Quelling the Complaints of an Avid Addict

Addiction is developing a friendship with something unhealthy, like improper use of a chemical, or improper use of one's domestic partner, or improper use of a computer. Something you are using to feel whole, and complete that isn't filling that need practically.

Being dependent and being addicted are different things. An addiction is an unhealthy dependency, a human relationship can share healthy dependencies, like for-instance a partner who helps the other take their medications on-time or helps to raise a child.

From someone who has a past life of an addict of multiple things, things become less pleasurable for addicts. That's the core of addiction, without denying one's self of pleasures, one will enjoy them less and less. Whereas having the discipline to be selective about enjoying pleasures gives one a greater bounty, when they are harvested. It's like soil, the mind needs time to replenish itself so that it can yield tasty fruit.

Now, the beautiful thing is that you can rotate different kinds of pleasures and denials to average-out to a general feeling of wellness, and as you calculate and employ ways to suffer less through your practices, the average of your enjoyment and peace increases.

However to suggest that addiction is a necessary part of the beauty of life is a semantic error wherein you are confusing healthy behavioral development with unhealthy behavioral patterns.

TL;DR You don't need to be addicted to wine to enjoy it, quite the opposite.

--Kyle Goodman

I presented this in-response to a friend of a friend making arguments to defend their addictive behaviors. They claimed that addiction was an essential part of life, and that we were already addicted to many things like air, water, and food. These are arguments that I once made to justify many unhealthy habits, and so I felt the need to respond. I hope it does some good for some of the humans out there battling addictions and poor habits!