Prologue
You have addictions
I have addictions
We all have addictions
They often start small with no real consequences on our lives, but slowly start to consume more and more of our time until they become real problems.
You may have tried to quit those addictions in the past, but haven’t really succeeded ever. It feels like you’re starting off strong, but always end up relapsing and going back to normal after a week or even a few days.
Throughout my life I’ve faced countless addictions myself, most of which I’ve successfully quit and I want the same to happen for you.
In this letter I wanna break down an 8 step process to get rid of any addiction you have in your life. Be careful, this is not a quick fix and will take you a lot of time, but if you're actually serious about quitting the addictions that have been ruining your life for probably the last years, this is the best framework I've ever created to quit the addictions you suffer from.
The "Abstinence Method"
When we really think about it, at a fundamental level, the only real way we can quit an addiction is by abstaining from it and I know that might sound very obvious, but it's how you abstain that really matters.
I'm gonna walk you through a method called the "Abstinence Method", which won't guarantee you'll quit your addiction, because you're still responsible for doing it properly, but if you pay really good attention to this and apply things properly, you will quit your addictions for good.
Let's begin
Step 1: Define a List of Addictions
The first step here is to make ourselves aware of all the addictions we really have. For this you'll need to use the following questionnaire to see what you are and what you're not actually addicted to.
Walk each of your potential addictions through these questions:
Do you have an inability to stop despite a strong desire to do so ?
Do you take or do more than you originally intended ?
Do you get strong cravings for a specific behavior or substance ?
Do you spend lots of time doing or trying to get the behavior or substannce ?
Do you have a lack of control over a certain behavior or substance ?
Do you know it leads to health, relationship, social, economic or moral problems ?
Do you continue using despite being aware of the consequences ?
Do you need to increase doses over time to feel the same hit ?
Do you start to prioritize that behavior or substance over other events that were previously a priority ( Family events, sports practice,... ) ?
I want you to go walk each potential addiction you might have through each question to actually confirm you're addicted to that thing.
Don't try to pretend you're not addicted to something when you actually are. The first step to improving your life through removing an addiction is actually admitting you're addicted to that thing.
Once you've done this, you'll make a list of all your confirmed addictions. At the moment I've pretty much quit all the addictions that negatively impacted my life, but a few years ago my list would've looked something like this:
Junk Food | Video Games | Pornography | Social Media |
No substances, just behaviors. Yours might look something like this:
Junk Food | Video Games | Smoking | Netflix |
This list might actually be a lot longer depending on how many addictions you have. It's important here that you define broad categories of addictions, not more specific ones.
The reason is because defining more specific categories is the next thing we'll need to do. So now that we've defined broad categories of addictions we have, we'll need to define sub categories in case it's appropriate.
With my previous list of addictions, this would look something like this:
Junk Food | Video Games | Pornography | Social Media |
Unhealthy Breakfast Snacks 10am Mellocakes 4pm | Fortnite Call of Duty Clash of Clans | Youtube |
For you this might look something like this:
Junk Food | Video Games | Smoking | Netflix |
Snack 10am Mcdonalds 12pm Pizza 8pm | Call of Duty League of Legends PUBG | Walking Dead Squid Game Prison Break |
The reason this might be important is because quitting an entire category at once will often be too difficult.
If I told you to abstain from all forms of junk food for a year you wouldn't be able to do it, but if I told you to replace your 10am snack with fruits for that same year, it would seem much more realistic and highly increase your chances of actually quitting it.
To know whether you should do this, ask yourself whether it's possible to even divide a broad category into multiple sub categories and whether it makes sense for your specific situation.
Are you addicted to multiple video games or just one ?
Are you addicted to multiple shows or just one ?
Then after that, it can also be a good idea to determine how addicted you are to each of those.
From a scale from 1 to 10 how addicted would you consider yourself to be ?
This can be useful in the case that you might have many different addiction that are very small addictions ( like a 2, 3 or 4 ) and which you could quit at the same time without too many issues. If it's a much stronger addiction ( like a 7, 8 or 9 ), it's a much better idea to only focus on that one.
So define broad categories of things you're addicted to, divide those into multiple sub categories if it makes sense and give a score from 1 to 10 of how addicted you are to all of them.
Step 2: Ranking your Addictions
The next step we must complete is ranking our addictions from highest impact to lowest impact.
Each addiction we have, has a certain level of negative impact on the goals we have for ourselves. Some addictions have a higher negative impact on our ability to achieve our goal and other addictions have a lower negative impact on our ability to achieve our goal.
And the way you rank your addictions from highest to lowest negative impact, will be dependent on the goal you have.
Let me give you a couple examples.
