A General Model for Overcoming Addiction
Please stop licking my birch, you dadgum teenagers.
So, I hear you want to stop licking trees?
Understandable. Y’know, there’s a lot of people who are in the exact same situation as you. Sick and tired of pulling splinters out of their tongue. Worrying night and day about another sap overdose. It’s time for a change.
Now, I’m guessing you’ve tried this before? You haven’t! Well, get out of here! How do you even know you’re addicted? Let me tell you something, licking trees is not an addiction if you can stop doing it whenever you please. Addiction is an insidious, clever creature. It thrives on making you do things that you don’t want to do. Things that you don’t want to do, that you desperately want to do. Real tree-lickers hate licking trees, and no matter how hard they try, they can’t stop.
That ought to clue you in to the real enemy here, tree-licker. It’s you. And that means that you’ve got to fight this particular problem in a way that’s completely different from any other that you’ve encountered. You’ve got to outsmart yourself.
Compulsion is the name of the game. People like tree licking. But they don’t just like it in the way that you like a color, or an animal. They like tree licking in a way that makes them lick trees. Compelling that behavior is a key part of addiction.
You ever tried working out? You should, you should. It’s a simple process. Use your muscles more, and your body starts to reshape itself. It says ‘Hey, this guy needs more muscle power’, and starts to beef you up. Same deal with tree licking. You spend a few minutes mackin’ on that tree, and it blows your mind. Your body says to itself ‘Hey, this guy needs to lick more trees’, and beefs up the tree licking part of your brain. After a few months, you’re spending an hour, two hours a day slobbering on the bark. Your brain got ripped.
That right there is why you aren’t gonna stop tree licking overnight. If you take one day off, you’ve still got these big rippling brain muscles to deal with. Your body starts to get antsy, wondering about when you’ll start licking again. You took one day off, and that filled you with a whole bunch of fresh energy. Fresh energy that your brain really wants to lick trees with.
Alright, so that brings us to step number one: Quittin’ Cold Turkey. Now like I just said, this doesn’t usually work. But it does the trick for a lucky few people, and it’s a good starting spot for the unlucky ones. What can I say, dramatic lifestyle shifts are pretty tough for most folk. The nice thing about quittin’ cold turkey is that it shakes you up. Brings things into focus, yeah? You’re just starting out, so your main goal right now is learning all the tricks that pull you back in. That rush of energy, those stray thoughts about how great licking is, the sudden gaps in your schedule? That’s all part of the process, stuff that you’re gonna have to deal with. The best way to understand what you’re getting into is to live it. So that’s what you do. Try to quit, hope it sticks, and if it doesn’t, then take what you learned, and use it going forward.
If you’ve been hooked on tree licking long enough, there’s another topic I need to bring up. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed that you don’t just lick when you get the craving. Sometimes, you’re good for the day. Had your fill, you could head home without jitters or nothin’. But you’re still licking. You’re just sitting there, not even really enjoying yourself, licking that tree. Tree licking has become a habit.
Habits are the late game play of addiction. Old reliable. Usually, you’ll get hooked on the pleasure, the cravings, but those aren’t really sustainable long term. The human body really doesn’t like extremes, you see. Sure, you can feel crazy good once in a blue moon, but if you try to get that same high every day then your body starts to tone down the pleasure. Is this giving you a good picture of things? You usually start out with lots of pleasure and low cravings, then that transitions into some pleasure and high cravings, then that eventually transitions into some pleasure, some cravings, and high habit. Habit is low intensity, so unlike the other two it’ll stick with you long-term, no decrease like the others.
That’s why it’s useful to quit cold turkey starting out, even if it doesn’t stick. If you break the chain quick, habit leaves you alone for a week, since it’s patient like that. Cold turkey means you’re spending a day or so learning how to resist the pleasure and the craving. But you’ve already got the notes from that. Now it’s time for step two: Quit Warm Turkey.
Reduction is what you’re looking for. If you take one less lick, then you had a good day. Most people like to set goals for themselves, get everything on a neat timeline, but I’m not big on that. Habit, craving, pleasure, it’s all real tough to hack through, so most people don’t give themselves enough time. Set themselves up for failure. Try to focus on the success, I say. Make a goal for yourself: ‘Once I manage to stay under a thousand licks a day, for two weeks straight, I’ll lower that to nine hundred. And also buy myself an ice cream cone or something.’ Something like that. If you can’t manage that goal, raise it to two thousand licks, promise yourself two ice cream cones, and try again. Lower your licks when you’re ready, but keep trying to lower ‘em. Remember, this is a long game. You only lose if you stop trying.
