What comes to mind when you hear or see the word, addiction? Drugs, alcohol, vices, or any of those habits that gradually destroy your body. There's more to addiction than meets the eye.

You can find yourself in a loop of behaviors, struggles, and suffering that you might be addicted to without knowing. It’s typical to think of addiction in terms of things like drugs, but it can be a complex journey that shows up in other ways, too. For some, it's exercising, gaming, and even spending time at work. People can get addicted to pain, abuse, and even self-sabotage. The question to always ask is, why?

Where does addiction originate from?

Everyone wants to be connected to something or someone. We all need to feel a bond, a sense of belonging, and something that makes us feel seen, heard, desired, and understood.

The world has been a shitshow for the longest time. With the current events happening around the world, and the physical and emotional pain that mental health challenges can bring, it’s not difficult to seek comfort in anything that presents itself as a coping mechanism or helps to feel a sense of control.

It often starts with a trigger. This could be something external, like stress from work or abuse, or maybe something within, like feeling anxious, lonely, stuck, or overwhelmed.

Maybe it's not even substance abuse. Maybe it's the compelling urge to self-sabotage, or the constant need to be the victim of emotional abuse. Maybe it's an unquenchable need to make others feel small so you can feel some sense of authority. Overall, the idea of becoming someone else can feel impossible and overwhelming, but you can always reinvent yourself.

Addiction can be tricky. It could be telling you that you’re putting up internal walls to avoid getting heartbroken, that you'll never fit in without people-pleasing or self-harming, or that you're dependent on a harmful habit because you're struggling with stress or trauma.

Awareness is a stepping stone to dealing with addiction. It helps to know why you feel the need for an escape from your current reality, or why you feel stuck in a series of behaviors that make you feel connected to something or someone. That need for a bond or an escape.

Treating a tree at its roots empowers it to grow fresh leaves. Forcing yourself to drop a substance that gives a temporal sense of belonging, or not speaking to someone, won't solve the problem of your desire to feel loved.

The problem is not that you're talking to people who don't love you, but that you don't feel loved. Why?

When you tackle that, you'll find it easier to understand what true love is. You’ll learn to love yourself and attract people who genuinely love you, because you know how you deserve to be loved.

An amazing substitute for dealing with addiction is connection.

- Bonding with new practices,

- Building genuine connections,

- Believing in a healthy community.

These help to gradually cater to the pain, trauma, or dependency on short-term satisfactions to escape your scary reality.

It is not impossible to be free from addiction. However, you need to be aware of the root cause, accept that there's a problem, and gradually replace unhealthy habits and triggers with healthy practices and new, wholesome bonds.