addiction
- asweareolivia
- Oct 27
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 28
“i have absolutely no pleasure in stimulants in which i sometimes so madly indulge. it has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that i have periled life and reputation and reason. it has been in the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories.” – edgar allan pose
hi friends,
today i want to speak to you about addiction. so often in society, we assign the term addiction to alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts, and other extreme examples. we gasp at the idea that “jimmy went to rehab” or “sara drinks every night.”
but what about the subtle addictions that are slowly eating our society away? the fact that we spend more time living our lives through screens than living them in real time. the fact that we’re getting surgery after surgery to maintain appearances. or that we constantly feel the need to buy more — more clothes, more products, more electronics.
i do want to mention that the above examples are only stereotypes of common things i see as addictive. whether something is truly addictive or not ultimately comes down to the person and the intention behind the act. by tuning into your body and asking yourself why, you should be able to sense whether your actions are addictive or balanced.
whatever the addiction, no matter how big or small, it all stems from the same root problem — the inability to be in one’s body, or in other words, the need to escape one’s pain. therefore, solving addiction should never be about quitting the addictive act, but about asking, what pain am i escaping?
when we let go of the idea that addictions are “bad,” we make space to deal with the root of the problem. as a result, the addiction will naturally fall away — not because you worked so hard to stop it, but because you no longer needed to escape the present moment.
another important question to ask yourself when dealing with an addictive habit is, how is this addiction helping me? most of the time, addictions are protecting you from childhood events that were too painful to deal with, or from multiple small traumas that have built up over time.
by focusing on one of the addictions i’ve struggled with throughout my life, i hope to shed light on how you might find peace within your own. after all, we’re all just humans trying to navigate the world, and addiction is something we all struggle with — whether we’re conscious of it or not.
let’s flash back to fourth-grade me. on the outside, i was a happy kid. i played sports, had friends, and a supportive family. but on the inside, i was unable to feel the present moment, with no understanding of why. in school, the teacher talked, my eyes watched, but my body was in neptune. this became my habit for years and years — all the way up until recently. my whole life, every time things began to get heavy, i checked out.
and my fix? daydreaming.
maladaptive daydreaming, as i call it (self-diagnosed). for a long time, i never really thought this addiction was bad. it wasn’t like i was hurting my body. but over time, deep, deep shame built up over how much of the present moment i was daydreaming away. and if i’m being completely honest, it was a lot more than i’d like to admit, haha.
anyway, it grew into this loop that sounded something like this:
why can’t i just stay present? i swear i’m done. i’m never going to do this again. again. F***, i relapsed. i’m worthless...
you get the point, right?
for years, i lived in shame of this addiction. and to be honest, i felt like nobody really understood the amount of pain it caused me. i opened up to a few people about it, but no one seemed to get it. over time, i kind of just accepted this habit as part of me — until one day, it just stopped, without me even trying.
i never tried to quit the habit, but i was guided to dive deep into my inner world, and on the other side, i found my body — myself. it guided me back to the present moment. in this moment, i now understand that i never deserved to feel all that shame for struggling with maladaptive daydreaming. the maladaptive daydreaming was just protecting me from the present moment — or so my mind believed. all these years, my body was stuck in the past, in a memory. my conscious mind had shut it out, but my body was still remembering. i believe most addictions form this way.
our minds and bodies are two different systems, and in order to understand addiction, we must understand both. our minds perceive addiction in a shameful way. we judge others for having addictions, and we hate ourselves for our own addictive habits. but our bodies are stuck in memories. they can’t tell if we’re still in the experience or if we’re finally safe.
so next time you get mad at yourself for repeating a habit you told yourself you were going to quit, just know that it’s not your fault. <3
~liv xx
ps: also highly recommend reading the realm of hungry ghosts: close encounters with addiction by gabor mate
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