Is enviroment more important than willpower to overcome an addiction?

[Never_give_up]

it seems no amount of willpower will win an addicted brain.

[Joshe]

Yes, but environment still isn’t sufficient. Distraction and submersion into something else is far superior. Willpower is fleeting and it’s not always available. All it takes is one very unstable day and willpower is nowhere to be found. 

When the system is stressed, that’s when it wants the addiction the most. So I think the best way out of addiction is energy management, good sleep, get enough vitamin d and magnesium, set environment up to make access to the addiction difficult to reach, and either dive into something deep and/or distract yourself with something for long enough that the addiction loses its power. 

A hobby or even TV shows can distract. You’ve gotta go through the initial acclimation phase - where the addiction is strongest - then you enter into maintenance where it is a background hum but not as strong. If you make it through acclimation, backsliding usually occurs when energy is chaotic, so energy management becomes crucial. In the interim, be reinforcing ideas that the addiction is not what you want and that it’s harmful.

It’s always a messy process and most attempts fail at first but as long as you keep at it, you’ll overcome. 

[Mayonnaise]

breaking addictions require starving the mind of that thing. It will fight you until it doesn't. Until your brain changes and then you stop thinking about it. The more you entertain the thought about the thing/the feeling of it, the more prone you are to doing it. Some addictions become physical dependencies, but within all of that is still the mind guiding you to do it. If you can go 30 days without it, you're out of the hole but still susceptible to falling back in. Once you've been addicted to something, you are always susceptible to being addicted to it again and again and again. You're always one choice away from falling back in. So really, you have to train yourself to find contentment without it. Once you go 30 days, your mind starts to loosen its grip on the thing, but there will be times when it will still try to pull you in. But if you let the feeling pass without acting on it, then you gain control. Gotta find something else as an alternative to fill up your thoughts. There's 3 types of pain with addictions. 1 is staying addicted and that thing brings you pain by controlling some aspect of your mind,  the other is the pain of regret of who you could have chosen to be without it. the3rd pain is breaking the actual addiction until your identity rewires itself. Addiction itself is avoidance of pain or discomfort used as an escape or a form of regulation/cope. So ask yourself, what am i missing in my life that i'm using this thing for to cope? Once you know what that is, then you go through the other pain to get it solved.

Edited 11 hours ago by Mayonnaise

[SimpleGuy]

Bro, tell me what addiction you have. Don`t be shy. Open up