When the pleasure starts betraying you – how do you stop?
You can only get so much pleasure from pleasure
before it starts hurting you.
- You can only eat so much sugar before it makes you sick
- You can only drink so much wine before it gives you a headache.
- You can only buy so much stuff before it’s simply pointless.
You may wonder what happened… it used to taste better, it used to give you much more pleasure. Now it seems you are drinking that wine, or eating that chocolate out of obligation. Obligation? To what? To your body… I will explain in a moment.
The first tendency to fix this “problem” by adding more excitement. Making the sweets sweeter, the drinks more fancy, the shopping more extravagant. But after a while you feel numb again…
Did you know it’s possible to return to the place, when just one sip of that wine or one bite of that food will give you again an explosion of taste? Once again it will be special. I know from experience it is possible.
Now, there are two types of people. Some would rather quit completely, because just one drink or piece of cake will create these desires that are so hard to resist. So it’s easier to quit completely and have peace.
Maybe you are not ready to completely let go of wine, or stop sugar, but you would like to cut back.
The real solution is counterintuitive.
The body adjusted chemically, biologically to this substance. It up-regulated its receptors to it, that’s why the body demands it putting in your mind a thought that you would like a drink or a cake. This is why it feels like an obligation. We can help the body not crave it, down regulating those receptors. When that happens you feel more pleasure again.
How do we do this?
We cut back. We manage our sensations and emotions. To go thru it with less pain – we manage the mind. We expect there will be drama and we get ready to handle it. We clean up the two contradicting desires “I want it but really I don’t”
Mind over body!
Some people quit cold turkey, others struggle more.
If’s that is you – I can help.
The second tendency is to…
Replace one false pleasure with another. (“False” meaning – it will betray you. )
Stop smoking, start eating.
Stop drinking, start shopping.
Stop junk food, start… overeating healthy food.
That can only go so far, before you see negative consequences of different kinds. You will only get so much pleasure from the new pleasure. There is nothing wrong with replacing one with the other, if you know it is a step.
However the complete freedom will come from a different strategy.
What if you didn’t even have the desire to have it, drink it, eat it??? To end the desire is a mental, habitual, biological change.
It it possible, doable, it happens all the time:
- We make the decision. We feel willing to do this. (we make our conscious mind the boss).
- We change our habits hence overtime we change our biology as it relates to the substance.
- We reduce the desire.
- We become free to find wellbeing pleasures that don’t have the power to trap us.