I usually start people off with a goal and a reward for achieving it, then give ‘em a month or so. It’s a nice low stakes way of kicking things off. But eventually, I always bring up the idea of a punishment system. It’s basic psychology. The best way to change your brain, is to give it something good when it does the right thing, and bad when it screws up. That said, punishments are tricky to set up. The biggest problem is that, ultimately, you are the only one enforcing the rules here. You are the one carrying out the punishment. Could you imagine if, when we gave a guy the death sentence, we expected him to prep his own electric chair, sit down, and throw the switch? He’d never do it! So when you’re thinking up a punishment, you have to find something that you personally believe is fair. A punishment that, when you screw up, you are willing to follow through on.
But it also has to work, as a punishment. Something that makes you think twice before taking the bus to your local park, but doesn’t make you think twice about dropping the hammer, when you inevitably screw up. Take a personality check on this one. I’m a cheapo, right, so I had a lot of success with a ten dollar charge for screwing up. Too small to really hurt me financially, but big enough to stop me, whenever the urge started comin’ on. Be creative with it. Maybe you can’t eat meat for 24 hours, maybe you pull the plug on the TV for the afternoon, maybe you have to tell a close friend that you screwed up. Figure out what works for you, then use it.
But anyway, what are you learning here? Different technique reveals different stuff. Binging, for example, becomes real obvious once you commit to a warm turkey run. You’ve got a solid week and a half of staying under your two thousand lick goal, then BAM! Five thousand licks, seven thousand licks, six thousand licks. For like a week straight, you just can’t stop. What’d I tell you? Cravings, pleasure, they don’t last long term, but they do a great job of grabbing you for a week, absolutely throwing you off the wagon. Warm turkey is all about recovering from that binge. Once you’ve been doing reduction for two, three months, a botched week isn’t so bad anymore. You screw up, you screw up bad, and then you get back to work. Because those cravings that owned you for a week? Eventually, they gotta let go.
Alright, that’s it for the lead up. Yeah, you heard right. Trying to quit for months is the start of things. There’re a few lucky folks who got out early, and good for them, but most of us are still sittin’ around, licking trees. Let’s start talking endgame.
So, you should have a decent feel for your addiction at this point. When you’re most vulnerable to relapse, what drives you to lick in the first place, and a handful of ways that you can push back against the urge. All of this info is gonna change what you need to do to quit.
Most folks pick up tree licking cause it feels good. If that pleasure is what’s keeping you hooked, I’ve got good and bad news for you. Good news is, if you stick it out long enough, you’re good to go. The human body’s a weird thing. As you get older, it stops caring about those short-term, feel-good pleasures, and starts to seek out low-intensity pleasure. Pleasure addiction grabs you when you’re young, but the older you get, the easier it becomes to just… stop. Bad news is that waiting sucks. ‘You’ll grow out of it’ feels like a crappy solution, and doesn’t do squat to help you in the here and now. Thought I’d share it with you anyway, though. Helped me a lot. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that.
Anyway, if pleasure is the problem, then there’s your solution, right? If you can make tree licking feel bad, then that’s the whole shebang. No pleasure means no cravings, no pleasure or cravings means no habit. Now, this is a tough one to swing, because you’re a smart cookie. If you spray down a tree with insecticide, lick it, and hate the taste, then there’s a decent chance your brain tells you to quit the bug spray, not the licking. What you want is an experience that is as close to the genuine article as possible, but one that doesn’t feel good.
Good news is, tree licking is actually pretty gross. Of course it’s gross, that’s why so many people want to stop doing it. So try a little exercise, next time you lick. Pay attention. Maybe you’re one of those folks that don’t like weird textures? Focus on the texture. Maybe you got a sensitive nose? Focus on the smell. I guarantee you there’s something gross about tree licking, that you just don’t pay attention to. That gross thing is how you fight back. Once you start thinking about how sticky your lips are gonna be after lickin’, once you gag at the thought of another sap overdose, you’re on your way to sobriety.
Alright, but maybe the pleasure solution ain’t doing it for you. You’ve got the hunger. Cravings addiction is super common, especially in this day and age. People get a little confused on this one, so let me spell it out: You’re addicted to doing something. You don’t lick trees because it feels nice, though that’s definitely a perk. You lick trees because you’re bored, and licking is what you want to do.
