Psychological Addiction - Alternate reality.

The mind is so powerful; it will experience what it thinks even though what it thinks is not always true.

When you use mood-distorting chemicals, you body stimulates a physiological response in the pleasure center of your brain as well as in the neurological communication system your body. The numbness and tingling you experience is a distortion of your sensual/body response.

The mind, confused about its own identity, will not be at peace. Rather, it will be in a vulnerable state of feeling deprived. It will be tempted to associate this body response as an experience of contentment in order to fill its anxious void of lack of contentment. In fact, it will be tempted to use any kind of body stimulation as an attempt to numb its anxiety. Here is where association is psychologically reinforced for the repeating of this experience. Escape is found and your drug use has now become its means.

Because pleasure is fleeting, the feeling of deprivation will return. This feeling becomes a strong motivation to repeat the false association of bodily pleasure in an attempt to find psychological contentment. The state is set for you to make psychological adjustments around the rush. This is the seed of what is called an addictive personality.

Every addictive personality, no matter what form it seems to take, involves the focus of a strong orientation towards bodily pleasure.

The adjustment towards experiencing the temporary nature of your drug is the motivator to repeat the experience in search for contentment. This lifestyle adjustment is a reinforcing orientation that limits you to seek fulfillment though normal life experiences.

Relapse involves one who has psychologically adjusted to the weakened state of only experiencing the fleeting pleasure and pain of the body. They exhibit minimal impulse control and are therefore easily distracted. With nothing else taking place in their life, desire for the numbness of pleasure and pain will overwhelm them. The same senses initially used to experience the body's fleeting pleasure of contentment now becomes one's attempt to distort all awareness of the body's senses into obliteration. If untreated, this despair can lead to institutionalization, jail,or even death.

No matter how self-destructive this scenario may appear, in unawareness it is still one's attempt to heal oneself.