What Does The Addictive Cycle Feel Like?

As tolerance grows, increasing amounts of alcohol are needed to reach the same

state of high, of emotional numbing and phycological distance from self. Over

time the brain adapts to cope with the alcohol’s continuous release of artificial

stimuli and chemical hijacking. New pathways attempt to restore balance

inadvertently changing the way a person thinks, distorting personal values and

boundaries, in affect altering the way a person chooses and makes decisions.

Alcohol doesn’t make things more interesting; it

makes your mind stupid so that things that would

otherwise have bored it are suddenly enough to

occupy it.

A new driven focus, subconscious and subtle to the drinker is now fixated towards

alcohol, priorities become irrational and biased in favour of drinking. Caught in the

addictive cycle of consistently needing a drink; to feel more confident, calm an

anger or hurt, harbour a resentment or frustration. To pacify the anxious unsettled

mind or body, a symptom of withdrawal, initially triggered by an emotion, a

dysfunctional thought, to physical and mental cravings and pouring the next drink.

Examine what you tolerate. The biggest stress is being

who you are not.

Drinking patterns downplay the autonomy, and true potential of an individual;

with their original and unique moral benchmark becomes distorted and depressed.

Along with the familiar ripple effect of relationship, social and financial loss. Even

those who claim they could stop, they “don’t need a drink they just enjoy it” could

if they were honest name situations where drink ‘got in the way’; caused them to

be ‘less available’ for their family, a friendship, a lover, when drink dealt the trump

card and won over their true relational wishes and needs.

In reality it is not alcohol that is addictive, but

the addictive need to change the way you feel.

Brain processes work against you in the chemical hook to want more and more.

The hard wiring is overrun by a complex alteration and decrease of brain function,

in some cases destroying brain regions which are meant to help us survive. When I

finally decided to get sober, it was a revelation to me, why everyone did not

experience this driven motivation for more. I naively assumed at the time, because

others lacked stamina, or a sense of carefree fun always needing to be in control.

It didn’t occur to me they were fundamentally fulfilled, forward focused and

possessed a healthy sense of self-esteem. An anomaly to think in a self-promoting

style, able to make healthy choices for myself; instead, I was filling the void, which I

believed at the time, was answered only by alcohol.

It is not drinking that’s the problem. But the

thinking behind the drinking.

Drinking damages, the connecting receptors which communicate between different

regions of the brain. Specifically, the memory and learning systems; negatively

influenced by the initial euphoria and over time the personal reward of drinking.

Experience accumulates, forming associations towards ‘coping’ and ‘drinking’. Both in

the individual’s mind and internal world, but also from their context and environmental

cues and triggers, creating a cycle of habits. The equivalent of a healthy brain

responding as it should to a foreign substance, which is both false and hostile.

Alcohol’s chemicals stimulate and mock the meaning of connection, a temporary

warmth and satisfaction like no other to the drinker. As time passes the bond grows

to be a reliable anxiety reliever, dependable emotional rest bite, feigning a friend who

will always stand in, creating a coexistence and a new hierarchy of needs of survival.

Living in the addictive cycle feels as much an entrapment as it does self-soothing.

Equally your world becomes smaller as alcohol robs you of your authentic confidence

and self-esteem, living on your nerves, emotionally unpredictable, unsure of what

normal feels like anymore. Subconsciously deluded by your own behaviour, refusing to

believe alcohol has caused you more vulnerability than before it took its hold

.......because you are too afraid to imagine a life without it.