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Why you can’t just stop your addiction #addictionrecovery #sobriety

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SoulWords—Rabbi Shais Taub avatar
SoulWords—Rabbi Shais Taub

Transcript

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Why do some people replace one addiction with another? There's a term for this, which is called cross-addiction. It's actually a very neat illustration of what addiction really is, which is the addiction is not really the problem. The addiction is an attempted solution at a deeper, more underlying problem. In other words, the addiction is the attempted distraction or escape from the pain that the person is feeling. When you take away one form of numbing, but you don't address the underlying pain behind it that the person was trying to numb themselves from, what are they going to do? They're going to go find a replacement, a new way to numb themselves. And this happens all the time. Imagine a 6-ft tall man who's trying to warm himself with a 5-ft long blanket. Wherever he shifts it, there's going to be a part of him that's uncovered. That's why recovery is not moving the blanket around better, but getting a bigger blanket.