How do I break an addiction to someone?
In my experience, addiction or codependency to people is a feedback loop much like a rollercoaster, one minute you’re flying high, the next minute you’re Ziggy Stardust, the Starman crashing back to earth. This pattern is exceedingly powerful and plays out unconsciously. Essentially it is a reflection of the duality within you, most people operate along lines which are very black and white, all or nothing, boom and bust, war and peace, love and hate. These cycles in terms of your relationships in your outer world, and it’s most evident in relationships with the people closest to us, are a chronic and debilitating reflection of how you see you, subject to the vicissitudes and constantly shifting sands of getting what you want your way by any means possible. Eventually you’ll end up with no one left to hit on. As your needs become ever more self centred on self gratification you’ll keep running into people who are the same; like attracts like, birds of a feather flock together. Usually it ends in isolation, chronic drug addiction or alcohol addiction so if you’re self medicating beware. Bondage to self is your addiction not anybody else. Unfortunately the last person you will normally look at is you as you pepper spray everyone around you with blame and recrimination. I spent 30 odd years drinking and taking drugs, blaming everyone and everything around me, 5 years in isolation, a bleak house that was, 14 years in and out of addiction treatment, psychiatrists, psychologists, bucketfuls of opioids, benzos, antidepressants, weed, you name it. Only when I got honest with myself and started listening to other people the same as me who had recovered instead of obsessing over what was wrong with everyone else did I start to see the wood for the trees. Meditation was the key. Time alone without any distractions was critical, years of it, music, walking, writing, rivers of tears, and an eventual realisation that I’m totally fucking powerless over people places and things. The truth is a foul tasting medicine but it cures all evil.
How do you recover from an addiction to another person?
I am not a doctor or a therapist but can instead tell you what works for me.I ask myself why I am feeling this way and disrelate it from the person.For example: you are a stand in for my tendency to want what I can’t have. While this feels this is all about you, this has nothing to do with you. This is all me.To put it in other words, what I am feeling are not feelings for you but my own craving for something that I can only find within me.I separate feeling something from acting on that feeling. “I can’t help myself” is a lie. “I have no control” is a lie. While it is very, very difficult, I can say “I want to call you a thousand times just to hear your voice but just because I want to call you a thousand times doesn’t mean I am going to call you at all.”In my experience, this desperate feeling of wanting more of this person has to play itself out, during which time I have to work on myself and uncover why this is happening.The time that I usually put into a relationship I put into myself instead.In the meantime, I acknowledge that I do not have to act on what I feel (so I don’t feed it) and repeat to myself all the ways this hurts me. At first, telling myself how this hurts me doesn’t help at all, but as I repeat it, it begins to sink in.For example:It feels like the fix is him but getting a fix (after the initial rush) makes me feel worse, not better. He does not want me. He does not want what I want. He takes all my power and energy away. The sensation that I need him is an illusion and proof of this is that he can’t even give me what I’m convinced I need.I lose my boundaries. I forget about myself.I need to get myself back, and that is the priority.I need to learn from this so that it doesn’t keep happening, which means I need to focus on understanding why. Where does this come from?I try not to judge myself for feeling the way I do. Instead I regard what I am going through with compassion.Finally, if I ever felt like getting myself back felt unreachable, I would consider therapy, or a 12 step program.Related:Dushka Zapata's answer to What is the difference between falling in love with someone and being addicted to someone?
How do I get over addiction of any person?
In my experience, addiction to anything or anyone happens because we get some kind of good feelings during or after being with it or with them. Addictions usually form when you have a excess and unhealthy dependence on an external entity (object or person). So, when an addiction forms, we are too dependent on the external entity (and the consequent good feelings) for becoming happy.So, logically, to reverse (or in your words, to get over) addiction of a person, try to push your mind to see the negatives of that person. If positives of someone can induce an addiction, the negatives will help you reverse it. I would forewarn you that when you start to see the negatives, your mind will try to deny it. This could be because of the habit of seeing just the positive. Yet, keep trying to see the actual person: all their good and bad qualities. Gradually, you will be able to overcome your addiction for someone.Aside from doing the above, get involved in activities where you wouldn't be reminded of that person. During this entire process, just like while treating any addiction, there could some consequent sad feeling. So, I must insist that you keep yourself busy to distract your mind away from such feelings. Slowly but surely, you'll be over it.Yes, you can do it.
How can I break a Facebook addiction?
It seems possible to me that you are using Facebook for some other reason. That is, perhaps you are going on Facebook for long periods of time because you are avoiding doing something else that you think you should do. Or perhaps you are feeling cut off from the affection of family and friends and you are using Facebook to try to make up for that. I suspect that when you address whatever underlying issues may be driving you to do this, the Facebook "addiction" will go away on its own. If this is seriously affecting your quality of life, why not go to a psychiatrist or psychologist and have yourself evaluated? The doctor can then recommend an appropriate treatment.
Which do you think is a more difficult addiction to break: one in which a person is physically dependent on a?
Psychologically dependent. Once you get over the physical symptoms of withdrawal you are fine and you get over the addiction. But if you are psychologically dependent you need some serious counseling and its much harder to break a psychological dependence because we still don't fully understand the mind and how to overcome psychological dependence. In general, I would say anything psychological is more complicated than the physical.
How do you break the chains of being addicted to someone? How do you stop thinking about them?
Very interesting question and I can relate. My experience may not be your experience but this is what I think happens. We find someone that meets some kind of criteria at first, you develop a relationship and then we start to create stories about them and the possible “meaning” they have in our life and how our life will be so different and better with them, actually the story, in our lives.We all quickly create meaning to almost everything. We create a dream, hopes, rules about how the dream will play out and then expect the other person to become that person. We think about them often because we are replaying that dream that happens to have them in it. It’s just a dream, its not real and it will probably cause more harm to your relationship.So, how do you break the addiction to that person. Realize that he or she is not actually in your dream, it’s been your dream not theirs. Know that if you really love them, give them and yourself the freedom to move on.Not sure if that helps, but it’s what I’ve realized in my life once or twice.
How do i get rid of my pizza addiction?
Mmmmmmmm, pizza.
Can heroin addiction be cured by breaking the addict's back at the base of the spine?
This is mentioned in Stephen King's The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three. "...where it was really coming from, he knew from what he had read in the medical journals, was from the bunch of living wires at the base of his spine, that place where heroin addiction takes place by causing an unnatural thickening of the nerve stem. Want to take a quick cure? ... Break your spine, Henry. Your legs stop working, and so does your cock, but you stop needing the needle right away." If you have an answer (preferably with some proof) it would be greatly appreciated, thank you!