Bordom and Addiction

Posted by admin in Uncategorized, depression on 09 5th, 2009 | one response

Boredom is a big problem for people attempting to withdraw from an addiction. Many addictions are stimulating in nature…or rather over-stimulating in nature. Facing life without them is incredibly boring to a mind or body used to over-stimulation.

To some degree even the average person has an addiction to over-stimulation if he or she doesn’t deal well with times of inactivity. Television, video games, computers, and other forms of entertainment have become national preoccupations. In withdrawal we have to be able to tolerate inactivity long enough to calm down and begin to experience peacefulness. It takes time.

However, stopping an addiction also starts a more intense type of panic. Physiological and psychological cravings and urges for the addictive substance or behavior are intense. These cravings and urges are temporary, but difficult to resist. Without successfully resisting them, however, withdrawal will not occur.

And lastly, as we withdraw feelings we have been trying to avoid for years return. Though we are afraid of them we must let them happen and must deal with them–often with professional help.

Withdrawal is both acute and long lasting, and it must happen. And for it to happen, one must identify the addictive behaviors that are used for self-medication and stop them. (They will be the behaviors that spiral out of control.) Whether these behaviors are acted out through fantasy or real life, or with spouses or strangers, they are a problem for the sex addict. Going to that unreal, self-medicating place is something the addicted person can no longer do. It is the addiction. Sexaholics Anonymous uses words like “chemistry” and “magic” when referring to it in its statement of “The Problem.”