1. Make a note of your main triggers.

We know there are some obvious situations that trigger off our addictive urges. For instance, you are an alcoholic and you just can’t walk home past The Pig and Whistle without dropping in for a drink. Solution; take another route home. You compulsively overeat; solution, clear out the fridge and get rid of those secret hordes of chocolate biscuits; you are bored and feeling lonely and so log on to a porn website for solace; solution, put on some music instead or read a book. One word of warning, the list will never be comprehensive enough. Someone with an addiction is susceptible to every situation becoming a possible trigger, because the real triggers are not the external situations, but the internal feelings provoked by that situation. So you may take the long way home past the pub only to find that in keeping yourself busy you go off to a football match and at half time end up having a pie and a pint or ten and that situation wasn’t on your list. Addiction feeds off any kind of feeling; it will soothe bad feelings and it will prolong good ones and therefore all situations can potentially set you off.