Letting go of addictions and compulsive behaviours

Introduction

There are many, many methods that people have used, with varying degrees of success, for releasing themselves from addictions and compulsive or habitual behaviours, and I'm not going into those here. Rather, I'm putting forward a particular combination of methods that I myself am finding most efficient in clearing mental habits, and which have the potential to easily and quickly clear pretty well any sort of addiction or compulsion, ranging from minor to really serious.

I'm concerning myself here not only with substance misuse but really with all compulsive behaviours, and that includes sexual behaviour. Contrary to almost universal misunderstandings, healthy sexual activity in humans would be neither compulsive nor habitual, nor driven by any sense of need, craving or desire. It's not driven by an 'appetite' nor a 'drive', and wouldn't necessarily be between individuals of opposite gender.

However, apart from the case of a vanishingly small proportion of people very advanced in their self-actualization / self-realization process, ALL of the sexual activity that actually occurs for people is driven by desire and feelings of need, and obstructs the manifestation of genuine love, which latter is a fundamental part of the basis of healthy sexual activity. Great benefits come from releasing oneself from such desires and compulsions, for then one's genuine love is able to manifest as an intrinsic aspect of one's everyday life experience.

Although the methods I'm presenting below don't directly take away true chemical addictions, the fact is that the main factor that keeps a person addicted is their own emotional addictive tendency, and this can generally be released. To come off the drug is then merely a transient uncomfortable phase (albeit more like a serious illness in the case of heroin-type drugs).

Typically people who are on addictive drugs (including tobacco) will blame their addiction on the drug or other people or something in their physical circumstances (like losing a job) rather than take responsibility for themselves and recognise that the prime cause and seat of their addiction is, to at least a considerable extent, the garbage, and very often soul fragments or sometimes 'spirit attachments' too, controlling them.

One problem about the controlling activities of the garbage is that it seeks to control the affected person emotionally to turn them away from really effective means to clear addictions, and indeed to clear themselves of their garbage interferences and any 'entities'.

In particular, as I experienced myself, the garbage tends to fight tooth and nail against its human victim or 'target' using any really effective emotional clearance method, because, if the latter were used, say, daily, it would be speedily dissolving the very emotional issues that the garbage is exploiting to create the addiction. Thus it's rare for an (at least initially) addicted person to be properly motivated to use any such method.

Dissolving the emotional addiction

Until in May 2007, when I took on the dramatically life-changing beginnings of the healing and self-actualization methodology that I present in Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way, of which more below, The Work was the most fundamental, easy and speedy way that I knew to enable oneself to let go of the emotional aspect of any addiction or habit. In The Work you simply identify the particular beliefs and stressful thoughts that underlie the habit or addiction and then write them down and put them through a simple but rigorous inquiry process. This enables you to stop believing those thoughts.

Such thoughts will commonly be things like I've got to have xxxx, I've got to do xxxx, I need xxxx, I couldn't survive without xxxx and I can't be happy unless I have [or do] xxxx. These are ALL untrue thoughts, but realizing that intellectually doesn't in itself get you out of an addiction, and that's where the inquiry process comes in. If you conduct the inquiry process well, your mind then lets go of its attachment to those thoughts, so that that issue, or a good bit of it, is then clear and you at last start feeling free to live differently.

As I explain in my guide to using The Work, it's important that the inquiry work be done on a broad front and not just applied to the one issue. If a habit doesn't fully dissolve when a whole worksheet of relevant thoughts has been put to inquiry, it doesn't mean that The Work has failed, but continuing work on a broad front is required, and you'd find that in your further inquiry work variants or repeats of thoughts related to the habit or addiction would still keep cropping up.

You then put each of those to inquiry, and so you continue, improving many aspects of your life as well as progressively weakening the particular issue. If, however, you just try to address the habit or addiction in isolation from other issues, then you will very likely not get very far with your inquiry work.

Note this carefully! — A particular reason for doing the inquiry work on a broad front is that the particular habit or addiction is itself an attempt to run away from one or more emotional issues that need addressing. So, without putting to inquiry the thoughts underlying such issues, it could be quite hard to get free from troublesome addictions even if one has been addressing them directly through inquiry.

