Once an Addict, Always an Addict?
At least twice, I had doctors describe me as having an &quot;addictive personality&quot;, and saying things like &quot;that&#x27;s just how you&#x27;re wired&quot;. I never went back to those doctors, as I refused to accept that&#x27;s what I was stuck with being.<p>I&#x27;d been an excessive drinker from my late teens through to my early 30s. &quot;Alcoholic&quot;, I&#x27;m not sure about; I&#x27;ve seen others who were formally diagnosed alcoholic, including one friend who ultimately died of it, and I wasn&#x27;t that bad, but I was at least very socially dependent. I also smoked tobacco heavily and dabbled in some substances - not the most addictive ones, but it could have gone down that path if I hadn&#x27;t seen the warning signs.<p>At 33 I stopped drinking and smoking completely (I&#x27;d quit smoking a few years earlier but had started again that year). For two whole years I didn&#x27;t have a drop or puff, and focused on eating a very healthy diet, cleaning up my body and getting my career and relationships in better shape.<p>Along the way I found some deep emotional healing techniques. I started doing them regularly, and have continued doing them consistently for nearly 10 years since.<p>These days I can drink regularly for pleasure, and I never have a problem with it. I barely ever get drunk unless it&#x27;s a major celebration, but if I do, I bounce back fine and have no temptation to do it again any time soon. And I&#x27;m never remotely tempted to smoke or use other substances when drinking, even when around others who are.<p>One of those doctors expressed shock that I&#x27;d gone to all the trouble of quitting my old ways, only to start drinking again. He couldn&#x27;t believe that it would be possible to go from the way I was to having a healthy relationship with alcohol.<p>The most significant factor that&#x27;s made the difference has been the emotional healing work I&#x27;ve been doing. It&#x27;s a practice that methodically finds and enables releasing all traumas, complexes and sabotaging beliefs&#x2F;patterns from the earliest times in life.<p>So maybe it&#x27;s valid to say one can have an &quot;addictive personality&quot; and that I was one of those people. But we assume that &quot;addictive personality&quot; equals &quot;hard wired&quot;, without realising that personality is very alterable if you work at it consistently over a long enough period of time, with a focus on the deep subconscious&#x2F;unconscious aspects of personality.<p>I think organisations like AA do great harm when they tell their patients that you&#x27;re an &quot;addict for life&quot;. It&#x27;s such a disempowering belief to have about one&#x27;s self, and it&#x27;s little surprise that people relapse when they&#x27;re given no hope of ever being completely free of their addiction and able to live like other healthy people.<p>These days, I have a young child, a great relationship with my partner, family members and friends, my career is going fine, and my physiological health continues to improve. The doctor I see these days, on the infrequent occasions I need to see him, says &quot;whatever you&#x27;re doing, keep doing it&quot;.