 Okay, let's talk about the drug-misinfluenced tendency. This is a really short one in Charlie's 25 biases, so I can pretty much read this one out. And I quote, this tendency's destructive power is so widely known to be intense with frequent tragic consequences for cognition and the outcome of life that it needs no discussion here to supplement that previously given under the simple pain-avoiding psychological denial. End quote. Now let us talk instead about addiction. Addiction's a very funny thing. There is a big difference between having something as a habit and having something as an addiction. When you have something as a habit, you still can't control your will and stop it. For example, brushing your teeth is a habit, it's not an addiction. At any point of the day, you decide to just stop brushing your teeth and go on for the next two weeks without brushing your teeth with terrible breath. That's because brushing your teeth is a habit, whereas an addiction is something that, despite your efforts to stop, you seem to not be able to, generally with addictions, you need outside support, you need outside help to be able to manage it. It is greater than yourself. It is an elephant on your shoulders. It's something that you have to live with, something that looks over you. That's an addiction. Now, many people develop addictions and it really can be one of the most destructive things that can happen to you because it really warps the way you think. Your focus in life no longer goes towards your goals and your ambition, it goes towards the focal point of your addiction, whether that's cocaine, whether that's alcohol, whether that's pornography, it's always the same thing. The mind plays the same tricks on you, time in and time out. You think about quitting, logically, it makes sense to quit, but emotionally, you cannot. The ties with this drug, whether they be physical or emotional or psychological, are too strong to be broken. The addiction goes hand to hand with pain avoiding psychological denial. We've all heard that story of the junkie who doesn't think that he's a junkie. It's because the mind plays tricks on us. Sometimes the reality is too painful to accept, so we come up with a fairy tale to justify our existence, to justify what we're doing. So a common one is believing that you can quit whenever you want. Many people who are addicted to substances will often tell themselves, oh I can just quit tomorrow, we'll start tomorrow or we'll start next week. One more hit, I'll quit tomorrow and it's not uncommon for them to keep this mantra going on in their head of quit tomorrow, quit tomorrow and if they're not careful they might end up still addicted 10 years or 20 years down the line, still replaying the same old thoughts and never able to actually come to terms with the fact that they are addicted. This is the reason why drugs kill so many people because they don't even know what's going on. They've become trapped, it really messes up your circuitry up there. Another common ploy that the mind plays on the addicted is making the addicted believe that their vice, their downfall, their addiction is actually a positive quality. This is the point in which the stockbroker starts to believe that cocaine has been giving him the edge in dealing with the market. He starts to believe that cocaine has been enhancing his focus and allowing him to see trends in graphs that other people are not able to see. This is the same mental ploy that makes the nicotine addict believe that smoking is actually helping his immune system and helping him become healthier. He has seen hundreds of people in their old age still smoking. He starts to believe that the research about lung cancer is all elaborate hoax from the government to stop people from smoking. This is the point of no return. They start to believe a bunch of other irrational things that people who are not addicted would never believe but because they are addicted and it's self-serving it all starts to make sense to them. So in most cases the only way someone can get rid of the addiction is if they still have enough willpower to identify that they are addicted and to get some help or if other people just step in and help them regardless. Generally no one can quit an addiction by themselves because it tends to get too strong too quickly. Do it! Just do it!