The fundamental drawback of The Work — and a more effective alternative

The Work, when awarely and skilfully applied, can work wonders — though, as I explain in my page on The Work, there are quite serious limitations and constraints upon the effectiveness of that method, because of the phenomenon of the parasitic lost souls that are attached to very many people (this is much more common than what are generally known as spirit attachments), and also the primary archetypes to which many people unawarely have active connections.

It isn't so easy to use those methods to clear out the emotional issues and traumas of lost souls attached to you, and it's presumably well-nigh impossible to clear oneself of the effects of the primary archetype connections — but yet those are all used by the garbage to control and attack people and to keep them in dependencies and addictions.

However, in any case the vast majority of people with addiction issues have blocks to the very awareness and mental acuity that would enable them to make good use of such methods. Indeed, the vast majority of all people have such blocks regardless of whether they have an obvious addiction issue!

Indeed in most if not all such cases I myself would recognise an obvious additional addiction, which could meaningfully be described as a 'meta-addiction' — that of being strongly attached to staying more or less the way one is, and not accepting healthy personal change in one's life! That may be normal, but what it's not is either healthy or genuinely natural. It's the garbage that seeks to cultivate such stuck-in-a-rut outlooks on life.

In 2007 I myself, without any obvious addiction issues, and getting a lot of good use out of The Work, still almost immediately found myself with no further cause to use that method once I'd taken on the yogic practices (not ordinary Yoga!) that I soon adapted, developed and added to, to create what is, as far as I can yet tell, a fully comprehensive genuine self-actualization methodology.

The latter is also built upon my own outlook and insights derived from my having been enlightened from 1997 and thus having an understanding of the nature of consciousness and of reality that nearly all 'healers' don't have. For this reason in particular I've been much more difficult for the garbage to lead astray than 'healers' in general.

I therefore refer you to Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way, where you will find more details of my range of methods. I do include there The Work, but I make it clear that certain other methods that I present are much simpler, easier and altogether still more effective, and, at least to my current understanding, even progressively weaken the hold of and progressively 'fade out' garbage interferences and attacks, and apparently eventually clear out any attached 'entities' of any type.

Also I have a specific method for progressively dissolving / inactivating one's connections to primary archetypes (though, for safety, that needs to be deferred till one is quite advanced in one's self-actualization process).

Look particularly to the Grounding Point procedure, which is particularly effective at dissolving illusory realities that one may be carrying, which are tied up with those beliefs that really make the emotional aspect of addictions.

Getting round the issue of lack of motivation

It doesn't require rocket science to realize that still the majority of people with addiction issues would have a block to using even the aforementioned yogic practices, just because the addiction itself (and the garbage interference causing it) demotivates them from using such vigorous practices on a daily basis. There's no 'magic wand' for such situations. If a person simply doesn't have the motivation to help themselves, then what do you do?

One thing that could be done, and would make tremendous sense, is for healthcare services to include facilities for group sessions for carrying out those practices — especially Self-Power Walking and Grounding Point — under the guidance and encouragement of an active user of the methods. That wouldn't reach anything like everyone of course, but at least some otherwise unmotivated people could be greatly helped that way. Addiction centres and mental health institutions, and indeed really all medical centres, would benefit their communities very much more if they offered this service.

However, putting all one's eggs in one basket is never such a good idea, and actually The Work works very well when people are encouragingly guided through using it on specific issues, including those relating to addictions. So the availability of 'facilitation' group or personal consultation sessions using The Work would also be a great enhancement to addiction, mental health and medical centres.

It wouldn't be the great extra drain on financial resources that many people would imagine, for the simple reason that these emotional clearance and self-actualization methods make people much healthier generally — physically as well as mentally — and so these people would progressively require less and less from the medical and other support services, becoming much more self reliant and self-directing.

An additional approach — challenge oneself or another person to get rational!

This wouldn't work for the majority, who are too locked into their irrationalities, but there are some individuals whose addictions and associated beliefs / illusory realities are sufficiently superficial for this to have at least some very positive effect. Let's give an illustration.

A particular guy picked me up on a hitch-hike recently (July 2021), and started off by seeking to encourage me not to use my face mask. With the COVID-19 pandemic still affecting this country, I had a strict policy of always wearing one (properly) when I was in a car with anyone, whether they liked it or not. So, he was getting a little edgy because he himself was into pandemic denial, anti-vaccination and all that (What they tell you is all lies, he kept heavily asserting). Then came the predictable 'courtesy' question — Would it be okay with you if I smoke?.

