Day 197 - Going to war with your brain
One of the most common elements of gambling addiction, and one I have written about a lot is the idea of the dual self. In one state of existence you are the gambler, and in another you are the non-gambler. There are many reasons why this dual identity emerges in the addict. First, it is a type of adaptive identity, if I can separate “myself” from “my destructive self” then I can exist in the world while at the same time justify my addiction. When I can no longer do this separation, I find myself at my absolute worst, where deep depression and suicidal ideation emerges. So, the dual-life identity is, at its core a coping mechanism, how else can a person willfully destroy their own life day by day? If I keep this separation I can tell myself things like “well I lost all my money, I hate that VERSION of myself that let it happen”, instead of just hating “myself”, I hate a horrible degenerate version of myself.
Sadly, while this can be a comforting thought in many ways, it is also what leads me back to the addiction. Because, as long as this dual self is separate from my actual self, I don’t really deal with the consequences of my actions in full. My shitty version of myself deals with all the misery and all the consequences. My shitty version is tasked with dealing with the fallout, in an effort to protect my actual self. The problem is, that the shitty version of myself is…A SHITTY PERSON. So, that shitty version of myself deals with things HORRIBLY. That version attacks my actual self, that version falls into depression, that version tells me I will never be happy, that version tells me to ignore and bottle up my stress, that version leads me back to gambling, back to addiction.
So, what the hell is the addict to do? Well, it is time to go to war, time to go war against your own BRAIN. It is the Brain that is that controls the shitty version of myself. It is the brain that I destroyed with decades of an overabundance of dopamine. It is the brain that I abused for so long, and now that brain is BROKEN. That brain has maladapted to my abuse and has created the shitty version of myself. I can’t blame my brain, I abused it, the reason it is so broken is my fault, the addictions fault. Here is the problem though, my brain is fucking strong. My abuse has molded it into a degenerate that only wants one thing: to gamble. My brain is going to do EVERYTHING in its power to get me to gamble, get me to come back to gambling, get me to let that shitty version of myself exist.
Time for Battle
So on one side we have my broken, abused brain, hanging onto the addiction. On the other side we have my actual self, an abandoned and forgotten self. The Brain is STRONG, my actual self is WEAK. How can the actual self win the war?
Know Thy Enemy
First off, we have to understand exactly who we are up against: our very own brain. We are up against an abused neural pathway that may never recover from the dopamine abuse I gave it. Our enemy is strong, and it has controlled our lives for decades. BUT… our brain is also broken. Indeed, it is only strong because it is so broken. The strength of my enemy is based on falsehoods, based on chemical imbalance, based on maladaptive coping mechanisms. My brain may be strong, but only because it is broken. In that, we find its weakness, if I can HEAL, if I can dismiss false thoughts, if I can work against maladaptive coping mechanisms then my brain becomes weaker. By healing, my brain will start to give up its grip on “the shitty version of myself”.
Abandon all assumptions and pursue new perspectives
I have written about phenomenology before, and it has been my main “philosophy” for recovery. When I first learned about it, it was presented first as a “given up” of all assumptions. Here is a philosophy which attacks naturalism, which goes against thousands of years of established philosophy. Here is a philosophy which goes against the greatest thinkers of our time.
Well, if Husserl and Heidegger can give up thousands of years of culture and tradition to invent an entirely new philosophy… then I can go against 20 years of my dumbass abused brain controlling my life, controlling the way I think. I can start giving up ingrained ideas of what I need to be happy. I can start looking at the world, even simple things like how a tree looks on a nice day, in completely new ways.
The important part of this method isn’t that the assumptions you are given up are wrong entirely, but rather that just by giving them up, you are making the brain weaker.
My brain kept playing tricks on me to say “You need to gamble”, “Gambling is the only way out of your position”, “Gambling is the only way to deal with your anxiety”. Well, every time I gave up any assumption, not just those related to gambling but maybe something like “I will always be alone”, or “I will always be ugly” I made the brain weaker. Think about it, If I can actually give up my thought that “I will never be happy”, then giving up “I need to play this slot” becomes trivial in comparison.
The War is won not by fighting but by healing
Healing the brain, giving the brain new ideas, giving up assumptions and long held thoughts makes the brain weaker. What happens then is MYSELF, the actual self, which started off weak becomes stronger. By building things for my actual self, like exercising, eating better, sleeping better my actual self gets stronger. Every “good” action makes my actual self stronger, and it takes power away from “my brain”. The more time I spend as my actual self, the less time I spend as the shitty version of myself. Everything I do in pursuit of my recovery, in pursuit of changing my life, I heal the brain. As shown above, healing the brain makes it weaker. I don’t fight my brain, I heal it. I don’t take my actual self to the battlefield, I train him and make him stronger. No battle is ever fought, yet my enemy gets weaker while I grow stronger.
The End of War is an Alliance
As I heal my brain, as I stay as my actual self, as I work on my actual self, my brain starts to give up the “shitty version” of myself. My brain forgives me for the abuse and it starts to return to me, my actual self. My brain starts to realize that it was broken, and it doesn’t need to keep me in addiction. There will always be a part of my brain that is still the “dumb brain”, still the part that may be clinging onto the addiction, but I can recognize that now. I can say “That is just my dumb brain pulling one of its old tricks again”. Of course, it is the BRAIN itself, the healed brain which allows this recognition, allows this dismissal. My brain and my actual self now form an alliance, because my brain realizes that this is now the healthy way, it will no longer be a victim of abuse. My brain releases the shitty version of myself and grabs hold of my actual self…and with that, for the first time in decades, I AM MYSELF (I teared up a bit writing this line because it really is incredible how empowering it is) . I am a good person, an honest person, an ambitious person and I can finally start building the life I WANT.