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Person on both knees on ground holding head as mind fills with conflicting thoughts

Understanding Addiction From Inside the Mind – For Those With Addiction and the Loved Ones of That Person

Side note: When I say “treatment” this may look different for different people. For me its doing the 12 steps, attending meetings, constantly working to help others, and working to strengthen the connection I have with the higher power of my understanding. This is what works for me, but their is no one size fits all as cases of addiction are highly individualized and complex.

The way one understands and views mental illnesses such as addiction plays a crucial role when it comes to treatment. Being aware of the inner workings of one’s mind is especially important for those who have mental illness not because this awareness will stop or lessen such illnesses, but because the awareness can allow someone to recognize the need to enact treatment methods and recognize the importance of lifelong treatment. Understanding what addiction is like, and putting oneself in the mind of the person who has addiction is also extremely important for those close with the person who has addiction. I am going to share the way that I view the inner workings of my mind in the hopes that it helps non addicts better understand the disease of an addict, and that it helps the addict be able to recognize when their addiction is being expressed.

Mental illnesses such as addiction are extremely powerful diseases that live within the mind. The mind is more powerful than we could ever imagine. Most people think of the mind as one unified thing that is you although to me this belief can hinder one’s awareness of their disease. I view the mind as if it is made up of many entities, each of which is vastly different, and they all are competing to be expressed through me. I label each of these entities and learn about how they think and what they want so I can identify which entities are expressing their thoughts in my head at a given time. For me some main entities that I have labeled are the addiction entity, the moral entity, the fear entity, the resentful entity, and the self riotous entity. The entities one can label in their own head, and how powerful each one is, is completely subjective to the individual. The way I view it, the mind is constantly filtering thoughts that are coming from all of these entities and the ratio of which entities are being expressed the most through you at any given time will change constantly.

Whether you believe there is any truth to the mind being the home of all sorts of different entities is not the point. The point is if you just try to view the mind in this way, it can give you the ability to better recognize when your mental illnesses are strengthening, therefore allowing you to see that you need to increase your treatment methods. It can also give family members of one with addiction a better ability to comprehend why their loved ones do what they do. It is important to learn the ins and outs of each of the various entities one identifies within their mind so that when the individual is thinking thoughts at any given time, they can reflect on which entity these thoughts are coming from. If the thoughts one is having are questionable it is always important to ask oneself, which entity are these thoughts coming from? Does this entity typically positively impact one’s life or does it typically negatively impact one’s life?

In my experiences, especially when talking about addiction these entities are in constant and direct conflict with one another. One entity, let us call it the moral entity which many view as their true self, feels as though it’s constantly at war with the addiction entity. This is why we see those who have addiction making so many sincere promises to family members about how they will stop using, only to use right after. More often than not when these promises were made, they were made with complete sincerity as the moral entity wants more than anything to be sober. With that said without proper treatment the addiction entity is much stronger than the moral entity, and the second it gets the chance it drives the individual to picking up. Once the addiction entity is stronger then the moral entity it is extremely hard for one to get sober off sheer will power, for you cannot strengthen the moral entity through will power and this is why some form of lifelong treatment is so important. Part of the reason those who have addiction are so misunderstood is because the mind is often viewed as one unified front. If you tell someone you want more than anything to be sober and use right after, it is likely the person you told will think you didn’t really mean it, and don’t actually want to be sober. They will think this because how could one unified mind perform such opposite actions one right after another and be sincere about both actions. The answer is it couldn’t, the mind would have to be completely divided and those who have addiction have just that, a mind that is completely divided and in direct conflict with itself. This conflict of the entities is what drives many addicts into severe periods of deep depression, and at times to suicide. Imagine waking up every day and robbing, terrorizing, and traumatizing the ones you love most in your life with almost no control over doing so. The moral entity within you wants so badly to stop, to make the ones you love proud and happy, yet it is too weak compared to the addiction entity without a form of treatment. If an individual with a strong addiction entity is introduced to substances, that entity will take whatever means necessary to get substances, no matter what! As a result, it feels like no matter what the individual does they will always bring pain into the lives of everyone around them because the addiction entity is just too strong for the moral entity to ever overcome.

Without treatment this awareness of which thought is coming from which entity will do the addict little good because the addiction entity is much too strong to be handled with willpower. This is why recovery often seems completely hopeless during active addiction. Now, once the individual gets some strategies that they can use to help treat their addiction such as working recovery programs, making spiritual connections to a higher power, meditation, etc this awareness of when their addiction is trying to be expressed can alert the individual of the need to increase the enactment of these treatment methods. These treatment methods strengthen the moral entity and overtime allow it to become stronger then the addiction entity. How ever if treatment is stopped, even if one hasn’t used in 40 years their moral entity will grow weaker and soon the addiction entity will take over once again. Addiction is a lifelong disease that requires lifelong treatment no matter how long an individual has been sober for. The addiction entity NEVER goes away. Often times once a person has been sober for a certain period of time they think they no longer need treatment and that they are “cured”. This mindset often leads to relapse and recognizing which thoughts are coming from the addiction entity can help prevent this from ever happening. If the person can realize which thoughts come from the addiction entity, they will also realize that the entity never goes away allowing them to understand the need for lifelong treatment.

Overtime the only thing that changes is how powerful each entity is, or the ratio of control it has over an individual. If one has been using for a long time the addiction entity is exponentially more powerful then the moral entity. However as a person starts enacting methods of treatment the moral entity grows stronger and the addiction entity grows weaker. If one then stops treatment the moral entity will grow weaker and addiction stronger. While the ratio of control may change, no entity ever goes away.

The last reason I believe this technique can be so helpful in maintaining recovery is because it can help individuals better see the tricks of the addiction entity. Addiction is a very tricky and manipulative disease. It can often create thoughts, and then try to disguise those thoughts as if they were coming from the moral entity. When one thinks of their mind as one unified thing it is much easier for the addiction entity to disguise these thoughts, and have them appear to the individuals as unharmful, and even positive. With this said, if one thinks of their mind using this strategy that I am suggesting, they can then better learn the tricks of the addiction entity, and the differences between such entities in order to recognize when their addiction is attempting to take control.

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