1.
I have written many articles on how to quit addictions. Because in fact, I have a particularly strong tendency towards addiction myself.
After I learned to smoke, I would smoke up to three packs a day. When playing games, I would often stay up all night. When going out with friends to drink, I would start drinking at six in the evening and continue until breakfast the next morning.
But only I understand that, in this process, I did not experience much joy. Pain was the norm.
What’s even more painful is the infinite fear that spreads as soon as I think about not having those distractions.
Perhaps for this reason, I spent a lot of time looking for ways to escape this pain.
As I gained more experience and learned much about studies on addictive personalities, after shedding those “addictions,” I gradually came to understand one thing:
No one wants to be addicted. We are just searching for a kind of anesthetic.
An anesthetic that can alleviate the true source of inner pain.
Here, we need not explore what this source is. Because no matter how we discuss it, we ultimately cannot escape our childhood experiences. And such discussions will lead to meaningless attacks on a certain person from the past.
Moreover, this kind of exploration resembles a sort of correct nonsense—
You entered this room because you just opened the door to it.
Yes, that is certainly correct. The past can determine the present. But then what?
What truly matters is how we act now to step into the room we genuinely want to enter in the next moment.
All past experiences serve this purpose. Otherwise, discussing the past is meaningless.
When it comes to changing addiction, you only need to know that you do not really need any addictive behavior; you are just looking for an emotional anesthetic to escape the deeply hidden pain from the past in your subconscious.
It is merely a skill you learned unintentionally, which you believe can help alleviate your pain—whether that pain comes from childhood traumas, work pressure, or rejection by a group.
But emotional anesthetics cannot truly help you.
If they really worked, you wouldn’t feel guilt, self-blame, and the ever-expanding fear of stopping while using the anesthetic.
You need a new skill.
A truly effective skill.
2.
This skill is the technique of detaching from pain—you can also refer to it as psychological separation.
To achieve this, the ability you really need to master is “awareness.”
The awareness of breathing we often mention is only a stepping stone. It allows you to understand what awareness actually feels like.
In reality, it is about learning to actively draw your attention to sensory experiences and being able to switch at any moment.
Because awareness—