It’s a time sink. You’ve got three hours of the day where there’s nothing you want to do, so you lick. This one also usually disappears as you grow up, assuming you take on some responsibility. What can I say, working a full time job while raising three kids eats up the time. So there’s your solution right there. Get busy. Take all of that free time and energy you’ve got, and use it on something else. Maybe start exercising, maybe hang out with friends, maybe start working two jobs, maybe take up a hobby. If you’re licking at three in the afternoon, get a part time job working one to five. If you’re going out to lick at midnight, find some friends who like to party. Ones that give enough of a crap about you to stop you from wandering into the nearest orchard.
Back when I was hooked, a lotta folks would just tell me, ‘Get a Life’. Now, that was a real jerk way of saying it, but they had a point. If tree licking is the best thing you got, and you hate it, then do the best you can to find something better. Sometimes addiction is a simple case of too much free time, spent on the wrong stuff. So, don’t be afraid to tighten the belt a bit. Lose some free time, make it valuable. It’s weird, but the less free time you have, the more your brain pays attention to it. That’s what you want. Force yourself to make decisions about how you use your time, and you’ll be surprised how often you choose to do the stuff you genuinely enjoy.
Alright, trickiest for last, what if you aren’t hooked on the pleasure, and the cravings aren’t really pulling you in? Tree licking has burrowed deep in, and you’re trapped by the habit. But that’s not all I wanna talk about here. Endgame, right? I want to talk about long term strategies for dealing with an addiction. How to stay on the wagon for good.
So, I know this guy. He’s like, I don’t know, eighty or something? Yeah, he was one of the originals, got hooked way back when barkless was a hot new thing. Thing is, he’s still on it. Now, there’s no way this guy still has working taste buds. And I got it from him personally, the jitters don’t really bug him that much. (Way I figure it, he’s just used to being uncomfortable all the time, one extra thing don’t really make a difference.) But still, he gets up each morning, hobbles down to his front lawn, and gives the dogwood a couple of wake up kisses. And whenever you bring it up, he starts gettin’ all nostalgic. Like, tree licking was the best part of his life.
Talking to him… I don’t know, it bums me out. He’ll talk about how he first met his wife while he was licking, and it’s almost like… Like the tree licking was the good part, you know? Feels like it’s some kind of parasite, suckin’ on his life. Burrowing into every good memory he ever had, making him think that hey, maybe tree licking is pretty great after all. He only talks about the wasted time, the missed opportunities, once he’s fallen into one of those thinkin’ moods. Late at night, couple of friends, you know. Funny how we all seem to forget the crappy stuff first, once the memory starts fading.
But, anyway. Maybe it ain’t for me to judge. All that to say, addiction does its best to worm its way into your memories. Make you remember how much you liked tree licking, ‘cause it knows you’ll forget about all the crap. If you really want to drop the addiction, long term, you gotta do the impossible. You got to forget the bastard exists.
Here’s a little challenge for ya. Paying attention? Alright. Don’t think about a pink elephant. Hehe, yeah, didn’t work, did it? When someone says not to think about somethin’, suddenly it’s the only thing on the mind. That’s the struggle, whenever you’re trying to put down an addiction for good. People keep telling you to stop thinking about it, don’t lick trees, don’t lick trees, don’t lick trees. But for some reason, the only thing you can think about is licking trees.
Now, when you’re starting out, this can be pretty good. You’re aware of your addiction, and you’re focusing on ways to get rid of it. But once the cravings are all gone and you’re off the stuff proper, that mind-space is poison. It’s a tiny little time bomb, just waiting to go off the next time life throws some crap your way. Doing its best to remind you about all the ‘good stuff’ you gave up.
I don’t have a magic bullet for this one, sorry. I’m just trying to give you a warning, before you get tripped up. Some people, even after they kick the habit, keep thinking of themselves as tree licker recoverees. They keep on living their life in the shadow of their past addiction. They keep thinking about it, and wouldn’t you know, I see them relapse more than anybody else. Don’t live like that. Once you’re free, you’re free. There’s a little trick I learned, way back when, if you ever wanna avoid the pink elephant. I think up a blue hippo. Once you get free, start making some memories. Good ones. Ones you can look back on and smile at when you’re older. Memories that’ll get you through the tough times.
You’ve got a tough road ahead of you, kid. But keep your chin up. Take a look around you from time to time. If you pay real close attention, you’ll notice that all the people who really got their crap together, they haven’t licked a tree in years. There’s a reason for that. Living a good life. That’s the best cure for addiction. That’s what you’re fighting for. That’s what you’re heading towards. And by the time you get there, let me tell you. You’ll know how to live the best damn life on the planet.