Learning How to Overcome Addiction
As drugs and alcohol set in on a person so does certain behaviour. Things like lying, hiding and keeping secrets as well as things like where to find the drugs, which drugs give you the best high or how best to handle a come down, all of this behaviour is learned.
Animals learn by stimulus-response, rewards and penalties but humans learn by study, observation, practice, success and failure. Once the cycle of drug taking begins so does this cycle of learning.
Well, the unfortunate truth is, you cannot unlearn this stuff. Humans are above the level of animals and though there are some practices designed to ‘un-learn’ this behaviour it doesn’t really work that way. What you have learned during the cycle of addiction is there… but that doesn’t stop someone from learning something new.
Here at Narconon, we believe that the key to rehabilitation (following effective withdrawal and detoxification) is learning. That’s right, learning. An addict learned those behaviour patterns, well let’s learn some new ones.
One of the hardest things for an addict is learning to deal with life without the crutch of drugs. If there is a problem, well how do you confront and resolve it? If there is a relationship issue, if you have done something wrong, if there is some new unknown condition in your life, what should you do about it?
All of these things can be handled with the old patterns, when things get difficult, have a drink or smoke a joint and keep it hidden. Or they can be handled with new methods learned.
Improved communication skills, better ability to handle conditions, ability to face up to wrongdoing. All of these things and more, allow a person to build new methods of dealing with things.
Life is always going to throw things in our path, what we can control is how we deal with them.
