What is your pattern of addiction?

Everyone, everywhere has had struggles with being enslaved to something (a thing, idea, habit, etc.). One of the first steps to doing violence to such a problem is to understand the pattern in your life. When we first become aware that something has us, grips us, we often are not fully aware of how we cycle through the pattern. Here’s how I help people identify the cycle of their addiction. Some of my material came from Patrick Carnes work.

1. Abstinence (everyone has periods of not struggling)
2. Triggers (can be in the form of thoughts, experiences, feelings, situations, etc.)
3. Tempting thoughts (these may be directly in the direction of the addictive habit or may be thoughts that lead to addictive responses (e.g., I deserve a break)
4. SUDS (Seemingly Unimportant Decisions). The little decisions we make that make doing what we know is killing us seem not so bad. So, the porn addict decides to aimlessly surf the web, the food addict goes to the kitchen, the crack addict just happens to drive in the direction of his dealer)
5. Indulge (need I say more?)
6. Defeated interpretations (if you’ve broken your promise to yourself, you might as well go whole hog. You weren’t going to smoke again, but you smoked one, so you might as well finish the pack instead of waste your money).
7. Guilt (keeps #6 going)
8. Penance (going to get yourself “clean” again by doing something good)
9. Abstinence again.

If necessary, you may have to start with #5 and work backwards to see what little decisions were made, thoughts/lies believed, etc. to find out the early triggers. Well practiced addictions may jump from triggers to indulge without much passage of time or thought processes.

Then, once you define your cycle (including what you do to punish yourself out of the problem) then the key is becoming aware of the ways of escape (2 Cor. 10:13) made available at each and every point of the way, including when you’ve just given in to temptation.