Breaking your bad habit is 'in the cards' - Addiction & Subtraction

Here is another habit-breaking project I saw from a fellow HN reader. If you missed it, check it out: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5131995

Nice read, well written but it won't work.

Just like many self-help articles or books - the article mistakes consequences for causes and tries to guide the person to eliminate destructive consequences, without even looking or touching the causes.

Addictions is a mind reaction to avoid pain. In many cases it's an inner emotional pain alike feelings of guilt, worthlessness, desperation or depression. Addictive substance or destructive habit is nothing more than a painkiller - the only way mind know how to avoid feeling or reducing pain.

The real cure is not "replacing your destructive behavior with something better.".

If the real cause of addiction - the inner pain is not taken care of - the addiction returns in different shape, form, habit or substance.

THe real solution is steering mind to look at the pain directly, observe it, feel it, see it for what it really is and let it be dissolved with the light of your consciousness.

Addiction starts with pain and ends with pain, or more precise it ends when pain is observed directly, without mind interference.

It sounds like you're suggesting the real solution for addiction is meditation and mindfulness?

But why did they want to look cool, or to have that buzz? It takes some time to get addicted to cigarettes, so if a person continues doing it in spite of limited benefits, you have to wonder what is the motivation. One might argue it is to ease pain, even if it is just some minor, universally human pain.

Here's how it works: negative thought causes discomforting or outright painful feeling within the body.

Once negative feeling and emotion roots itself in the body it keeps invoking similar painful thoughts. Such thoughts in turn keep causing alike feelings and the vicious cycle continues feeding on itself and growing itself, like a weed.

To uproot the weeds you either need to eliminate negative feelings or eliminate negative thoughts.

Meditation, mindfulness or conscious breathing attacks this from the "thoughts" side. "Positive thinking" philosophy also tries to resolve this vicious cycle by replacing negative thoughts with positive one. This works well for very moderate cases of negativity, like temporary irritation or non-life threatening negative events.

The problem comes when people with stronger, deeper, longer living pains (such as strong anxiety, or depression) tries to resolve it this way. Stopping thoughts no longer works because thoughts in that case are just a consequences of deep emotional pain within the body.

The only solution in these case is to locate and resolve the pain directly within the body.

In other words - you cannot think or meditate your way out of depression. You have to approach it from the body feelings/body emotion side directly, bypassing any thinking.