Addiction is hard to overcome due to psychological factors. What is one very good way to overcome "the bump" in the graph? Connecting to people.
Addiction often leads us into viscous cycles. Addictions typically release chemicals in the brain, in order to make you FALL IN LOVE with the experience. So you do it again. And again and again. Until the addiction has taken over your life.
As the graph above, it is easy to move between different levels of addiction, but hard to go from addict to free from addiction. As a person stays away from their desires, they feel like they are going crazy, and the experience is terrible. But in the end they get their lives back. They get their sanity and their self control back. This is better than anything they experience during the addiction. And they can move on and be productive in life because they can finally think and do what is logical, not what their brain wants them to do.
So how does one actually overcome the gap. It's so painful, that some people may "skate up" the addiction side of the curve, only discover how painful it is, and skate back down. This is primarily because all the happiness and joy they can see in life comes from their addiction. They see no future of joy in any other path than being an addict.
But making connections with people can fix this. People can orient us to reality again. They can also generate chemicals that make our brain fall in love. And godly people can inspire us to move away from our addictions toward living in a way that pleases God.
Having connections with people can ease the process of recovery, so the hump becomes smaller:
Proverbs 27:17 NLT - "As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend."
Comments