Addiction is about one thing only: self-control.
If you can control yourself, all is good.
If something or someone else controls you, it’s your choice.
Sometimes, you hear people say, “I didn’t have a choice!”
Bull crap. You always have a choice.
Even when someone holds a loaded gun to your head. You can choose to live or die. If you choose to believe their BS “Do this or I kill you!”, you surrender your agency to them.
The way I see it, even then you have the final word in the matter.
Death is guaranteed in life. You seldom have the opportunity to decide its precise moment. When someone physically threatens to kill you, you have two logical options.
- You buy into their narrative. You comply. You hope and expect to survive if you follow their instructions. They hold the gun. They may honor their promise… or they might not. If they do, you’re safe. If they do not, you are dead. Even though you jumped through the hoops they indicated with the assiduity of a well-trained canine competition doggo. Either way, you have no say in the matter. They decide who lives and dies, arbitrarily.
- You do not buy into their narrative. You do not comply. You fight. You do not manage to gain the upper hand. They shoot you. It’s sad but you made your choice. You have nothing to reproach yourself. You did everything right. Others may be inspired to do the same. Especially if there’s more people like you, who understand that one must fight for one’s life if one is to survive. In this instance, the good guys prevail. They even save your life. However, let’s say you do overpower them yourself. You take the initiative and you put them down. You save yourself, maybe others. You save the day. Huzzah for you!
Quick question
When a reporter comes to interview you after the fact, would you like them to call into question your actions? Would you like them to ask you “But mister, why did you risk getting shot? Do you think that was the smart, safe thing to do? I mean, you didn’t have a choice, they were holding the guns, right. Why did you do it, then? Why chance it?
How would you like that line of questioning?
You always have a choice. You either die on your feet on your terms OR on your knees on someone else’s.
Never believe anyone who tells you they had no choice or that you do not have a choice. Remember that someone holding a gun to your head is not your master… yet.
You are the one who decides when, how, and who gets to be in control.
When they take control over you, you become their object with voice: a.k.a. their slave.
Same goes for everything else: food, alcohol, and substances. There are many millions of people slaves to their belly. Other countless hundreds of million alcoholic. And many many more addicted to tobacco and drugs.
The guy was partially right. He was an addict. But he wasn’t overpowered by alcohol. It’s not like a drink came to him and held him up or something.
And yet he had the audacity to blame it on that first drink.
Look. I get it.
I struggle with night eating. For the last 30 years, I’ve eaten at night. Not good.
Yet last year, for the first time in three decades, I stopped cold turkey.
This helped me lose weight even more.
Two months ago, my mother passed. May she rest at the right side of God. I started to eat again at night.
I put on 4 kg but lost half a kilo last week. Not easy.
I could easily blame this on my mother’s passing.
But I won’t.
Because it’s not true. Not manly either. But mostly not true.
I sometimes stop myself from hitting the fridge.
And because I can do that, I know it’s on me when I don’t.
All I have to do is stop myself and go back to my positive neuronal feedback loop that tells me:
“Wait a second, get a sip of water, drain your lizard. It’s still nighttime.”
Götterdämmerung 