Jon's Voice

In fairness, there are much bigger and more complex issues then the person just being "weak".


Phil

You're generalizing and that is what is uninformed. For SOME people it may be easy. For others, their body is going to fight whatever they are trying to do with full force.

So what physical obstacle was it that you overcame to make you an expert?

And.... Bryan Adams just re-recorded 'when you're gone', with Pamela Anderson!!
Smart man!

We were talking about addiction and how "easy" it is to quit.

Yeah, but you can't compare quitting heroine to quitting smoking.

Yes it is the addiction that stays. The person remains mentally addicted even though all toxins have left their bodies. If you don't shoot up anymore or light up a cigarette, you can't really say they are still in their habit, cause they ain't anymore. The mental craving (not the physical) remains. Possibly forever.


Of course there is nothing wrong with helping someone. Problem is that most people (including so called professionals) are not equipped to do so. Neither are most friends. Compassion and empathy don't help a friend or loved one to overcome addiction (though I still don't think it can be overcome - just stalled) and most 'professionals' do NOT have the experience. I don't have the answer. All I know is that even the best rehab program has a very very very small success rate and that rate would be even smaller if looked over the lifetime of an individual. Same for smoking. Too many people give up smoking for years and at one point or another will take it up again - they might quit again, but it clearly is a battle...


that knowldege, understanding and experience is not taught in any school though and some people can be faced with the same experience but are not able to internalize it and thus end up helping others.

Addiction in any shape or form is tricky business and we are faaaaar from understanding it well enough to combat it.

why not?

mental addiction is the same, whether it implicates nicotine, alcohol, crack or heroin.

In fact, more people probably overcame a heroin addiction than a cigarette addiction and I am certain less people die of heroin than of smoking.

No I'm not. I already said, while the formula for helping people is exactly the same, each case has to be aproached slightly differently because everybody has different reasons for doing what the are doing.

Yes, you can certainly fall back into old habits but if you understand why, then you can avoid it in the future. And in some cases you're right, change can be more difficult for some but dose that mean you shouldn't do it? But as I have constantly been saying, there are ways and means out there that make it easier then you could ever imagine to overcome any problem you have and isn't it arrogant to say that isn't the case if you don't know what they are?

I overate choclate and ice-cream to a dangerous degree, I didn't put on weight but I was becoming very unhealthy outwordly and inwordly and yeah I was totally addicted to the sugar in those foods. Now, I know it ain't the same as heroin or nicotine, but it was an addiction, a habbit and a part of life life, nonetheless. One day I committed to being healthy and I gave up those foods, and more, cold turkey. That was about 5 years ago and I haven't eaten anything like that once and the reason is, now, even though I would enjoy eating it, the pain of the result and breaking my commitment would cause me so much pain the mere idea of eating them makes me sick. Thus I never even think of it. The reason why I did what I did was different to why others indulge in other addictive/unproductive behaviours but the ways I went about it are the same ways anyone can quit any addiction or unproductive behaviour as they follow the basic principles of physcology, and everything you do ultimately come back to how you are representing things to yourself.

I've overcome a dibilitating fear of speaking in public. I've also overcome a major problem that pushed me to the point where I came within a whisker of killing myself. Is that good enough?

Now, through studying physcology in the form of Nuero-Linguistic Programming and finding help from a man trained in that I've overcome all those things and I'm living an incredible happy life that I know I will continue to love no matter what happens. And all that has happened in less then a year. I am absolute proof you can change even if you truly believe you can't.



Phil

Isn't heroin the drug that creates the strongest addict?
I though a lot of the people that uses heroin died of it, perhaps I’m wrong, I don't know. Not all people who uses heroin is wealthy rock stars, that’s for sure.

I'm pretty sure you're right Spunky. Nictoine addiction is supposedly the most difficult to overcome.