I didn't have access to internet yesterday thus I am posting my article today.

I am not a professor of psychology because I have not done any studies at university but I know about addictions more then many of the highly educated people in this topic. In my country there is a saying that 1 gram of practice is more valuable then 1 kg of knowledge. And in my particular case I had at least 1 kg of practice in my life. But I also have to say that most of my experience was not from the point of an addict but from the point of view of a child who's father was addicted.

Although it was quite often very unpleasant and painful experience, I came out of this whole experience with a lot of wisdom which helped me quickly to recognize and deal with my personal addictions. My addictions were never so big because I didn't take drugs, drink excess of alcohol, smoke cigarettes etc. but I have noticed that all addictions have always the same underlying pattern. Thus I have noticed and recognized this pattern when I decided to stop eating sweets at one time and then I could see how my behavior and withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the symptoms of my father. It was not as strong but it was very, very similar. And then I started to see and observe other people and it was always the same story - whether it was heavy destructive addiction or just simply eating sweets or going shopping, it was always the same.

From all of these experiences I have also understood why the traditional treatments for addicts are not effective. As a matter of fact it is not about the treatments. It is about the people. They are simply giving their power away into believe that they cannot do it. There comes a difficult moment and instead of holding on, they find all sorts of excuses ( e.g. 1 drink is not going to make a difference etc. ) and they fall in. It is all very simple but yet extremely difficult to apply. But the difficulty is either not real because it comes only from our beliefs which we create in our own minds. Those who have succeeded ( although there are relatively few ) always say that it was not as difficult as it seems. It is a matter of self discipline.

In general the treatments for addicts are not effective for one main reason: those who are addicted place falsely their hopes that the treatment will miraculously pull them out of the addiction and they have to do nothing out of themselves. But the fact it that they have let themselves fall into it and thus they are the ones who can pull themselves out of it. And this is basically the only secret to the addictions.

To be continued...