Strengthening the Will

"You do not have to look far to disprove the myth that all dope smokers are lazy. I have met many heavy dope smokers who are also highly driven to succeed. I was probably one of them myself, but in my case I also had a subconscious impulse to self-sabotage, which kept my aspirations pretty much in check. Ironically, I understood only too well at the time that my desire for success was driven to a large extent by fear of failure.

Plenty of people addicted to all sorts of things do manage to pull off the success trick, but often when they try and change their addictive behaviour, because it is destructive in other areas of life, they have difficulty maintaining the success momentum they have built up.

When we think about defeating addiction, or indeed becoming successful, many of us believe we need to use willpower to get us to the point where we can look back and feel a measure of safety. There is a problem with this, however. Willpower, like drive, is all about using fear of failure to win our battles. Unfortunately, however driven we are, however much willpower we muster, it’s possible to drive ourselves so hard that we seem to reach a point where we end up snapping because we’ve worked so hard. Surely we deserve a break?

Rather than coming from a place of fear, personal will can be summoned and strengthened by tapping into our own positive sense of self-worth. As a human being like any other, I can assure you I am in no position to lecture others about personal will; but over a period of time I have begun to understand that will, like so many other aspects of recovery, works best when it is built up slowly and nurtured with self-acknowledgement."