Tips and Tricks for Using Your Mind to Stop an Addiction
Many anti-addiction programs ask addicts to quit their addiction using only their willpower and talk-therapy. It’s possible to do this. The brain will rewire itself over time if you habitually deprive it of the addictive stimulus and engage in other activities. But using willpower alone is much more difficult than if you combine the decision and the will to quit with amino acid and nutrient therapies that we discuss in these posts.
A lot of people fail to overcome addiction using only talk-therapy and willpower because addiction is a nutrient deficiency problem that leads to low levels of neurotransmitters in the brain and gut. And it’s an issue with the unconscious mind which means that talk therapy alone could take many many years to get to the root of it. Scientific studies have shown that nutritional deficiencies can make people vulnerable to a wide array of different types of addiction including addiction to narcotics, methamphetamines, refined sugars, cocaine, pornography, gambling, social media and smartphone abuse, toxic relationships, and more. In order to overcome addiction, you need to go into the recovery process properly nourished with the right vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, and you also need to work with your unconscious mind and the motives that you may never have considered consciously that have kept your addiction going. Many rehab centers provide everything except nutritional therapies and therapy that specifically targets the unconscious mind! If you seek out a holistic addiction rehabilitation center that provides amino acid therapies and therapies that target the unconscious mind such as hypnotherapy, shamanic drumming circles, or even sacred indigenous medicines like Iboga/Ibogaine or Ayahuasca, you’ll be much more likely to experience success quickly so that you can get on with your life.
Of course, some of these therapies can be done on your own and many people experience great success at overcoming addiction at home, even people who are addicted to opiates or methamphetamines or cocaine.
The decision to quit an addiction is yours. The posts at this site were written to help you understand how to take control over your own mind using nutraceuticals and amino acids. The nutrients and supplements we discuss here will help you:
- Avoid many of the painful physical withdrawal symptoms of addiction
- Detoxify from substance abuse (if you have been using a substance)
- Avoid many of the emotional and withdrawal symptoms of addiction
- Avoid obsessive thinking associated with addiction
- Have positive thoughts to give you the opportunity to plan ahead and create a new set of habits for yourself.
Start the process of overcoming addiction by making a plan for yourself one day in advance. Think carefully about each of the following:
- What will you do with the time that you normally would spend on your addiction?
- Take some time now to plan ahead for the upcoming 24 hours of your life.
- Make a list of what you would rather do with the time you would normally spend on your addiction.
- Pay special attention to planning your free time and transitional times if you’re addicted to your smartphone or social media (when you’re in a car or on a subway--the times when you would normally pick up your smartphone and start scrolling). If you’re addicted to a substance, think carefully about the things that trigger your addiction and plan to avoid those triggers and engage in other activities.
- Think about people in your life who may facilitate or encourage your addiction in some way and make a plan for how to avoid interacting with those people.
- Think about people you know or social situations that may support your decision to quit your addiction and try to involve yourself with those people/social situations.
Willpower and the Unconscious Mind…
Hypnotherapists will tell you that if the conscious mind and the unconscious mind are in conflict over something that the unconscious mind will always win. In other words, if unconsciously, you want a piece of chocolate cake, but you consciously tell yourself that you can’t have it, eventually, the unconscious mind will win and you’ll end up eating the cake. You may use your willpower to tell yourself over and over again to not eat that chocolate cake, but if you unconsciously believe that you need it in order to fulfill some necessity (which you may never fully understand or even discover as you work through your addiction!), you’ll end up with the chocolate cake.
Unfortunately, many Americans don’t realize that there are amino acids and nutrient supplements that reliably work with the unconscious mind to help give some of your conscious efforts and goals more amplitude. Amino acids and nutrients are not just a collection of chemicals, but, when they come packaged as whole plant medicines (like Mucuna pruriens for example), they have a consciousness of their own and if you know which plants you need to work with to achieve your health goals, they can help in ways that are very different from how pharmaceuticals in conventional medicine work.
