How to Overcome Addiction Using the Ultimate Replacement Strategy
Filed Under Beating Addiction |Overcoming addiction can be baffling without a replacement strategy.
Photo by Kyle May
What does this mean? A replacement strategy is actually a creation strategy.
For example, consider a list of common goals that people might strive for in their lives:
Lose Weight
Get out of debt
Quit smoking
Notice that all of these are negatives. People are trying to take something away from their lives. They are trying to create a negative. Now this might be a little nit-picky here, perhaps we are just playing with words a bit, but it probably makes a big difference–especially when it comes to your attitude.
Here is the big revelation: it is impossible to quit anything. Instead, you must replace it. With what? With some sort of creative energy.
For example, people don’t actually lose weight. Instead, they might change their eating habits, and start exercising on a regular basis, and weight does disappear eventually. But to say that they lost the weight is inaccurate, and also not very useful. Instead, they created positive replacement habits. They started living healthier.
Replacement strategies (or creation strategies) are powerful things. This is because they can have a multiplying effect on your progress. Let’s look deeper:
Say you want to lose weight. So, using traditional thinking, you might “eliminate 300 calories per day,” or do the same thing with a certain number of fat grams. You might also mandate a certain number of exercise sessions each week. This strategy will probably make for a long, slow road. Why? Because progress will be incremental at best.
How would a replacement strategy work in this case? The idea is to replace your bad habits with good ones, not just to simply eliminate the bad. So you would replace your least healthiest snacks each week with food that is actually good for you. You could do the same with exercise, and find your least active days, and push yourself to exercise the heaviest on those days that used to be the slowest for you.
Not only are you replacing the bad habits with good ones, you are doing so by applying the 80/20 rule. Target the absolute worst parts of your routine and completely flip them into a positive. Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to change every little thing that is bad in your life–start with the really bad stuff that needs changing and apply overwhelming force to turn it into a positive. That’s using the power of the 80/20 rule! It gets results fast while multiplying your efforts.
How does this apply to recovery?
When it comes to overcoming drug and alcohol addiction, simply abstaining is probably not going to work out for most people in the long run. Doing so creates a miserable life, unless you can incorporate some sort of recovery program.
Now consider the fact that most recovery programs are actually creation and replacement strategies. The question you need to ask yourself is this: how entangled has my life become with drugs and alcohol? Does every waking moment revolve around drinking and/or using drugs, thinking about using and drinking, figuring out ways to get the money so that I can continue to use more, and so on? The extent to which you are obsessed with drugs and alcohol is the extent to which you need a replacement strategy.
My whole life revolved around staying drunk and high on drugs. That was all I cared about. Therefore, consider the replacement strategy that finally worked for me: living for 20 months in long term treatment. Daily meeting attendance. Completely severing all ties with old drinking buddies and associating daily with new and sober friends in recovery. That was my replacement strategy.
Notice that all of those things are an act of creation. They are all positive things that required action on my part, instead of inaction (such as not drinking, or not going to the bars, etc.)
Does this mean that every addict needs long term treatment to overcome addiction? Not necessarily. But you should consider your plan for recovery as a plan of creation. You are not simply “quitting drugs.” What are you going to create in your life, and build up in your life that is positive? This is one reason that 12 step meetings are so powerful. Involving yourself in them every day becomes a powerful creation strategy.
What is your plan for recovery? What positive changes are going to become the centerpiece of your life? Are these changes enough to replace your obsession with drugs and alcohol?
Check back next week for a deeper analysis of what role spirituality plays in your replacement strategy for recovery.
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4 Responses to “How to Overcome Addiction Using the Ultimate Replacement Strategy”
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This makes sense to me. I am not in a position to be a able to live in a long term facility but desperately want to stop drinking. When I don’t drink, I feel incredibly alive and then something happens and I can’t cope.
I go back to drinking to numb. I am ashamed and so frustrated with me.
Hang in there, Kelley. I can definitely relate to you when you say that something happens and you can’t cope. I had to learn a new way to live; a way to cope without using drugs and alcohol.
I don’t think you should be ashamed with yourself. There are lots of people in your position.
Find a way to get help.
Good luck and God bless.
We forgot how we used to feel before drugs and alcohol entered our lives. Remember those days of
simple joys like playing whatever or just learning about life in general. Live, Love and Learn to Laugh again. Don’t look down, Look up and Stay positive. What you might find out about yourself may pleasantly surprise. Upward and Onward one step at a time. Stay encouraged always.
Thanks for the comment, Frank. I would agree that the simple pleasures and joys in life eventually return when we start working recovery. Living, learning, laughing, and all those sorts of things become meaningful again. The trick is to find a way to clean up long enough to give yourself a real shot at recovery. The reason it’s tricky is because all of those simple pleasures are not appealing when you first stop using drugs and alcohol.
Thanks again for your comment and God bless.