Now, over that particular issue, for the most part I'd been a wimp over the years and completely dishonestly said some version of 'Okay, fine, as long as we have a bit of ventilation'. — But on this particular occasion I was motivated to bite the bullet in a 'lateral-thinking' manner. I paused with a somewhat pregnant smile, while I momentarily fished for the right words, then said Let's say this. What I'd prefer is that you make the choice that you know to be the genuinely most beneficial for you.

— Upon which, after a transient surprised pause, the driver chucked the still unlit cigarette down on the dashboard, exclaiming with a surprised-at-himself funny little smile, There — I don't smoke, then!, as though he were suddenly feeling relieved about that, rather than annoyed in any way. And indeed I didn't notice him even start fumbling for that confounded fag again while I was in that car (a 20-minute drive). Presumably he smoked it just as soon as he'd dropped me off at Launceston, though even that can't be a cut-and-dried forgone conclusion.

Of course, his response enabled me to come in with a bit of laughing banter, to the effect of If you know that's not in your best interests, then, you silly monkey, why on earth are you keeping on harming yourself that way? — And it was clear from his response that this was a new experience for him, in that, with my unexpected prompting, he'd suddenly made a (notionally one-off) choice based on what was genuinely best for him, and it had implications that he realized he now had to start thinking about.

In other words, the name of the game is to direct focus away from what one feels that one 'needs' (which is inevitably a craving or 'want', not a need at all), and ask oneself what relevant choice just now would be genuinely in my [or the other person's] best interests? — Always remembering that 'wants' and genuine needs / benefits are not at all the same thing, and it's always the latter that one really needs to focus on.

Or, to put it all in an amusingly clumsy nutshell,

'Wants' vs real-time needs
translates to
ants in the pants vs inspiring deeds

The most effective mindset and strategy for cutting out a particular substance misuse

Here, 'substance misuse' includes ALL socially accepted ongoing use of mind-affecting substances — such as alcohol, tobacco products, cannabis, caffeine and other stimulants / anti-depressants (in tea, coffee, cocoa, various 'soft' drinks, and so on), and sugar as confectionery and the huge range of gratuitously sugary 'foods' (the latter typically constituting a main meal's decidedly unhealthy final course). They're all harmful — all the more so if you like and even crave for them —, because, quite apart from direct chemical / physiological effects of their consumption, they are at the very least habit-forming. Each habit or addiction that you're carrying is a heavyweight ball-and-chain that limits your life experience and demotivates you from significant positive life change.

So, you want to give up, say, smoking, but it all seems just too intimidaunting! Maybe you do stop smoking for a few days, but soon fall back into the old habit — particularly if any particular life stress pops up and triggers your old habit of using the smoking as an emotional 'prop'. The trouble you're facing in such a situation is that you've not yet significantly been getting rational about it.

Without a conscious and deliberate rational basis, any attempt to cut out smoking or other habit / addiction will most likely soon get sabotaged because you're still living reactively. Instead of stopping to think-through responding constructively to everyday life's stresses, you respond automatically by trying to comfort yourself by falling back into the particular habit — in other words, trying to hide the underlying emotional issue(s) instead of recognising and clearing it / them.

Let's tell you how I made things hugely easier for myself when I wanted to cut out all further use of cannabis in 1974. The simple answer was to cut out use of ALL mind-affecting substances. — Yes, and I do mean ALL!

What I realized was that that was the only way anyone could have a properly supportive rational basis for permanently cutting out even just one of all those substances.

— If you're trying to stop smoking but are still depending on your regular fixes of caffeine from tea, coffee or whatever, and no doubt drinking at least some alcohol into the bargain, you're still living in an irrational reactive mode, and are simply not in command of yourself and your life, and so still have no real basis upon which to cut out even one addiction.

My initial recognition of that simple 'fact of life' took me quite by surprise, because superficially it seemed so counter-intuitive — cutting out the whole effing lot being so much easier and more dependable long-term than battling valiantly to cut out just the one habit / addiction! Doing it like that proved to be really straightforward. Yes, I did feel a little groggy for a few weeks, and after a week or two I relapsed to the extent of having a cup of fresh-ground coffee, but that was a valuable learning experience.

