But this was not just me, my friends helped me a lot.
The problem is that our neurons are wired to lead us to behave in a certain way. People with addictions and serious dysfunction are often trapped by their own programming and can't just "reason their way out of it". Friends serve as a "leap of faith" mechanism that help you to change the way you think.
If you think you'll reason yourself into making different decisions than your current programming, you'll often be stuck making the same decisions as always. For the really big changes, you need to unplug your current decision-making software long enough to do things you wouldn't normally do.
This is why 12-step programs always have some element of god/spirituality. When people open themselves up to "a higher power", they allow a sort of human meta-programming to rewrite their connections. This leap of faith reason is also why group therapy works so well. You can suspend your normal programming if the steps to get you to where the person next to you in the circle is are small ones.
The problem is that our neurons are wired to lead us to behave in a certain way. People with addictions and serious dysfunction are often trapped by their own programming and can't just "reason their way out of it". Friends serve as a "leap of faith" mechanism that help you to change the way you think.
If you think you'll reason yourself into making different decisions than your current programming, you'll often be stuck making the same decisions as always. For the really big changes, you need to unplug your current decision-making software long enough to do things you wouldn't normally do.
This is why 12-step programs always have some element of god/spirituality. When people open themselves up to "a higher power", they allow a sort of human meta-programming to rewrite their connections. This leap of faith reason is also why group therapy works so well. You can suspend your normal programming if the steps to get you to where the person next to you in the circle is are small ones.