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tweet by Johann Hari: The core of addiction is not wanting to be present in life, because pour life is too painful a place to be. This is why imposing more pain or punishment on a person with an addiction problem actually makes their addiction worse.
IMO the chemical addiction just acts as a mechanism to enact the escapism. Like with a cigarette I could shake my brain like an etch a sketch, switching to a new mental scene, by blasting it with dopamine.
Also, when I was out of cigarettes I had a mission: get cigarettes.
That chemical dependency thing just adds a new magnet to the mental filings so they align less along the lines of feeling bad about my life.
A drug habit is like a video game for your emotions. You assign yourself this arbitrary quest, and a whole set of missions and adventures come out of it, and it kills the time.