The Battle Within – How Fear Keeps People Stuck on Opiates

When a person starts taking opiates, it’s because they are deriving benefits from doing so. Whether it’s for pain relief, to self-medicate mental issues, or simply to get “high,” everyone that continues using opiates after the first time does so because it makes their life easier in one or more ways.

It is for this reason that opioid dependence can be a “resource” for awhile.

It was for me.

I used opiates for social anxiety, depression, to numb emotional pain, and because they helped me to write better songs for the reggae/rock band I used to play guitar in (called The Fifth Wave), so opiate drugs were a resource that added tremendous value to my quality of life.

However, once the opiate dependence starts making your life harder than if you were not taking opiates, addiction becomes an “exhausted resource.”

This also happened to me.

I was spending all of my money on opiates, I was lying, and towards the end of my addiction, I even began stealing money from my parents.

Why did I continue using opiates long after opiate addiction had become an exhausted resource?

One…simple…word…

How Fear Holds You Back

The main reason most people on opiates are resistant to getting off the drugs is because they are consumed with crippling fear.

Here are some of the main fears people have regarding coming off opiates:

 

Some people continue taking opiates daily for years after drug use starts causing significant problems in life (I did this).

Fear causes us to resist making changes in our lives. Fear holds us back from reaching our true potential.

How To Overcome Fear

Upon doing research on overcoming fears, I found a perfect article. And since there is no way I can do as good of a job writing on this subject as the author did, I’m going to reprint it here and link to the article.

It’s an awesome blog and I encourage you to check it out!

Turning Fear into Anticipation and Excitement

“Think about a roller coaster ride. Part of what moves people to get on a roller coaster is the fear, except they don’t call it fear, do they?  No, they call it excitement.

What makes it possible to embrace a fearful situation and see it as exciting and exhilarating? In the case of a roller coaster, you see others doing it and having fun. No one flew out of their seat, and all the cars stayed on the track. So your mind becomes convinced that you won’t die.

Logic versus emotion

This is where the negotiation process begins between your mind (logic) and your emotions (fear). Your mind says, “You can do this and it will be fun.” How these internal negotiations turn out will have a lot to do with your level of fear and the reasons behind that fear. These are your paradigms.

Suppose that as a child, you saw someone fall to their death from a roller coaster. Obviously, in that case, your fear is deeply ingrained and your mind will probably never be able to move past it, period. In fact, your mind will likely support your emotions and your inner dialogue will be short and unchangeable. “I’m not getting on that thing no matter what.”

There is nothing wrong with that kind of reaction. It is a natural, survival response that serves to protect you from danger. That is why sane people don’t try to jump off of tall buildings in hopes of flying. So fear can be a healthy, logical response to a dangerous situation, and that’s a good thing.

Turning fear into excitement

Now, let’s go back to the internal negotiations about the roller coaster ride. For someone with no fearful roller coaster references, what’s the likely outcome? Their mind will be able to reframe the fearful energy into anticipation of an exciting experience.

In this situation, the person whose mind is energized by a manageable amount of fear will be able to create a positive internal response called anticipation, which opens the door to a positive and exciting experience.

Because the human mind is capable of processing billions of bits of information per second, all of this can take place in a moment. So, most of the time, we just respond on autopilot without considering what’s involved.

Nothing happens unless we take action

This is where things get interesting. Let’s say we made a decision to get on that roller coaster and have some fun. So far, everything that has happened has been internal. We haven’t really done anything yet, except make a choice. The anticipation we feel after making that choice must be turned into action before we can experience any results.

Now we come to the defining moment. The special moment in time when we commit to following through by taking action on the decision we’ve made.

With reference to our roller coaster ride, it becomes a commitment at the exact moment when we climb aboard, place the safety bar across our lap and the cars start to move. Now our anticipation grows into excitement. Now our whole being becomes focused on this “experience” because we have made a commitment and we can’t go back.

How to harness the power of decisiveness

For an Olympic track athlete, the decisive moment comes when he brings to the starting line the sum total of all his training and focus, assumes the starting posture, the gun fires and he rockets into action.

At that moment his energy levels explode, his focus is unshakable and his commitment is absolute. You can use this same concept to propel you into truly focused action.

Making the shift from preparation to action

The decisive moment occurs when planning and preparation are transformed into action driven by a total commitment to success. The surest way to accomplish incredible things in your life is to bring that same level of commitment and focus to the starting line before you launch into action.

Setting a goal, establishing a plan of action and fixing on a specific time to start, are all vital to success, but they actually make up the training and preparation phase. These are the steps that prepare you for the action phase.

All systems go!

Yes, each step required you to make choices and then act on those choices. Each step also moved you closer to your goal. But everything changes at the decisive moment. From that point on it is a new and completely different experience. It’s game time.

This is the moment when you blow the doors off your limitations and you call up resources you didn’t even realize you had. At this point, any residual fear becomes excitement, doubt vanishes and your commitment gives you the focus needed to blast through anything that tries to get in your way. Now it’s a rush, a living roller coaster ride and you are the one having fun.”

YouTube Video on Overcoming Fear

I hope you liked that article on turning fear into anticipation and excitement. Along with that, I also highly recommend watching this 21-minute video of Tony Robbins being interviewed on how to overcome fears.

Tony Robbins is one of the personal development teachers I studied from when I first got clean off opiates.

Face Your Fears: