How Addiction Works

Addiction is really misunderstood. A lot of people think it's about character, morals, willpower and ethics. It's not. It's about pain. I had a father call me this weekend. His son has been dealing with addiction for many, many years. And it comes and goes, and all of a sudden it came back again. His son told him, I just wanted to get high because my wife told me she was going to divorce me if I do it again. And that stressed me out. And I went and I have this little black box that I have with my stuff in it that I hide. And he says, I haven't used it in months. He said, I went right back to it. The father, because he's so hurt, is still so angry, he can't see what his son was actually doing. Was his son trying to hurt himself? Was he trying to get high? No, he got stressed out. And what code got built? The drugs stop the pain, and so it immediately goes to it. It's not a logical decision. It's a survival mechanism. And the survival brain learns through repetition. Repetition builds codes. The more evidence that I have that this is the solution to my problem, the code becomes very strong, and that's why they can't get out of it very easily. Trying to override the codes is very difficult. But if you don't fix the trauma that started, the original source code that's still running in the background, and there's where they relapse. So people say to me, why would people use drugs and alcohol knowing the consequences? I said, because it works. It solves their problem in the moment. Now.