My Story

[lifeontheroad]

Right now I'm exhausted. I'm so very, very tired. My mind, my body, my soul. I'm always frustrated and anxious, nervous to talk to people, easily stressed by the thought of even being in a conversation with people. My forehead is in a constant state of crease; confused, frustrated, angry. And never have I ever felt so demotivated, uninspired, and ultimately inadequate. I can't achieve, or rather I won't achieve. I know what I need to do to get better and feel better but I cant even convince myself to do it. I smoke cigarettes, I smoke weed, I've drank at least a litre of Coca Cola every day for the last 15 years, and I eat junk food like McDonalds at least twice a day. I usually maintain myself fairly well, and it's not immediately obvious but I certainly hate the way I feel all the time, and smell all the time, and even taste all the time. I smoke a cigarette and it tastes filthy and makes me cough and splutter, but I still go in for another drag, and another drag, and another drag... I eat a Big Mac and I feel like I've swallowed trash, and it's just sitting in my stomach... And yet, I buy another one... and another one. Sometimes I don't even eat it. Sometimes I buy it, I pull it out of the container, immediately lose my appetite and then just put it back in the bag and it sits in my car and makes the car smell like old Big Mac... and I work in my car. And then there is the wasted money. Thousands and thousands of dollars just thrown away because of drug use, because of laziness, because of just plain old silliness. Just gone. For what? For junk. So much junk. And yet... another one.

So, why. WHY. Do I always go back... and why is it so hard to break the cycle?? Because now my brain is back to thinking about how exhausted I am, and how tired my brain is. I know that I can do better and be better because I've been there. Honestly, it's always been hard to be happy, and I've always expended a lot of energy trying to achieve normality, but now it's gotten the better of me and my candle is well and truly burned. Thankfully, I don't want to hurt myself or anything like that. But I just wanna have life again. And I really wanna not be an addict.

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

Well, I guess these habitual behaviours are fulfilling some sort of need/urge. Those urges will happen to you again and again, just as part of life. The problem isn't the fact that you feel {sad, bored, lonely, whatever}, but that your brain is used to jumping to some particular ways to deal with the situation. Brains just do this. They like to streamline things, so they can be as energy-efficient (non-thinking) as possible.

But just like hunger can be solved with chocolate or cheese or chives, other urges can also be met in different ways. Try to catch yourself in those urges, and wind back the thought process to find the feeling that initiated it. And try to do something else instead that will address that urge. e.g. If you feel lonely, call a friend. If you feel bored, do something exciting. Sometimes I do this and I don't even know what to do to deal with my feeling, so I just google it; e.g. "What to do when feeling {lonely, like a rat in a cage, like nothing is fun, whatever}", which always comes up with some good suggestions. That's one thing to try, anyway.

It is a *process* to change habitual behaviours, so you most likely WILL fall back to the behaviours again and again. It just takes time, and getting back on the horse, again and again. Don't beat yourself up when you have slip-ups. Just think "Ah, well. There's a slip-up. All part of the process. And now.. on we go, forward.".

With smoking in particular, people are more likely to quit if they use nicotine patches or some other nicotine replacement therapy. Your doctor can help you with this.

For now, you're exhausted. That's okay. People are exhausted sometimes.

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

Also, it can be very helpful to use outside help in various forms. Change your environment to suit your goal: remove the tempting thing from your house, put up some notes or posters that reaffirm your goal. Talk to someone (friends, or people on this forum, or someone) about your progress and slip-ups. Make use of phone apps that give you reminders, if that would be useful. Join a support group. It can be very tempting to try to solve problems entirely within the confines of one's own head. ("It's my problem; I should solve it"). But we are social and environmentally-involved creatures, and part of the way we exist in the world is in relation to our surroundings.