The History of Willpower
Willpower is a concept in the English language that’s become synonymous with mental or emotional strength but before you buy into willpower as a real thing, you should understand the history behind it.The Delphic maxim “Know Thyself” was probably the first reference to something resembling willpower, but in the modern era, the idea of willpower really came into vogue in the early 1900’s during the Industrial Revolution when people started extolling the virtues of self-mastery. And then, the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment was concocted by Dr. Mischel where 4 year old children were offered one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows later if they could sit with that first marshmallow and wait for the scientist to return to the room without eating it. This experiment, which followed the kids through their lives showed that the kids who could wait to eat the marshmallow until the scientist returned to the room tended to do better in life on a number of variables. They tended to have higher scores on their university entrance exams, more successful marriages, better health, and higher paying jobs.
But what were these scientists really measuring?
Did this experiment measure willpower, or the effects of a poor diet on a child’s ability to control themselves?
It’s common knowledge that the refined sugars in junk foods like marshmallows cause a dopamine release similar in magnitude to the dopamine release caused by a hit of cocaine. So, without knowing each child’s diet, it’s hard to say whether the scientists were measuring willpower as a mental construct or dietary deficiencies that cause addictive behaviors and the inability to delay gratification.
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Willpower, determination, and the desire to make a change is a vital starting block in overcoming an addiction. There’s no doubt about that! But in order to have willpower, you need to be properly nourished.
If you’re experiencing addiction, start by taking supplements to replace the dopamine precursor L-Dopa (found in the Mucuna pruriens bean, a staple food in certain Central American societies). This will disrupt the addictive cycle and give you the willpower you’ve been lacking.
Then, you’ll start by changing just one thing in your addictive routine.
After you’ve proven that you can CHANGE ONE THING, you can change one more thing. The process will continue naturally from there.
If you’ve tried talk therapies or even rehab facilities or digital detox groups with a focus primarily on pure willpower or a distraction from unconscious drives and motivations and you’ve experienced relapse and failure, then it’s time to forgive yourself and try again, but this time with the nutrients your body needs to stop the cravings and withdrawal symptoms that occur in any type of addiction. Having the right nutrients in your body will help you reconnect with your willpower so you can actually accomplish your goals.
The Unconscious Mind…
According to the science of psychology, the unconscious mind is a special reservoir of emotions, thoughts, impulses, and memories that reside beyond our conscious awareness. When you’re in a relaxed state driving a car, when you’re meditating, or when you dream or when you’re daydreaming lucidly, you’re accessing and exploring your unconscious mind. During those times, your conscious mind goes to sleep or it takes a break, allowing you access to this repository of thoughts and emotions.In many cases of addiction, people do not need to consciously do a lot of work with their unconscious minds in order to make big changes. But sometimes, the unconscious mind creates obstacles that have to be overcome as part of the process of succeeding. If you take the supplements that we’ve suggested and you’re still struggling to kick the habit, there are a variety of different types of therapists who work with the unconscious mind and energies that pertain to the unconscious mind.
Having a skilled guide to help you deal with an unruly unconscious mind can put you back in the driver’s seat of your own life.
In this post about Types of Therapies That Deal with the Unconscious Mind, we provide a list of different types of therapies that will help you overcome an addiction if you have unconscious blocks that you need to address in order to move forward. The top 2 list items in this post (Ayahuasca and Iboga) are sacred indigenous plant medicines and they’re very powerful. They allow your unconscious mind and your conscious mind to work through their conflicts and overcome them over the course of 24 hours or less. In other words, these two plant medicines can help you make big changes very quickly, but you need an experienced shaman, sitter, guide, or medical practitioner who knows how to administer these plant medicines if you decide to go this route.
The other list items we’ve included in the list to help you work with your unconscious mind will also produce results quickly if your conscious goal is to make lasting changes in your life. Combining amino acids and nutraceuticals with therapies that deal with unconscious blocks is the most powerful way to overcome addiction and these are addiction treatments that you can do at home.