If your main goal is "Productivity", high negative impact addictions will include Junk food, Video games, social media and netflix. Low negative impact addictions might be smoking for example. Smoking is obviously still bad, but won't completely destroy your ability to be more productive.
If your main goal is "Fat Loss", high negative impact addictions will include junk food, video games and netflix. Lower negative impact addictions will include social media and smoking.
If your goal is "Becoming Healthier", the high impact addictions will be junk food and smoking. The low impact addictions will be video games, social media and netflix. In this case quitting smoking is a much bigger priority than it is with fat loss or productivity.
Based on your goal you'll need to define which addictions will have a high impact on your ability to achieve that goal and which ones will have a low impact.
This doesn't mean you won't quit the lower impact addictions, but it simply means you'll put your attention on the things that really matter first.
If my goal was changing my body composition, I would rank my previous addictions in this way:
1 ) Junk food |
2) Video Games |
3) Pornography |
4) Social Media |
For you it might look like this:
1) Junk Food |
2) Video Games |
3) Netflix |
4) Smoking |
The second step after this is to also rank all sub categories individually.
Within junk food, certain things you do have a bigger impact than others.
Some video games are more addictive to you and are more of a problem.
For my previous addictions it would again look something like this:
1) Junk Food | 1) Mellocakes 4pm ( Worst ) 2) Unhealthy Breakfast ( Less worse ) 3) Snacks 10am ( Least worst ) |
2) Video Games | 1) Fortnite ( Worst ) 2) Clash of Clans ( Less worse ) 3) Call of Duty ( Least worst ) |
3) Pornography | |
4) Social Media | 1) Instagram ( Worst ) 2) Youtube ( Least worst ) |
For you it might be:
1) Junk Food | 1) Pizza 8pm ( Worst ) 2) Mcdonalds 12pm ( Less worse ) 3) Snack 10am ( Least worse ) |
2) Video Games | 1) Call of Duty ( Worst ) 2) League of Legends ( Less worse ) 3) PUBG ( Least worse ) |
3) Netflix | 1) Squid Game ( Worst ) 2) Prison Break ( Less worse ) 3) Walking Dead ( Least worse ) |
4) Smoking |
Once you've done these things for your own addictions, you're done with this step.
Step 3: Gathering Data
The third step of our process is to gather information surrouding each addiction we have. This will help us understand many things about it and also help us a lot once we actually begin abstaining and I'm gonna give you a list of questions for inspiration.
( You don't need to answer every single question, but it does help to have these answers once you're actually about to abstain from that addiction )
Here's a list of questions:
What do you do / eat / play / consume ?
How often do you do it ?
When do you do it ?
Where do you do it ?
With who do you do it ?
When are you most likely to relapse ?
Where are you most likely to relapse ?
With who are you most likely to relapse ?
What are my triggers ? ( Location, Time, Objects, People, Preceding Events )
What emotions am I feeling when I'm about to relapse ?
…
There's more questions you could ask yourself, but this should already be a good enough list. You ideally wanna do this for all the addictions you have as this will make things very clear.
Step 4: Clarifying Objectives
Our fourth step is to define the objectives of each of our addictions. We have our list of addictions, we have that list ranked from highest to lowest impact and we gathered some data ( although not all data ) surrounding those addictions.
Now we need to figure out the "Why" question.
Why do we do what we do ?
Whenever we engage in anything, there is always an objective or a reason why we do it. The reason we work is usually to make money and make sure our basic survival needs are met. The reason we get into relationships is to fulfill our needs of intimacy and sex ( at a fundamental level at least ).
You have to understand that each addiction we engage in has some sort of purpose, even though it might seem stupid. We never do things that don’t have a single benefit in our lives.
When we smoke, we’re reducing our stress levels, which makes us feel better. When we play video games we’re fulfilling our desires of achievement and sense of status. When we eat junk food, we make sure we’re getting enough calories and energy for our survival.
Even the most stupid things we might do have a purpose. We scroll on social media because we feel bored and boredom doesn’t feel very good.
Regardless of how irrational it might seem, every behavior we partake in has an objective and there’s a reason we do it.
What we need to do is identify those objectives for every addiction we have and make them clear. We need to define the "Why" part of each addiction we have.
Now there's really 2 main reasons why we engage in those behaviors:
Negative Emotion Relief
Fundamental Human Need Satisfaction
Almost all the addictions we have are there because of one of those 2 reasons. They either help us relieve negative emotions we feel or they give us an illusion of fulfilling our fundamental human needs.
