Complete Lifestyle Change or 1 Habit at a Time: Which Is Best for Fighting Addiction?

Lifestyle Change: Complications in various parts of your life come as a result of struggles with addiction. Although you might be “functional,” you will find that being truly functional means you accomplish more than what you are capable of doing. When you put too much focus on your financial life, your physical health will inevitably falter. When you focus solely on family, friends, and romantic relationships, your emotional health might begin to fall short. Drugs and alcohol make it very difficult for you to have anything at all.

Being under the influence inebriates your ability to juggle every single responsibility that crops up in your life. This begs the question: How am I going to fight my addiction, and why?

This question is best answered by challenging the pros and cons of habits; what is good for you and what is bad for you?

Lifestyle Change Habits and the Dimensions of Wellness

There are several dimensions of wellness, focusing on:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Social
• Spiritual
• Intellectual
• Occupational

Each habit, each behavior you take on, affects one or more of these dimensions of wellness.

To contrast your ability to perform multiple healthy behaviors while influenced by drugs or alcohol, take, for example, simply planning meals for the day or week. Additionally, getting exercise in the morning, readying yourself for the day ahead, working a nine-to-five job (or even part-time employment), managing a social life without emotional repercussion, and spiritually and mentally caring for yourself are all important components.

These behaviors paint a picturesque world that includes some stress, but this type of stress is not overwhelming, nor does it harm you with long-term afflictions. These habits are good ones, ones that progress you toward long-term satisfaction.

Inject addiction into the mix, and you wind up either unable to sustain these habits long-term or only keeping up with a few of them. Eventually, addiction causes you to drop most healthy behaviors. You’re likely no longer eat nutritious meals or exercising.

Additionally, your hygiene might plummet, and your work-life suffers. Plenty of people suffering from addiction have lost their jobs because of it. Friends and family see how you’ve changed. Some support you, some don’t. Of those that support you, you are wary of their intentions. Addiction has a hold on you and does not want to let go. What follows is severe mental anguish and hopelessness.

Turning Points During Addiction

There comes the point in your addiction when you realize how you have changed. The person you were before is far and gone, and you do not necessarily like the person you have become. However, as much as you would like to revert to your old self, old, good habits died hard, circumvented by new, bad habits. This tears your focus in a multitude of directions. Should you focus solely on recovery or recovery and more?

Before we talk about how to change one behavior — a habit — we will discuss how habits form in the first place.

Thinking About Addiction as a Habit: How You Form Habits

How you form a habit is a lot like how addiction develops. From an excerpt of Atomic Habits, a bestselling novel about building habits and breaking bad ones, written by James Clear, “the process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.” Any habit develops through these four stages and in the same order. To an extent, addiction follows this process.

The cue is driven by reward. It initiates a type of behavior to happen. The motivation behind a behavior taking place is due to the outcome or the reward. Whether it be happiness, satisfaction, love, money, or something else, the cue will take you there through the beginning stage of developing a habit.

In terms of addiction, look toward why you start using drugs or alcohol in the first place. Is it a way of escape? Is it to supplement treatment for depression? Are you looking to gain courage in social forums? Based on the outcome — if the cue you follow ends up as a positive or negative influence on your life — a behavior has the potential to form into a habit, to reoccur.

Cravings Drive Addiction

Cravings are no mystery when it comes to addiction. Cravings show up regardless if you are trying to quit drinking, or using drugs, or not. They drive your addiction. They are chemical influences from new interconnected triggers found in your brain, created by the continued practice of a habit.

A cue starts the idea in your head that certain behaviors are beneficial to you. A craving repeats that idea. Your mind has already once experienced the reward that comes with habit-forming behaviors and wants more. From James Clear, a craving is a “change in state [a habit] delivers.” Your motivation — the reason you face cravings consistently when in recovery — is how your body, how your mind feels once under the influence.

Not all habits (or addictions) derive from the same kind of cravings. Are you prone to drinking excessive amounts of alcohol? A bar, a liquor store, even the alcohol aisle of a grocery store might trigger your cravings. The cravings themselves are the want to alter your mood, to feel something otherwise unreachable — relief.

