[Guest post by SMART Facilitator Kelly Scullin]
Addiction, like Foucault's Pendulum, swings with a kind of frustrating reliability. Back and forth. Back and forth.
It’s the behavior that shows up on cue. The urge that arrives when things get messy. The pattern that—annoyingly—still knows your address.
Isaac Newton's first law of motion states that an object in motion will stay in motion with the same velocity unless acted upon by an external force. That’s inertia. Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion.
That’s also addiction. Left alone, it keeps swinging. Predictably. Unapologetically. And no matter how much we wish it would just... stop already, inertia doesn’t respond to wishes.
But here’s the part that matters: We are the external force. The pause. The awareness. The one small decision to sit with the urge instead of act on it. The recovery meeting. The journal entry. The walk around the block. Those aren’t just coping tools. They are interruptions of inertia. Little disruptions that slowly, steadily change the course.
You may not feel like the Earth most days, but you kind of are. Because while the pendulum—or your addiction in this metaphor—keeps swinging, you are the one—the Earth—turning beneath it.
And when your view changes, even slightly, the swing hits different. What once felt automatic now meets resistance. What once felt inevitable now gets questioned. And, yeah, sometimes the swing still lands. But you’re not in the same place anymore.
The law of inertia still holds.
But so does this truth: Change doesn’t have to be dramatic to be real. It just has to start.
SMART Recovery is a science- and evidence-informed program that provides educational and peer support to those who want to abstain and gain independence from all addictive behaviors, whether or not they involve alcohol or drugs. The program emphasizes building motivation and self-empowerment skills, employing strategies to control urges, managing thoughts at the root of addictive behaviors and living a healthy, balanced life. Go to the “Meetings” tab at www.smartrecovery.org to find an in-person or online meeting to attend.