Now here’s a few examples of addictions and why we may do them ( as you'll see it always comes back to negative emotion relief or fundamental human need satisfaction ):
Junk Food | This fulfills our basic survival needs for food. Junk foods often being high calorie foods have a much more addictive potential due to that high amount in calories. This can also serve as a stress reliever for people. Many emotional eaters will use high calorie foods when they've had a stressful day. Some people also use it as comfort and to fill and emotional void they feel inside ( yes, this is quite deep, but it is part of the reason people binge eat ) |
Social Media
| Social media serves as a way to give us an illusion of socializing ( one of our basic fundamental human needs ). It also triggers plenty of dopaminergic release in our brain, which has that sedative effect on our negative emotions ( it's the same reason people use junk food to reduce stress ) Social media often serves as a way to reduce the boredom we feel and we know boredom doesn't feel very good. |
Pornography | Pornography gives us an illusion of fulfilling our primal needs of sex, intimacy and reproduction. We're hardwired to crave this, because of its vital importance to our survival. Then it again serves as a way to relieve our negative emotions, because of the dopaminergic release in our brain. |
Video Games | Video games specifically fulfill our desires of achievement, status, progress and responsibility. Games are designed to give us an illusion of fulfilling that need. And just as with the previous addictions, we have this same sedative effect on our negative emotions like boredom, stress and so on. |
Smoking | Smoking relieves our stress, because it releases lots of dopamine in our brain and therefore has that sedative effect on us. |
This list is to give you some inspiration for why you do certain things in your life and why you engage in certain addictions.
Step 5: Clarifying problems related to use
The fifth step is about identifying problems related to our addiction. Even though there's always a clear objective for each addiction that we engage in ( often instant pleasure ), there's also problems and consequences that come from engaging in those behaviors. Those can include health, moral, social, wealth, relationship problems and so on.
Here's a few examples:
Junk Food | Junk food will mainly cause us health problems because of the processing and lower quality of those foods. They will also cause us relationship problems, because the fatter you become, the more relationship satisfaction decreases and if you're single, it will highly reduce your chances of finding a partner, because when you're fatter, you're uglier. Then junk food will also impact our ability to focus, reducing our work output, which then reduces our work performance and increases our ability to get fired. |
Video Games | Video games sedate our goal striving mechnism, which removes a lot of drive and motivation to achieve goals in the gym. If we're achieving goals in video games, we won't have the same drive to achieve them in the gym. They also tend to make us a lot more sedentary, causing us more health problems. Video games then tend to take a lot of our time, which could potentially cause relationship problems. |
Pornography | Pornography sedates our relationship seeking system, reducing our desire to actually seek out a partner and if we are in a relationship already, it will cause some tensions. It can also lead to moral problems if you're religious. |
You have to understand that each addiction you currently suffer from has negative consequences on you and your goals.
Now for many of you, you’ll have a hard time fully identifying how a certain addiction affects you negatively. Most of us are not able to see the full extent of the consequences of our addictions while we’re still using or doing them.
There’s 2 reasons for this.
First, is because high dopamine behaviors and substances cloud our ability to accurately assess cause and effect.
“The world is sensory rich and causal poor”
- Daniel Friedman
We know junk food has a good taste in the moment, but we’re a lot less aware that eating junk food every day for a month adds 10 lbs of fat. We’re very good at knowing a behavior feels good, but we’re a lot worse at assessing how that behavior will impact us in the long run.
Second is that young people ( even highly addicted ones ) tend to feel the negative consequences of addictions a lot less. Those are some of the advantages of being young ( even though it's actually more like a disadvantage ). However as you age, you begin to feel the consequences more and more and they begin to affect you a lot more. I often hear adults telling stories about them getting drunk when they used to be younger and being relatively fine the next day, but if they did the same thing now, they would need a lot longer to recover from that night.
So even though you’ll probably have a more difficult time identifying problems related to the addictions you have, I still want you to try your best and find a couple things.
Step 6: Starting the Process
So, now we're actually getting to the meat of things. This is the part where we're actually abstaining from our addictions. Now there's a couple steps you'll need to follow to successfully do this.
Pick your Highest Impact Addiction
Previously we've defined all of our addictions and ranked them by highest impact to lowest impact on our ability to achieve our goal.
What I need you to do right now is pick the one that is at the top of your list. If I take my previous list again, the worst thing that I would need to quit was my mellocake addiction after school.
1) Junk Food | 1) Mellocakes 4pm ( Worst ) 2) Unhealthy Breakfast ( Less worse ) 3) Snacks 10am ( Least worst ) |
2) Video Games | 1) Fortnite ( Worst ) 2) Clash of Clans ( Less worse ) 3) Call of Duty ( Least worst ) |
3) Pornography | |
4) Social Media | 1) Instagram ( Worst ) 2) Youtube ( Least worst ) |
So that is the one I need to pick.
