You Can’t Get Enough of What You Don’t Want

Ever have a craving for something to eat, but you just can’t put your finger on it? This is close, and that’s almost like it, but it’s still not right? What do you do? Most people will eat a little of this and a little of that for as long as it takes for them to find what they want, or eat a whole lot if they never do.

It’s the same way for other things – sex, relationships, drugs. Just like bad habits can give you something you need, you can search for this vague something in all the wrong places and never get it, just get distracted.

One of the definitions of insanity (okay, not an official definition) is doing the same thing and expecting different results. You go to a bar, meet a guy, have a few drinks, head back to his place, have sex all night, and in the morning go home never to hear from him again. Okay, that guy wasn’t Prince Charming, but Prince Charming must be out there somewhere, right? So, next weekend, you go to a bar, meet a guy, have a few drinks, head back to his place, have sex all night, and then get surprised when in the morning you go home to never hear from him again. And people will do this not just a few times and then wise up. They’ll repeat this for years.

Drugs work the same way. “Getting drunk yesterday didn’t help my problems, but maybe it’ll work today.” “It’s not that getting high didn’t do me any good. I just wasn’t high for long enough.” Yes, there’s a physical component to the addiction, but that’s getting to be really well known, and there are places you can go for help. But people won’t get help until it’s horribly too late or just plain horrible because they think that they just didn’t quite get it right. No, what you didn’t get right is thinking that doing the same thing would get different results.

So what do you do? Something different. But how? You’re too good looking and too young to be hanging around the church picnics to find a “decent guy” which is just *way* too boring for you. Also, your life is just too hard to face without a little pick me up, a drink, a cigarette, a snort. You can’t go cold turkey.

That’s the trouble with a lot of people who are stuck searching for a beach when they’re in the mountains. They just can’t get it through their minds that there’s something else. It’s one extreme or another. Bar slut or convent. Horrific life or drug-induced haze. Abusive husband or lonely spinster. 60 pounds overweight or eating nothing but tofu again. It’s one or the other. There’s no middle ground. Nothing else exists.

Those extremes don’t work, is the problem. And you keep looking for what you want in places that just don’t have it. If you have a craving for potato chips, all the ice cream in the world isn’t going to help you. If you want a long-lasting, meaningful relationship, all the one-night stands in the world aren’t going to help you. If you want a life that’s worth living, drugs are not going to help you.

If life isn’t working for you, figure out what you want and go for that in some new and different way, because what you’re doing right now isn’t working.