By far my most popular post is the gallery, “12 Depression Busters.” But those suggestions were actually a response to Beyond Blue reader Peg’s query on how to stop smoking. They absolutely do help a person fight depression and the ongoing war against negative thoughts; however they were designed as techniques to use when getting pulled into addictive behaviors.
The last month or so I have used every single one of these. And I’m happy to report that I actually feel a lot freer from insidious, destructive behavior than I did several weeks ago. Here they are: 12 Addiction Zappers. They work!
1. Get Some Buddies
It works for Girl Scouts, depressives, and addicts of all kinds. I remember having to wake up my buddy to go pee in the middle of the night at Girl Scout camp. That was right before she rolled off her cot, out of the tent and down the hill, almost into the creek.
Our job as buddies is to help each other not roll out of the tent and into the stream, and to keep each other safe during midnight bathroom runs. My buddies are the six numbers programmed into my cell phone, the voices that remind me sometimes as many as five times a day: “It will get better.”
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I’m sorry to say I disagree with everything you wrote. Beating addiction has nothing to do with avoiding the thing you’re addicted to. Every one of your ideas suggests avoidance. Imagine solving other problems with the power of avoidance such as an unpaid bill. It doesn’t solve the problem. When I quit smoking, I quit because I didn’t like it anymore, not because I avoided things which reminded me of smoking.
Just because you you quit smoking the way that you did does not mean that what has been said is wrong. That was your circumstance.
loved it, helped me so much, thank you
Well I liked it, and whilst Aaron has a point that you have to face your addictions, there’s a period in the beginning (and occuring regularly if you’re me!) when you just have to do anything to avoid the repeat behaviour.
As we know, on of the biggest hurdles to change is hard-wired behaviour and these were good ideas on to how to break that/those.
Thanks, I’m already finding this helpful
Chocolate is not an addiction, lol if you find yourself being unable to resist chocolate it doesn’t mean your addicted, it means your a pig. If your trying to quit drugs this step by step bull is a waste of time. All you need to do is say no today. That’s it, just for today, don’t think about what you need to do to quit or how hard it’s going to be to stay off it just say no today. You can’t outsmart or distract an addiction but you can delay it until cravings are not as strong and become manageable. Addiction is for life.