That time my coffee experience was from a different viewpoint, and I was much more consciously observing all the coffee's undesirable effects — raised heart rate, rapidly filling bladder, mental overactivity, and a dreary sense of being trapped by my issues rather than resolving them. So, despite the coffee's addictive aroma, for me that experience was overall an uncomfortable one that simply reinforced my choice not to consume any further mind-affecting substances, and to concentrate on my continuing process of clearing my underlying emotional issues that had been causing me to use emotional 'props'. — And indeed that was the last coffee I ever drank — right back there in 1974.

A rational approach is both flexible and consistent

The inevitable question arises — what do you do when you're in a situation where it would apparently cause problems to refuse a 'fix' (tea, coffee, alcohol, etc.) that you were being offered in a social setting where people could act 'hurt', offended or generally abusively when you refuse their actually most unhelpful offering! I myself got criticized on the odd social occasion for saying I don't drink when I was offered one (what effing cheek!), because my simple factual statement was getting interpreted as a put-down upon those actually highly irrational and pattern-driven people! In such situations, shouldn't one bow to such stupidity? — I'd say, in broad terms, of course not in the slightest! People who behave like that are simply not friends in any worthwhile sense, so there's no good reason to seek to please them by denying your own humanity and good sense.

However, this is where a rational approach is particularly called for, because there can be the odd situation where it would simply cause too much trouble to refuse, and only the mental flexibility of true rationality enables one to be properly discerning / discriminating about whether and in what manner to accept or refuse in the current instance.

We need to remember, for one thing, that it's in our true nature, which we open up through a genuine self-actualization process, to be a positive influence upon others around us. That would generally be not through preaching at people but by being a living example of awarely rational living. You don't achieve much of that if you're always keeping your head below the parapets and pretending to be like everyone else in order not to rock any boats!

One thing I learnt from the bits of flack that did come my way in socializing situations was that there were generally much better things to do with my time and attention than socializing. — Better to encounter people in the course of healthy activities, especially outdoors — right away from the insane 'rules of social engagement' that imprison the hugely vast majority.

I get far more really worthwhile and inspiring encounters during my wild-country hikes and my hitch-hikes to and from the hiking routes, than I'd get in a whole lifetime of socializing and seeking to appear to conform and 'please' those around me — so, no, I'm NOT pointing you or anyone towards a miserable lonely existence! Instead I'm pointing toward a joyful new-found 'freedom of spirit' and abundance of life experience.

Talking of which, please do yourself a great favour by working methodically through Understanding loneliness — The real practical solution!

Methods to clear out or manage the interfering influences

For virtually all people with troublesome addictions, the cause and indeed a great aggravator of those addictions is garbage interferences and, more often than not, attached 'entities' of some sort — most commonly soul fragments.

Therefore it's crucially important to address this issue. However, the good news is that any really effective emotional clearance method (see above) is carrying out the necessary groundwork for weakening of the impact and 'hold' of 'entities' and progressively reducing interference from the garbage, and, through dissolving the emotional stress or trauma material, is actually progressively removing the 'ammunition' that the garbage uses in controlling and even attacking the person to keep them in their addicted state.

Any 'entities' would thus presumably eventually be cleared out altogether, especially if Regular Core Practices are also being used, and over a fair period the garbage interferences of all types would be gradually 'faded out' of the person's life experience, at least to a relatively insignificant level. Once one has got to that stage, one is in a quite advanced state of self-actualization and would be extremely unlikely to be tend any longer to gain or retain any significant addiction or attachment to anything unhelpful / unhealthy.

For management and completely safe (do it yourself!) removal methods please refer to my page 'Dark force' and entity troubles — The real way to clear them. However, really the best starting point after this page is Crisis emergency self-help — Life upturn the SMART way, regardless of whether you consider yourself to be in crisis. That's because it guides you through taking on board the mindset that enables the various methods to work properly, enabling to view your life situation in an altogether healthier and more constructive way — and it inspires the all-important self-empowerment motivation.

The 'Dark Force' and Entity Troubles page covers the main types of problematical non-physical 'entity' and influence, and links you to all the relevant pages for getting going using the relevant methods. It enables you to take the most fundamental action towards disempowering and removing / dissolving the 'entities' / garbage interferences, and not getting any more back, by clearing out your emotional issues — especially traumas, and generally to build up the strength of every part of your non-physical aspects so that there are no weaknesses, distortions, blocks or imbalances that the garbage or 'entities' could exploit, and you have simple procedures to dissolve garbage attacks and all manner of emotional pressures, including addiction ones.

