CRAVINGS
What do they mean and how they affect a person with addiction.
Recovery begins with eliminating cravings for drugs that may harm you. Cravings support Addiction.
Craving is defined as a deep memory of the rewarding or pleasant effect of drug use that is an overlay or superimposed or attached to a negative emotional state or feeling.
So we start with a smiley face, which stands for that rewarding or pleasant effect of drug use.
But in the background of that smiley face is the frowning face (negative emotional state) that is creeping into the picture, as the drug starts to wear off.
As the rewarding feeling continues to wear off, the frowning face (negative emotional state) gets bolder.
As more time separates you from taking the drug, the negative emotional state keeps getting stronger.
Finally, the negative emotional state (bold frowning face) takes over and places a dark cloud over your day.
This drives you, by any means necessary, to wanting to make that frown be replaced by that rewarding or pleasant feeling smiley face. That 'by any means necessary' approach robs you of control over the direction of your life. Because now, the craving is driving you.
An important goal of treatment is to make this craving go away. Otherwise, the craving will get real angry and make you quite desperate. It is even worse because you are fearing the return of withdrawal symptoms.
The negative emotional state has a deep connection in the brain to the fear of the pain of withdrawal.
This brain thing is not your fault. It has to do with your animal nature and how your brain has deep memory for things that it figures is good for you and things that bring you pain (like withdrawal). So it creates a drive in you to keep the drug coming to keep you feeling good and keep the drug coming to keep you from feeling bad.
This sort of thing happens with certain junk food; you just can't get enough; not because you need it; it is because it makes you feel good and keep you from feeling the pain of not having that junk food. You should also know that people overdose on junk food or too much food. They get way overweight and die a lot sooner due to the complications of being way overweight.
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