day. Say you are addicted to pop. If you removed that from your day, would you supplement it with something like coffee? Take away a smoker’s smokes…..will they start doing something else. Does an alcoholic quit drinking and start smoking pot addictively? This is a fine line for us toe and it makes us more mindful of our definition of things.

With so many words in the english language, there are just as many interpretations.

Take a moment to think about this and incorporate this into your day to day.

Namaste

-e