Self-empowerment rules — okay!

The difficulty of beating 'hard drug' addiction

Actually the same principles apply to coming off any addictive drug, such as various psychiatric drugs.

Here is a paraphrase / edited partial quote from a question that was sent in to me by a guy who I shall just call J:

I've had a heroin addiction for some three years, and have tried to quit a number of times — 'cold turkey', meds and all that.

As you may know, heroin/opiate withdrawal is a very painful and stressing experience that may last between 4 to 10 days, depending on the characteristics of the user and of the habit itself. Once a person has started a process of emotional cleansing and once he feels he's on the right path to self-actualization, how is he supposed to get through the withdrawal pain? is it okay to use a chemical aid such as sobutex or methadone, or sleeping pills??

I don't think so; those things will most likely create another addiction…
Can you please clarify this point for me?

In no way would I wish to underplay the very real difficulty and indeed pain of coming off the very strong chemical addiction of drugs like heroin, which keys into any emotionally-based addictive tendency and makes it require a particularly strong determination and clarity of mind to cut through the constant pull of the addiction.

Looking at heroin addicts generally, sadly extremely few have sufficient clear-minded and consistent determination to use the methods they really need for healthily getting clear of their addiction. However, J, who sent me the above query, evidently has at least a good measure of the requisite qualities. It's clear from his full message that he'd been reading up on this site and understands what the real needs are, and very much looks to be not at all into the standard self-disempowered and disempowering 'addict' mindset, at least, now.

The name of the game here, as actually with ALL self-actualization issues, is that of being grounded and PRACTICAL in one's approach. 'Doctrinaire' approaches, even if they look 'right' superficially, are always inclined to let us down, because they don't allow one to produce the most appropriately tailored unique response to the uniqueness of each situation.

So, it looks to me as though J is thinking along the most helpful lines, but is just a little caught up on his own anxieties about using any further drugs. While it wouldn't be helpful for me to tell him what he 'should' or 'needs to' do (particularly as I don't have the precise answers for him in his situation), I'd point to the general principle that you use what looks most likely to be genuinely helpful, and you tiptoe past the rest! So, indeed in this particular case it may be most helpful to very temporarily take a particular drug to help one through that extremely difficult withdrawal phase.

However, just using a drug to help one through isn't enough, because that isn't at all addressing one's emotional addictiveness, which would most likely quickly land one in another addiction if not falling back on the old one. So, at least to my own best understanding, it's still necessary to use the various methods that I've pointed to further above, while one is also addressing the chemical addiction.

My inspired guess is that if one is fully using my methods one would have at least less or quite possibly no need for 'withdrawal medication' (albeit still having quite a difficult time) — BUT if I had such an issue myself, what I'd aim to do is to have a stock of suitable medication to take just if / when things get really difficult, but overall to aim NOT to use it at all if reasonably possible.

I'd regard a small cache of Zopiclone (NOT benzodiazepine) sleeping tablets as a sensible backup anyway, for very likely the withdrawal symptoms would at times tend to keep one awake, and, while it gets very harmful to take sleeping tablets on a nightly basis (particularly on more than two consecutive nights), their occasional use can be something of a 'lifeline' in such situations, just to get some sleep to keep one going reasonably while one is addressing the particular issue that's disturbing one's sleep. I write much more fully about that in Ways of handling a prospective rough or sleepless night.

As I understand it, the big problem with heroin substitute drugs being used to try to get one off heroin is that those who administer such heroin withdrawal or 'detox' regimes simply don't have the necessary understanding about how to get clear of one's underlying addictive tendencies, or even that there is such a need. And so, all too readily the substitute drug then becomes the person's next addiction.

However, if you use the insights and methods that I give on this page and indeed this site generally, such a problem would be bound to be much less likely. Instead you'd keep your focus on doing what's most helpful from time to time to further your not only coming off the heroin but also becoming clear of all tendency to addictive / compulsive behaviour. If you're working on that during your heroin withdrawal period, with that clear motivation, that would make the whole experience much more positive and less of a 'hell'.

I can't make any guarantees about specific outcomes for specific people, of course — all the more so because I have no experience of assisting people to come off heroin, or indeed of coming off such a strongly addictive drug myself. Thus the name of my 'game' here is to give pointers to methods and basic principles that I'd expect to work well to the extent that they're actually applied, given a sufficiently strong and consistent motivation.