Why is it so difficult to give up an addiction?
During the course of involvement in an addiction and we start to give up friendships and ballgames and other ways of feeling good. We go through a process I call “unlearning.” We unlearn ways of coping with life. I work with many people that knew how to ask a girl to dance and by the age of thirty they are afraid to. They have unlearned through the course of the addiction working efficiently, effectively, predictably, how to do that. They have unlearned how to go and enjoy a ball team, how to cope with life, how to do hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of things they knew at the age of fifteen, but by the age of thirty, they no longer know how to do because they didn’t work as efficiently and effectively as their drug of choice. So, they are now in a stage of unlearning. They feel completely handcuffed, not only by the reinforcement of knowing how to feel good, but by the resources that they once had, or the resources that they would have used or learned at 18, 19, 20, never were developed.
Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5aWz8qnlAk
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