I wanted to comment on the idea of withdrawal, that horrible state, right after a break up where you feel like you’ve been ripped to shreds and beaten to a pulp. You can’t stop crying, you can’t focus, you can’t get up and go to work, you can’t eat, or maybe you’re eating everything in sight! WHatever the case, withdrawal is not pretty.

With anything  (food, alcohol, coffee, nicotine, drugs, love, sugar) our bodies react to things in a chemical way. When we repeatedly put a chemical like caffeine into our bodies and then suddenly remove it, Ouch! we withdrawal (obviously on a much smaller scale) and tend to incur the typical no-caffeine pounding headache. But, coffee aside,  the human body takes time to readapt to any new chemical state we put it in, and it especially takes time if it happened abruptly, as opposed to slowly, over time. Going “cold turkey” ain’t for the faint-hearted.

In love addiction recovery this is important to know. Too often going through withdrawal seems like a never-ending state of mystery, and so, what does the love addict do? He or she goes right back to the PoA to put out the flame and feel an immediate sense of calm. Of course, that sense of calm, brought on by “going back” to your drug of choice, is an illusion.

Instead, we need to know that withdrawal is temporary and we need to have patience with the “process” our bodies and minds need to go through. Love and the high we get from a PoA is also a chemical reaction and when it’s removed, our physical body and mental state need time to readapt to the withdrawal as well.

I know it’s hard, but this is the time to have patience with yourself. This is the time to wait. It’s incredibly hard for LAs to wait because we want immediate gratification. Like a child, we want what we want and we want it NOW. But adults understand the need to wait. They understand that deferred gratification brings joy. That blowing the pay check week to week gets us no where, but saving our money, offers security for those times of economic uncertainty.

Remember too that withdrawal is the first step in the process of HEALING. And that after it, comes a much more realistic, well-earned sense of calm and an ability to think more clearly.

So, wait. Hang on. Do whatever it takes to get through this. There’s a list of “Tips” here on this website that can help you.  More than anything, be patient with yourself. Don’t allow the “trick” of withdrawal to lead you to believe you will always feel this miserable. You will NOT. The body heals itself, but needs the time to do so….