Successful life and harmful addictions – Part II

Just like virus harms the computer, harmful addiction does the harm to our mind…

I often, when I want to motivate my patients to give up addictions, I give this comparison, to show what harmful addictions do to our mind. The memory of a computer is just like a human mind which stores all the information, which we get throughout the life from sensory receptors (eyes, nose, ears, and skin).

All this information we save in two different forms: tolerated and not tolerated, for example, if a person touches a hot plate, thanks to sensory receptors in his skin, he feels a burning pain. This pain and fear form stays inside the brain and does not let a person make the same mistake again. This program, later on in life, will send the signal “be careful – it is hot”! And he will never touch a hot plate again. This kind of program is perfect because it saves us from burning ourselves when baking or cooking. There are other programs like usage of alcohol program, which will be ruining a person’s life even though it will be used “moderately”. I like to compare this program with a viral program, which will be ruining our brain work just like a viral program does the harm to a computer. Why?

When a viral program is inside the computer, it might be impossible to do anything (open a particular page) because a computer might be sick and slow down… If it finally opens that page, the view gets damaged. If a virus is worse – the page never opens, in worst case scenario – a screen shuts down. Let’s compare the usage of alcohol program and what does it do to human’s life. Of course, it will always depend on the harmfulness of the program: if a person has a program of severe alcohol usage, the harm will be worse. For example, this type of person cannot reach his goals because addiction (virus) damaged brain starts to form the wrong image, person’s, who has a more severe addiction, sight slows down and it can take some time to get the right image.

In even more severe cases a person can black out. The goal cannot be reached! How does it affect our life? A person, who drinks alcohol “moderately” (always, time to time…), damages his mind, brain and this type of people often have low self-esteem, are not motivated, do not want to learn new things, become more passive and live in fear.

These people most of the time work as civil servants. A lot of “moderate” drinkers have jobs that they do not like, therefore they do not improve their skills. A person, who does not learn new stuff, will never be happy about his success because he will never have it… I am certain that only those people, who use alcohol, nicotine, anger, lying, revenge, envy and other programs, are not satisfied with their life…