Make a Plan of Abstinence
Next we need to define a plan on how we'll successfully abstain from that addiction. For you will need your list of questions you answered from the third step. Then, based on your answers you will start to define a small plan ( it doesn't have to be in depth ).
You'll look at when you do it and when you're most likely to relapse. This is the time block you have to be most careful off.
You'll look at where you do it and where you're most likely to relapse. This is the place you'll need to be most careful off.
You'll look at who you do it with and who you're most likely to relapse with. This is the person or people you'll need to avoid and you'll look at your main triggers, which could be a specific time, location, mood, person, preceding event and so on.
Define a small plan of places, times and people you should be careful off.
Start the abstinence process
So now is the time to actually start abstaining from the addiction you've just picked. It's important you just pick one and stick with that one for the entirety of abstinence period. Don't change other variables of your lifestyle, no matter how motivated you feel. Control yourself, keep one main addiction to quit in mind and stick with it.
The abstinence period will last exactly 30 days and the reason that number is ideal is because of 2 reasons.
First, our brain perceives a 30 horizon to be realistic to stick to. If I asked you to abstain from whatever addiction you have for a complete year, it would feel way too much. A 30 day time horizon seems a lot more realistic to our brain.
Second, 30 days will be enough to fully quit a behavior. This will obviously depend on the addictive potential of your drug and how addicted you personally are, but around 30 days seems to suffice.
Now in order to abstain successfully for those 30 days, we'll employ a few methods.
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The first method is to apply something called self binding, which is essentially the act of creating barriers between you and your addiction.
The main goal of this, is to create as much friction to engage with our addiction as we can, so that we're much less likely to actually relapse.
So there's 3 main ways you can create barriers between you and you addiction:
Physical self binding
Chronological self binding
Categorical self binding
Physical self binding is when you create physical barriers between us and our addiction. Throwing the cookies out of the house, locking the ps4 in a closet or putting your phone away in a locked safe. These are all examples of physical self binding.
Chronological self binding is when you create time barriers between you and your addiction. You might allow yourself to watch tv only after 7pm or allow yourself to go on your phone between 4 and 8pm. These are examples of chronological self binding.
Categorical self binding is when you allow yourself and don't allow yourself to consume certain things. You might only allow yourself to consume certain types of food rather than others.
Now out of all the 3 forms of self binding, the only one we'll use is physical self binding. We're not trying to quit our addiction, but still do it half the time. We wanna quit things completely, so the only real useful thing we can use is physical self binding.
I want you find ways to create barriers with your addiction of choice. If you have a very strong phone addiction at night, ask a family member to hide it somewhere you can't find it each evening. If you have a junk food addiction, stop having it around in the house. If you order too much food online, delete and block these apps.
These won't always guarantee that you'll quit those behaviors, but it will create friction to do them.
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The second method which can be used to increase your chances of successfully abstaining is stimulating your brain with healthy forms of dopamine. The main reason things feel so chaotic in your brain when you're abstaining from an addiction is because it is craving dopamine.
We don't want to give ourselves "bad" forms of dopamine, but what we can do is give ourselves healthy forms of dopamine. They will never completely satisfy you, but they will help.
There's 5 main things you can do whenever you feel like you're about the relapse, which will help you out:
Exercise
Cold / Warm Exposure
Reading
Watching Documentaries / Podcasts
Working
Now these might not seem like "fun" things to do, but trust me, when you're really craving something, distracting yourself with one of these will help you a lot, without damaging your dopaminergic system. Try one of these whenever you're craving your addiction. That is the second method.
So in summary: Define all your addictions, rank them from highest to lowest impact, gather information around them, define their objectives, define the problems associated with them, abstain for 30 days 1 addiction at the time and manage your cravings with both methods mentioned.
Avoid Forgetting
The most important aspect from now on is avoid to forget this. The first time I tried this method, I applied everything for 2 weeks, but then I started to forget that I was supposed to abstain.
By nature, this method takes a lot longer than other ones and it's therefore a lot easier to forget. That's why I have a few methods I'm gonna share with you to help you not forget.
Method 1: Hang a day tracker on your wall
This is where you have a visual representation of all the days you still need to complete for the month. To make this, open up a google docs document and add a table with 30 squares. This represents the amount of days you'll need to abstain for.
Here's a template for it.
Link
Method 2: Hang your list of Addictions
Next to your day tracker you could hang your list of addictions ranked from highest impact to lowest impact to remind you of the addictions you still need to quit.
Method 3: Hang the answers next to your day tracker
In the third step we gave ourselves a lot of information regarding the addiction we were trying to quit. It helps if you hang that list of information next to your day tracker to remind yourself of when, where and who you need to be careful off.
Thank you for reading this letter
Adrien
Whenever you're ready, there's 2 ways I can help you:
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