loving

Alcoholics often say that they have a certain amount of freedom over whether to have their first drink on a given day. But once the first drink has been drunk, all bets are off. This dynamic I think carries over to micro-addictions like doomscrolling/binge-eating/porn etc. Each morning when you wake, there is a window of opportunity to enact the freedom not to restart the cycle of compulsion. But as soon as you start diving into your <insert compulsive behaviour>, all bets are off - it’s easy to get sucked into the compulsive loop indefinitely. It’s why it’s so important to treat that first engagement in the day with a compulsive behaviour with a lot of care. In the case of phones, it’s why it’s especially important to make sure grabbing your phone / scrolling isn’t your first act of the day. This moment of first engagement with the world is a sacred opportunity to set the tone of the day. And the moment of first temptation by a compulsive behaviour is a sacred opportunity to reset your relationship with that behaviour. Often, finding a sacred ritual to start the day with can be a way of replacing the ritual of our compulsive habits. Sometime I even think that many modern micro-addictions are caused by the lack of sacred rituals we have embedded into modern life. In the absence of conscious rituals, we engage in unconscious rituals. And all the power of our inherent drive towards the sacred gets channeled into compulsive behaviour.