Facing Addiction

How can you overcome addictions, compulsions, immaturities, personal limitations, and other character flaws or behaviors that hold you back in life?

It's tempting to seek out the easy predictability of some precise plan to follow—a perfect “how to” for you to tape to the fridge or front of a binder.

The problem with plans like that is you quickly (unconsciously) teach yourself to forget the logic behind the steps, ignoring how those steps are meant to tie to your real experience.

“Oh well,” you say, “at least I tried. I guess that wasn’t quite the right plan for me after all. I’ll go find a better one tomorrow, or maybe the next day...”

Unlike plans, stories have real power to change your life.

You never forget stories you relate to.

And when you can come to see your own story objectively enough over time, you find your perspective starts to both deepen and widen all on its own. It’s called maturity; and maturity shows up as choices made in real time that align with your values.

So Facing Addiction is a story about the power of your story.

It's a story about discovering who you are in the midst of constant change—about gaining a lasting sense of self that defies external pressures, shameful prescriptions, and self-deceptive tendencies.

It’s a story about transcending your limitations as you watch the values you hold dear work themselves out through your life, transforming you into a strong, stable, self-controlled individual somewhere real (and you-sized) in the world.

It’s a story about purpose, passion, fulfillment, and fun . . . a story about uncovering and honing in on the basis of everything you want most in life.

As you grow beyond all that’s held you back, the focus of your story shifts outward. It becomes a story about connecting with those like you who speak your language—those you can truly be yourself with and inspire (and those who inspire you).

That could also make it a story of punk individualism in the face of conformity and public stigma.

Oh yeah, and since the addiction my story happens to center around was to marijuana, Facing Addiction might also be a story about ghosts, inner voices, and other mystical illustrations used to represent whatever it is that happens when one's mind is slowed down just enough to see in-between regular thoughts; but, really, that’s not the point—that’s just one of the values that was worth facing my own compulsions for.

: )

Let’s hear your story.