Your own cocktail of motivations

If you are reading these lines, chances are you have been living under an addiction for some time. It is also a fair bet that you have already identified a number of reasons to stop — otherwise you would not necessarily have found the appetite and the energy to get this far.

Before starting the list, it matters a great deal to say that no reason is better than another in any general sense. The best reasons are the ones that work for you and mean something to you. I can tell you without much hesitation that every person who comes to see me about an addiction has their own cocktail of motivations for stopping. The ingredients of that cocktail, on the other hand, are common to everyone.

So here is a range of mixtures for putting your own recipe together intuitively. Grab a notebook and a pen for this quick exercise — three to five minutes. First pick the motivations that speak to you, then put the ones you have selected in order of priority.

Leaving an addiction behind is not only a personal challenge, it is also an act of virtuous rebellion. The next piece explains how getting out of an addiction is a strongly political act, set against the mechanics of our society.