Character Motivation Thesaurus Entry: Overcoming Addiction

Human Need Driving the Goal (Inner Motivation): esteem and recognition

How the Character May Prepare for This Goal: 

• Taking a serious look at one’s addiction (tracking usage and financial expenditures, journaling about one’s feelings, examining the negative effects in various areas of one’s life, etc.)
• Purging one’s home of the substances or items that make using easy or more tempting
• Setting goals and coming up with a game plan
• Exploring treatment options
• Seeking therapy
• Speaking to loved ones about one’s desire to kick the habit as a means of garnering support
• Attending twelve-step meetings
• Cutting ties with negative influencers
• Seeking out new friends and contacts who are dedicated to sobriety
• Identifying and avoiding triggers that will make it difficult for one to be successful
• Reducing stressors in one’s life
• Engaging in activities or hobbies that will keep one busy
• Throwing oneself into work
• Becoming more spiritual; clinging to one’s faith as a means of getting through the process
• Adopting healthy mental practices, such as focusing on the positive, keeping a gratitude journal, or giving oneself plenty of time to find success
• Finding others who have been successful and talking to them

Possible Sacrifices or Costs Associated With This Goal: 

• Experiencing grief over the loss of the activity or substance one has always enjoyed
• Losing long-term friends or loved ones
• Strained relationships with family members who doubt one’s ability to change (particularly if one has failed repeatedly in the past)
• The stigma that occurs when other people become aware of one’s addiction
• Losing one’s job due to attending an in-house, long-term treatment program
• Having to give up one’s job or change careers in order to overcome one’s addiction
• Financial difficulties due to the cost of treatment

Roadblocks Which Could Prevent This Goal from Being Achieved: 

• Stressors and triggers that make success difficult
• Pressure from other addicts who don’t want one to change
• Past wounds and negative emotions that become more pronounced once one stops medicating
• Having no support system; having to go it alone
• One’s addiction of choice being inadvertently replaced with another one
• Lacking the necessary financial resources
• Being surrounded by other addicts and being unable to get away from them
• Not being able to get the time off work needed for therapy or proper treatment
• Unrealistic expectations from others or from oneself
• Not looking realistically at one’s addiction
• Defeatist thinking patterns
• Negative events (a death in the family, losing one’s job, being involved in a serious car accident, etc.) that occur when one is trying to stop, making it even more difficult
• Having to stop treatment early (to care for a loved one, attend a funeral, travel for work, etc.)

Talents & Skills That Will Help the Character Achieve This Goal: Empathy, Multitasking, Reading People, Talents that help one focus on something other than the addiction (Baking, Musicality, Sculpting, etc.)

Possible Fallout For the Protagonist if This Goal Is Not Met:

• Broken relationships
• Loved ones following in one’s footsteps and being led astray
• Long-term health issues
• Depression and other mental illnesses
• Suicidal thoughts and attempts
• Harming oneself or others while under the influence
• Bankruptcy
• Losing one’s job due to an inability to perform
• Abandoning important passions and talents as one’s addiction becomes all-consuming
• Being ruled by doubt and self-loathing
• Being unable to succeed in other areas due to one’s lack of confidence in one’s abilities
• An inability to face and overcome the pain from the past, resulting in one not being able to move forward into wholeness