How To Stop An Addiction On Your Own

Now, most people out there in the addiction recovery world will try to tell you that you can't stop an addiction on your own, that you have to have help. But I'm actually going to be telling you the exact opposite of that. Not only can you stop an addiction on your own, but it's pretty much the only way. Now, I know some of you are probably feeling a little skeptical about that, but just hang in there, because I think by the end of this video, you're going to be able to come on board with this way of thinking. And I'm also going to be sharing with you my top four tips for increasing your self control, which, as you can imagine, is pretty important if you're trying to overcome any type of addiction. Now, for those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor. I've been helping people overcome addiction for many, many years now. And on this YouTube channel, we don't believe you're powerless. We don't believe that you need to hit bottom before you can make a change. We're here to empower you by helping you really understand the science and psychology of ADD so you can get and stay five steps ahead of it. All right, let's get back to our topic. Now, I hear this all the time. People saying, well, I want to do it on my own. I don't want to talk to a counselor. I don't want to go to a meeting. I want to do it on my own. And here's how I respond to that. Well, you're in luck, because there's actually only one way to do this, and that is on your own. Unfortunately, no one else can do this for you. They can't even do a little bit of it for you. You have to do 100% of all of this on your own. It's not like building a house where if I'm your friend and you're building the house, I can show up for the day. I can help hammer nails and hang drywall and paint walls and put roofing shingles on. But all the things involved with stopping an addiction can only be done by you. Once we look at that point of view, I think we realize that when people say, I want to do it on my own, what they're really saying is some kind of version of, well, I want to be able to do it without having to go to counseling, or I want to be able to do it without having to go to 12 step meetings, or I want to be able to do it without having to go to impat or something like that. Now, if any of those are your goal, you're in luck, because not only are you going to do this on your own, but yes, it is possible to do it without having those things in place either. In fact, I like to say there's really only one requirement to be able to overcome an addiction, and that is humility. The humility to say, you know what? I might need to change the way I'm doing it. You know what? Maybe I was wrong about what it's going to take to stop this addiction. And if you're still listening to this video, you're already practicing a little humility because you're willing, willing to hear what someone else has to say on the topic. I'm not saying that I have all the ANSWERS Or I'm 100% right, but I will say that listening to someone else on the topic is definitely a step in the right direction. Now, let's take this idea of I want to do this on my own. I don't want to have help doing it. Let's take that one layer deeper because, you know, we've already identified that what someone is really saying is, I don't want to do X, Y, or Z in order to make this happen. Okay, that's cool. I'm on board with that. But let's take a look at why you don't want to have those other kinds of interventions, like counseling, like meetings, like intensive outpatient groups, like inpatient treatment, all those things. One of the questions you need to ask yourself is, why do I not want those things? Many times when we really look deep inside and we get honest with ourselves, we're trying to avoid something. Oftentimes we're not wanting to hear from other people about how to get sober because we don't want to feel forced into getting sober. Or maybe we don't want to feel forced into doing it someone else's way. It's really a need or desire or want for control. Maybe the reason why we're not wanting those other kinds of help or interventions is because you're trying to avoid hearing something either about addiction, about recovery, or about yourself that you don't want to hear. So, for example, here's a really common one. Maybe you have more than one addictive tendency. Like, maybe you drink and you smoke marijuana and you're all on board with giving up the alcohol, but you don't want to give up the marijuana. And you know if you go to treatment, they're going to be on your case about that. So what's really happening here is you want to avoid being pushed or controlled again into doing it some kind of way that you don't want to do. Maybe you're not wanting to get any kind of outside or external help because you're trying to avoid accountability. I see this all the time. People decide that they're going to overcome addiction, and not only do they not want to get outside help, they actually don't even want to tell anybody. They don't want to tell their family. They don't want to tell their friends. They want to do what I call secret recovery, where there is a big problem with that. Well, unfortunately, that doesn't really work. You got to get really honest with yourself, because deep down inside, what's really happening is you're trying to avoid accountability just in case you change your mind. And this whole thing about being sober doesn't really work out for you. Well, if you're going into something with that mindset and you're leaving that door open for yourself, you're already setting yourself up for failure. Or maybe the reason why you're not wanting to get some kind of help is actually because you feel really embarrassed or you feel really, really shameful about what your addiction is or all the things that have been involved with your addiction. And that is completely understandable. Again, that will drive you to trying to do it in secret. And there's just a lot of reasons why doing it in secret is just not the best pathway. When you really drill down the reasons why you're resisting getting outside help for an addiction. And it's mostly because of some kind of pride or ego issue standing in your way. And I'm not judging you because we all have that. I've been there and done all those things myself. And honestly, I think we've all been there before. So if you're really serious about overcoming your addiction on your own, the first thing you got to do is you got to get your pride out of the way. Now, that's not me telling you that you have to go to 12 step meetings or that you have to go to inpatient treatment, or that you even have to talk to a counselor. I'm not telling you if you any of those things, but I am encouraging you to ask yourself, why is it you're really, really, really resistant to doing that? Because let me tell you what it's not. It's not because you want to do it on your own. Maybe you're telling yourself that as some kind of, like, defense mechanism. Or rationalization. But if you're still watching this video, then we've already sort of peeked behind that curtain to see that's not really exactly true, what we're telling ourselves. Now, I'll stand by what I said. You don't have to do any one of those things in order to overcome an addiction, to stop drinking or using drugs or gambling or whatever your addiction is. You don't have to do any one of those things. But I am going to strongly advise you to get yourself some kind of advisor person in your life that can be a counselor, that can be a sponsor, that can be a recovery coach, that can be your cousin JJ who got sober 10 years ago. That can be your preacher, it can be your best friend. But it needs to