Actions and Reactions

Every action has a reaction — that is the response of forming a habit. It is the habit itself. A response exists as the idea of whether you can even commit to an action in the first place. Are there physical or mental barriers against you from carrying out the action that stops you from forming a habit?

With drugs and alcohol, rarely is that the case. Both are largely accessible, with the only barriers holding you back being cost and consequence. Unfortunately, alcohol is legal and within grasp even before turning the legal age to drink. It is an onset response of our broader culture wanting to reach maturity as quickly as possible.

At a young age, you might be “rewarded” for drinking. You might gain status among your peers. You lead in new experiences where others don’t. Sometimes you even win over the other sex with these behaviors. Your only fear is getting caught by your parents, the police, or other role models. Your response to drinking as a habit develops with maturity. The response from drinking widens in range. Social consequences lessen, financial consequences heighten, and physical repercussions become an issue — the toll it takes on your body. The same applies to using drugs as well.

Rewards: The Final Step in Forming Habits

The fourth and final step in forming a habit is the reward. A reward provides you with two inarguable gains: satisfying your craving and teaching you. Cravings are self-serving functions our bodies convince us that we need. The rewarding effect proves that to be true, to an extent. In the case of addiction, the rewarding effect incrementally declines over time until it becomes harmful.

Rather than changing your behavior due to this, your brain has acclimated to the chemical changes, encouraging continued action. In addition to feelings of satisfaction throughout your addiction to either drugs or alcohol, you were learning that the pleasure you get from a high or state of drunkenness takes precedence over all else.

Unlike other habits, drinking and using drugs will cheat you. Like having a card up its sleeve in a game of poker, these addictive behaviors affect your body with an unfair advantage — at the chemical level. From the physical intake of alcohol and drugs, your body adjusts and adapts to the effects these poisons bring, eventually becoming a permanent part of your physiology.

How Do You Break a Habit?

Once ingrained as part of your life, the steps you take to create a habit become a cycle that loops endlessly. Breaking a habit similarly follows the same route as creating one. Habits are only capable of being broken when you invert how you look at them. During each step — cue, craving, response, reward — instead of considering their positive effects on your life (in this case, addiction providing you with relief), consider the negative (addiction — drugs and alcohol — is the culprit responsible for how you behave when faltering).

Much more goes into breaking a habit, such as identifying each key reason it formed in the first place, analyzing why each reason is a negative, and following through on actions to cease committing the behavior. It is a change of lifestyle in and of itself.

Addiction Is the Root of Bad Habits

The answer was simple all along. As explained at the beginning of this blog, addiction is the bully on the playground pushing everyone out of their comfort zone. Your good habits fall out of line due to addiction. The answer does not follow the question: Should I commit to a complete lifestyle change or focus on changing my addictions? Instead, addiction is the cause of my bad habits; working on recovering depends not just on my stopping drinking or using drugs but also on how I actively regain control over my life by practicing good habits.

Realizing your life is worth living depends on good habits, too. Escaping the clutches of drugs and alcohol requires you to think inward — what makes you feel good; what makes you feel healthy? You had a life before all of this. You have the ability to pick and choose what those moments were. You have the ability to evolve past your old self. Breaking bad habits sometimes depends on forming new, good habits. The future is about what excites you. Reflect on how the past was positively memorable and how that might be reflected going forward.

All states of you are at stake, including your physical, social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and occupational. These make up your present and future. Where does sobriety lead you? How is it different from addiction? Is it good or bad?

How do you keep from overwhelming yourself when trying to achieve sobriety? When seeking addiction treatment, it may seem like multiple facets of your life will quickly change. Having others on your side will help with your addiction recovery. Recovery is a process, and at times, even tedious. With a support system in place, you can be successful not only with long-term sobriety but in achieving a complete lifestyle change too.

Real Recovery Sober Living offers just that. We are a sober living community that helps those in recovery from day one onward after taking part in our intake process. Our community is built on the principles of providing you with safety and stability and helping you flourish in your transition back to the real world. Whether that means you are starting a career or education, we are on your side. Call us today at (727) 290-9156 for more information.

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