Attitude and Addiction

Attitude and Addiction

When you think of addiction, what images come to mind? 
Do you see the dirty homeless man caressing his bottle shaped brown paper bag?  Maybe it’s an anorexic scab ridden woman passed out in an alley with the needle still hanging from the vein in her arm. 
The truth of the matter is that addiction is found in the pretty girl sitting an English class, the strong and healthy quarterback, the soccer mom, the business executive and even the parish priest.  Addiction is no longer limited to the weak or feeble minded and has no consideration of gender, race, age, education or finances.  Addiction is not limited to drugs and alcohol but includes in its arsenal such things as gambling, porn, shopping, food, TV, the internet, astrology, sex and anything else that will possess the minds and wills of the willing.  Addiction is still a dirty word saved for the obvious but many forms of addiction are considered socially acceptable.

Have you ever wondered why addiction is so prevalent in today’s society? 
I’m sure many will blame broken homes or abuse; targeting them as leading contributor’s but the real culprit is an attitude.
So, which attitude is so pervasive and debilitating that it has single-handedly created generations of addicted personalities?

It is Powerlessness.

Now I know you are probably thinking that’s crazy but let me show you why I believe that our willingness to adopt a powerless attitude to life is responsible for rampant addiction in today’s society.

Let’s start by looking at attitudes. 
An attitude is a positive or negative view or opinion of a person, place, thing or event.  Attitudes are judgments developed on the ABC (affect, behavior and cognition) psychological model.  The affective response is an emotional response that expresses a degree of like or dislike for a person, place, thing or event. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of a person. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the person, place, thing or event that constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object. Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.

Putting that into practice, let’s take a small child sitting on her mother’s lap in the garden.  A spider crawls up onto the mother’s arm.  The child sees it and is curious.  The mother sees it and screams.  The child sees the mothers fear and is upset by it.  So here we have the affective response.  An attitude is beginning to form in the child’s mind.  The child has had an emotional response to an event.  The mother responds to her own fear by jumping up and desperately swatting at the offending bug yelling “eewww yuck get off get off” 
The child’s developing attitude has been further developed by seeing and hearing how her mother responded to the spider thus the child sees behavioral intention following an affective response.  The cognitive response sees the event evaluated; how do I feel about this event, is this a good event or a bad event.  The child has developed the attitude that spiders are scary horrible things and must be removed quickly.
The great thing about attitudes is that they can be re-evaluated at any point, either consciously or sub-consciously.  If the child saw many other people with spiders on them who did not respond in fear then the attitude the child has about spiders on people would be re-evaluated and a different attitude developed.

Now that we have a better understanding of attitudes, we can look at the attitude of powerlessness and begin to understand why it is the leading contributor to addictive behavior.
The attitude of powerlessness voices itself with statements like “I can’t” and “It’s not my fault”.  These two statements serve to remove us from a position of control to one of being powerless.  So, what are the affective responses and behavioral intentions that result in our cognitive response forming an attitude that we are powerless?

Well, there are many but I want to focus on our environment.
 
We have created an environment that abdicates responsibility at every turn. We are constantly being told by society to blame our parents, our community, our government, global warming, genetics, the drink, drugs, peer pressure, etc for the failings in our lives.  We are weakened of our resolve from a very young age.  Just look at sporting events where everyone gets a medal just for participating.  We are so afraid of damaging fragile egos that we reward everyone, deserving or not.  This sends a clear message that it is okay to be mediocre.  Worse still, it tells our children that they cannot do anything to influence the results.

Our legal system, once designed to send a strong message of right and wrong now serves to excuse our behavior for a myriad of reasons.  You can get away with murder if you can convince a jury of mitigating circumstances such as being sufficiently provoked, temporarily insane, medically disadvantaged, defending yourself (even if the threat was a perceived one), defending others, defending your property, obeying orders, under stress, depressed, tired or just didn’t mean to do it.  It is fair game to use anything to abdicate responsibility for a crime.  This sends an overwhelming message that being powerless will be rewarded.

We have replaced, what was once black and white, with a seemingly innocuous shade of grey. 
Is it any wonder why so many people choose to hand over control of their lives and in so doing, believe they have also handed over their responsibility.
We have become emotionally lazy with excessively fragile egos. The phrases du jour are "I cant" and “It‘s not my fault“. We have become emotionally disabled, gender disabled, learning disabled, attention disabled, racially disabled, age disabled and no doubt, there are those who claim to be astrologically disabled as well.

I'm not sure why we have allowed this pervasive attitude to rob us of our virility. It is beyond my comprehension as to why we embrace an impotent effect less life but without a doubt, we have. 
This adoption does not come without baggage though. 
It is unnatural and unhealthy to live this way.  It flies in the face of Nature herself.  As a species, we cannot survive without a fighting attitude.  It is survival of the fittest and we are becoming emotional couch potatoes. 
As with anything unnatural and unhealthy, there are symptoms.  That growing unrest, dissatisfaction, loneliness and never-ending re-runs of Groundhog Day are all typical symptoms of ineffective living so we must either change or medicate.
Change requires hard work and we have already been taught (and accepted) that we are powerless so the only option left is to medicate.  We medicate with drugs, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, chocolate, sex…the list is endless. We already know it’s not our fault we have to medicate so we cannot be responsible for our addiction either.

So here we are; we have come full circle and can see why our attitude has spawned our addiction. 

Do we accept this is our lot and proceed to medicate some more?

The very nature of addiction is that it numbs, removes and replaces whatever it is in our lives that we are trying to ignore. We are told that guilt is wasted energy but what if, say just for a minute, we entertain the idea that we have a conscience and that our conscience seeks to let us know when we are on the wrong path, making mistakes or hurting others or ourselves.  If that is the case, we must also accept that we can change, that we are indeed powerful and in control but be warned that accepting power and control over our lives also entails accepting responsibility.  I want to know why 'responsibility' such a dirty word.

I had some counseling after my marriage broke up. I expressed guilt at not meeting the needs of my children to a satisfactory level. My counselor put her hand on mine, looked me in the eye and said, "You did the best you could with what you had, you didn’t know any better so don’t blame yourself".
What a load of rubbish.
Let's not sugar coat the truth.
I was more concerned with my own issues than those of my children's. I was lazy, self centered and selfish. I did not need to be told I wasn’t responsible because I was. Now I’m not suggesting we all dress in sacking cloth and cover ourselves in ashes but it is time for a reality check.

Addiction of any kind is rooted in fantasy and it is there that we run when reality becomes ugly. It’s easier to pretend our lives are not ugly than it is to actually change our life experience because easy is good...isn’t it?
Not in my book.
I am flying this airplane; I am deciding where I am going and how I will get there.  I am also accepting full responsibility for anything and everything I do in the process.  But that is my choice and my attitude, how about you? 

Passenger or Pilot?