be someone who has some kind of understanding about overcoming an addiction. Now, there are a lot of reasons why you need an advisor, but the biggest one is when you have an addiction, you'll trick yourself. When you have an addiction, you've gotten yourself so good at rationalizing, justifying, minimizing. You've been doing this habitual pattern for so long, if you're just leaving it to you, you're gonna keep falling back into it. So you definitely want to get yourself some sort of advisor. Now, there are a million ways of doing that. I've already told you, you don't have to get a counselor. But, hey, maybe you don't know anybody that knows anything about overcoming addiction. Guess what? There's a million books out there, There's a million podcasts out there. There's a whole bunch of apps you can put on your phone. But you need some source of information. If I were trying to do anything that I'd never done before, the first thing I do was do a little research into that. Probably I'll go to YouTube, or I would get a book, or I would take some kind of course about the topic. If you were trying to build a house, that's what you would do. If you're trying to fix your washing machine, never fixed a washing machine, guess what you're going to do? You're going to find some source of information. Maybe you call up your Uncle Frank, because Uncle Frank is a handyman and he's going to walk you through the process. You wouldn't think twice about doing that. In fact, you would think it would be kind of silly for you to just go in there and fix your washing machine and you'd never done it before and just try to figure it out on your own. Even if you're fairly Mechanical. Yeah, maybe you could eventually figure that out. But do you know how long it's going to take you? About a hundred times longer than if you just picked up the phone and called Uncle Frank and said, Uncle Frank, my washing machine is making this noise. What does it mean? Do you see how having an advisor can expedite your process by like a million fold? Even if you have done something before and but you haven't done it that many times, you still probably want to get some kind of advisor or mentor or something to help save you time. Not saying this because you will never figure it out. Yeah, you'll probably figure it out, but how many times a failure is it going to take you to figure it out? In fact, if you're watching this video, my guess is you've already tried it your way a hundred times. So not only do I suggest you get an advisor, I suggest you get one that you trust. One that you trust enough to like listen to their advice. Even if your instinct is kind of resisting that for some reason because you're saying, hey, I trust this person. I know they know what they're talking about. I know they have my best interests at heart. I know they're not judging me and I can let go of my pride and just listen to what they have to say. It's going to save you a lot of time and more importantly, a lot of heartache. Now my second piece of advice for anyone who wants to have better self control is to not to try to so much manage your decision making as it is more trying to manage your environment or what I might call your influence. Because actually environment wins over top of will every single time. And there's a lot of reasons behind that. There's a lot of psychology there. But basically I just want you to know that all of us, if you have a brain, you're programmable and your brain is going to be programmed based on the environment that you're around, the people you have in your life, the influence that's there. So when I'm telling you to control your influence, I mean it in an even deeper way than they mean it. In old school recovery, in old school recovery, they tell you have to change your people, places and things. Sometimes they say your playmates, your playgrounds and your playthings. Yes, you do need to get rid of those negative influences for sure. Also you can construct an environment where you're putting people in your life. These don't have to be like sponsors or trusted people, although they can be. I'm not against that. But people that bring the right influence into your life, the right mindset into your life, the right positivity and encouragement if you want to be successful. Control your environment, where you go, who you surround yourself with, all of those things are very important. Now my third piece of advice on how to increase your self control is to make it very difficult for yourself to fail. And one of the ways to do that is to set up some kind of accountability systems for yourself. If the issue is drugs or gambling, then you probably want to make it really hard to access cash. If your drug is alcohol, maybe you want to sign up for some kind of alcohol monitoring system like soberlink. A lot of, you know, I talk about soberlink, I'm a big fan. I've got more videos on that if you want to hear about it. But basically you want to put as many roadblocks in your way as absolutely possible. Could you do it if you wanted to? Of course you can do it if you want to. But don't make it easy. Delete those numbers out of your phone, take the social media off if you need to, take a different route on your way home from work and don't carry or have access to lots of cash. You know your habits and routines. Put the blocks in front of you, as many as you possibly can. Now my fourth really important piece of advice for anyone who's trying to overcome an addiction and increase your self control is to focus more on what you do want instead of what you don't want. Telling yourself, reminding yourself all day, every day, don't drink, don't drink, don't drink, don't think about drinking, don't have a craving. It's not very effective as you can imagine. Just hearing me say that sure made you think about it, right? What works much more effectively is to decide what you are going to think about. Maybe that's some kind of positive outcome that you're going to get. Maybe that's a gratitude practice that you're doing. And sometimes maybe that's just distraction. Hey, maybe you want to put some audible books on your phone that you know are really interesting to you. Maybe they're scary stories, maybe they're romance stories. Maybe you want to make sure you have a whole playlist of podcasts that you haven't heard or certain music that puts you in a frame of mind. What you're doing is you're planning for where your attention is going to go. So for example, if you know on your way home from work is a particularly high risk time, then have a system for what you're going to do on your way home from work. Instead of saying, don't pull over the store, don't pull over the store, don't pull over the store. Make sure when you get in your car, you got your music ready, you got your podcast ready, your YouTube videos, whatever it is that's going to keep your mind busy and distracted. It's going to make it a lot easier to make the decision not to pull over. And if the thought does occur to you, don't freak out. It's natural. It can pop in there. Just sort of acknowledge that thought and let it pass right by and get back to thinking about or and get back to focusing on something else. Now, if you want even more tips on how to get sober and overcome your addictions, I want you to watch this video next. And if you're not already subscribed to this channel, you should definitely consider it, because there is a ton of advice right here on this channel. In fact, you can learn every single thing that I know for free right here on YouTube, which, again, is another way of being able to do it on your own without having to spend extra money or go to inpatient treatment. All right, everybody, I'll see you next time.