Author Anne Wilson Schaef says that we are an addictive society, supported with much evidence. If that’s true, why and how does addiction happen?
You are at risk for becoming dependent upon someone or something outside yourself when you don’t feel good about yourself and when you don’t know how to make yourself feel better right now. Minimal or failed coping skills can lead to poor choices while trying to feel better right now. If your choice of someone or something seems to help you cope, makes you feel better, and does so quickly, it may end up becoming your favored coping method for dealing with life as it comes at you.
Some individuals depend upon a whole array of preferred coping mechanisms, often referred to as one’s “drug of choice,” to face all the problems, fears, stressors, or other adversities that make up life as they know it. Their dependency upon these coping mechanisms to make them feel good, or at least a little less bad, grows over time because they don’t know any other way to make themselves feel better, let alone feel good — and addiction ensues.
When the only way you seem able to make yourself feel better is outside of you, you have become dependent upon those “somethings” or “someones” for the sole purpose of relief. You are other-dependent and have become addicted.
Your favored coping method can be almost anything. It can be something as innocent as working crossword puzzles, playing video games, or using your mobile phone app while walking down the sidewalk. How could these normal everyday activities be considered addictions? What is wrong with working crossword puzzles, playing video games, or using your mobile phone app? Perhaps everything is wrong or maybe nothing at all. The point here is that even the most innocent of things can become an addiction when used to escape from life as you know it in order to feel good.
What have you used to cope with life to feel better or at least to feel less bad? Make a list. Do you have a favorite? What is it?