The Trap of Methods

For a long time I fell victim to the trap of methods. During a period in my addiction in which I was less introspective and less honest I’d often play the game of trying to beat the monster by coming up with clever ideas, a method to outwit the madness.

I have a few observations about that period. First of all, how and when these rhetorical devices were born: always, without fault, right after partaking. Never in the calm of abstinence or even in the natural periods between one session and the next with some clearheadedness. This should’ve been a clue right away, but the appeal of coming up with a “solution” with my intellect was too seductive. It’s like I thought my brain, my emotions and my will, operated on binary logic, which could be easily redirected with the right combination of if this then that statements.

In my ignorance I used to think the deed was done when the peak of pleasure was reached, and that the guilt that followed was a natural impulse by my better self. The period between that and the next instance was normality, and the next instance was caused by some trigger or by pure habituation. If that was how it worked, then a method should be effective. So why wasn’t it? Let us first define what we mean by a method.

Let’s say you observe some particulars about your addiction, for example:

• A location or time of day when it happens: Bored at home, you open up incognito mode and check out porn. Depressed, anxious and alone in a new town for a job, you go to a bar. When you have a long streak of bad luck in your personal life, you feel the wheel is gonna spin in the opposite direction soon, so you decide to go to a casino to take advantage of that.

• A repeated component of it, such as a specific porn site you go to, or a grocery where they sell your favorite brand of wine for cheap, or extra cash that you can “afford to lose” and “won’t bet more than that” at poker.

• An emotion that triggers it, often loneliness, boredom, despair, anxiety.

Right after you engage with the addiction and the peak has passed you’re left with yourself again in the vestiges of the storm, where having already satisfied the urge and hopelessly knowing it will come back again tomorrow, you look around for any signs of hope. An object calls your attention and you pick it up. It’ll look like one of the factors listed above. Rather than looking at yourself, you look at that object and you start thinking how it got there, and how if you destroyed it, or placed it strategically somewhere else, or painted it blue, then next time the hurricane might deviate, or it might dissolve itself before reaching you. So you sit down and start devising some strategies. A flurry of positive emotions swells up in you. “If I’m just not home at the time this happens, then it won’t happen”. This thought is seductive because it is true. If one of your triggers for watching porn or getting high is because you have nothing to do between 3 and 5 PM and you’re unemployed stuck at home, then if you just go out then you’ll likely not partake.

Or “I’ll get my friend to join me on my trip, so he’ll watch over me and I won’t drink”. Again, this might work. So if this is true why am I saying such methods don’t work? The answer is that it’s not sustainable. It will be true for a day, or two, maybe a whole week, but for how long can you keep it up? You had one thought and somehow that single thought will work like a magic key and sustain an entirely new habit, to counterspell a habit you’ve been building, making stronger, for years or possibly decades?

This is why methods are a trap, because they are partially true, and because they fool us by camouflaging themselves under positive emotions.

You might still be hesitant and still believe methods work, it’s just that the ones tried so far didn’t. One might work, we just have to keep trying and find the right one.

And you know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s how it works for some people, but for me this is where honesty comes in and after some point I have to admit that they don’t, and won’t work.

And the reason I believe that isn’t pure trial and error, but an examination of how they come about and why. As I mentioned, they always spring out of the post peak state of mind, and they bring with them a sense of elation. They’re supposed to be logical and clever, but the driving force is an emotion, and their birth is the addiction itself, not some deep logical pondering while we’re cold and peaceful. As with guilt, this is something that under normal circumstances might work, it might be healthy, but after a point, it’s just another tool possessed by the addiction and turned against us.

When I write and ponder these things I am mindful that I don’t pretend to speak in universals, for after all that’s what a method would be, a series of steps to follow that would foolproofingly get you out of the rut. At the same time, when you read something that might clash against your beliefs, I implore you to ponder whether that contrarian voice is not the addiction itself, toppling down yet another opposition. My intention is not for you to believe me or even follow what I say, except in one thing: know yourself and inquire into your soul with honesty and compassion.