Overcoming Addiction Cycle Therapy: The Gravity Metaphor

Addiction issues are a common reason people seek help in my therapy practice. Often times people seek help for issues in their lives that, after some examination, turn out to be related to substance use or compulsive behaviors. In sessions, we explore the conflict and trauma in their lives caused by these patterns—a fundamental focus of overcoming addiction cycle therapy. Addiction in this sense can refer to the abuse of drugs, alcohol, sex, exercise, work, or any other activity or substance that can become compulsive and have harmful consequences. One of the many difficult aspects about dealing with addiction is the cycle of withdrawal, where the client is able to abstain for a period of time from these addictive behaviors but eventually falls back into them. This is quite common, and part of the process of change. I like to describe addiction as having its own force of gravity, just like a planet, and in this metaphor we are all pilots of our own individual spaceships passing by these planets on our journeys through life.

Understanding Addiction Traps: The Gravity Metaphor

Let’s imagine that each of the planets in our imaginary universe represent various sources of addiction. There are planets of alcohol, drugs, exercise, love, sex, work, everything one can become addicted to and engage in compulsively to their own detriment. Many people are able to fly right past these planets without stopping. Some people are able to land and visit, check out the place, and then blast off into space again. However, some of us land on these planets and can’t escape. Something about the gravity of these particular planets combined with our own unique emotional history results in us getting stuck on a planet we can’t get off of.

Life on this planet might not seem so bad at first. Sometimes we feel like we’ve discovered a great new planet that we want to stay on forever. We like what we’ve found here and how it makes us feel. Over time our addictions grow stronger, and the gravity of the planet grows as well, making it much harder to leave than it was when we first arrived. We might try to leave, but feel the pull of the planet’s gravity stronger than we thought it would be, and decide it’s easier to stay. But we’re not happy living on this planet, and deep down wish that we could leave.

Escaping the Pull: Blasting Off into Recovery

With work and support, and a dedication to changing our lives, we are capable of building up the strength necessary to blast off from this planet of addiction—much like the intentional focus required when zooming out to observe emotional patterns. It almost always takes multiple tries and various levels of what we perceive as failure, but this is the process of change. Eventually we can escape this planet’s gravity and get back into space, back into the journey of life. We thought this planet was the place to be, that we would never leave, yet here we are, living away from the planet and enjoying it. We’re glad to be putting it in our rear view mirror (our spaceships have rear view mirrors).

So we’re cruising along through space again, proud of ourselves for not acting on the addictive thoughts that had ruled our lives for so long. Then we see another planet up ahead. It’s identical to the planet we just escaped from. It has the same gravitational pull on us, and as we get closer to the planet the pull gets stronger. Part of us knows we don’t want to land there, we don’t want to revisit the planet, but a bigger part of us remembers what it was like before, the satisfaction of the addiction, the fulfillment of our craving, and we just want to stop by real quick and say hi. As we debate our options the reality is the choice has already been made, as the gravity of addiction is reaching right into the center of our being and grabbing hold, pulling us back down to the surface of the planet.

Navigating Relapse and Navigating the Return Flight

And so we zoom back down to the planet of addiction and re-engage in the activities we used to do there. We might feel like we can leave whenever we want this time, that since we’ve experienced the gravity before we can handle it differently this time. And some people can. But most people can’t. We stay, engage, regret, and try to blast off again, only to get pulled back to the ground. Sometimes we break free and cruise along through space again, thinking the gravity of addiction is in the past, but then we pass another planet with a similar gravitational pull, and find ourselves drawn to land there, and the process repeats all over again. Other people might have found an adjustment to make on their spaceship that makes them impervious to the gravity of these planets. Some of us are motivated to continue our space journey with pit stops on planets of addiction along the way. Some of us become so consumed that we crash land on these planets and feel stranded there, never to escape.

With more hard work and dedication we can eventually blast back off again. It takes time and effort to build up the force to break free. It’s very hard work. We realize now, though, that the hard work doesn’t end when we get back into space. The hard work is avoiding these planets in the future. Understanding how compulsive behaviors and addiction impact brain pathways can help us build better navigational shields. We eventually come to understand that there are some planets we just can’t visit, no matter how much we try to create scenarios where we can. Our friends might be able to come and go as they please from these places, but we know we’re not capable of that. This is the time to remind ourselves that we enjoy the journey through space more than living on that planet. We’re happier this way, and better equipped to fight the power of gravity now that we have experienced it before. We know where that feeling of gravity pulling us towards our addiction will lead, and in that moment we must hold firm, commit to overcoming addiction cycle therapyprinciples, and stay the course on our journey.