Understanding Addiction

I have been thinking a lot about craving lately. What is craving, really? What’s it all about? Craving seems to amount to a fundamental sense of being incomplete. When we crave, we want something to fill us up. We want to fill a hole, by taking something out there in the world and putting it […] (Read the rest.)

Okay, where were we? Ego fatigue. The empty-tank syndrome, losing your resolve when you’ve been trying too hard or for too long or both. The comment thread has been really valuable: Many of you know exactly what this feels like. And we seem to recognize that this phenomenon is critical when it comes to relapse. […] (Read the rest.)

There were a lot of comments on my last post. Any of us who have been there know about the pivot point, and some readers felt that this was a critical moment, a key to the whole cycle of addiction and readdiction. I gave it a name, ego fatigue, from the psychological literature. And I promised another […] (Read the rest.)

There is something terribly interesting about the moment of giving in. That moment when the teeter-totter crosses that invisible threshold, when the momentum shifts, when you know you’re going to do it, despite the hours of telling yourself you won’t. It’s a very distinct feeling, says a recent reader. It’s a lot different from thinking […] (Read the rest.)

Hello readers! Happy New Year and all that. I took a couple of weeks off for the holidays and went to visit family and friends back in Toronto. It was a time of heart-warming reconnection with people I’ve known for much of my life. But it was also a time of emotional pain: loss, disappointment, […] (Read the rest.)