Addiction is like having chains around you, preventing you from making good choices, and leading you down a path of destruction. Whether the addiction includes using taking substances or doing compulsive behaviors, over time you find yourself trapped, unhappy and compelled to do things that do not match your value system. This is terrible to live, and horrible to watch, as family members and loved ones feel helpless to have any impact on someone else’s addiction.
In the treatment of addiction it is important to stop the cycles of behavior and the power of the addiction to control your life. But it is equally important to change the environment around you to stop reinforcing addiction, and to find out the painful feelings that are caused by the addiction, and what possibly caused it in the first place.
