What to do to remedy addiction?

[Prometheus]

I've been battling some form of addiction for most of this decade.  First, it was opiate, then over the last 4 years or so it has been Kratom.  Alot of this struggle is mental.  I know that much of addiction has underling causes that need to be healed.  Looking back, I wasn't necessarily unhappy, but enjoyed the quick fix happiness painkillers brought.  I seem to be always looking for a quick way to change my mood, nowadays.  What is a good way to heal this aspect of myself?

I was addicted to Kratom for a couple of years. Eventually it got to the point that I had to take some every 5-6 hours or I would immediately have terrible withdrawals. It was also stimulating extremely negative emotional patterns, anger, rage, and sadness. At this point I decided to quit.

On the one hand I am grateful to Kratom for bringing a lot of dark emotions out of me that I had been hiding and didn't know were there, and helping me to confront them. On the other hand, they were beginning to consume me completely. There needed to be a balance.

First, you have to make the decision that you *are* going to quit. Don't make excuses for yourself about how you need it in your life or whatever. Once you return to normal consciousness you will be more like your old self again. You must commit to that decision. Once you're off the stuff, you'll realize quitting actually wasn't that hard.

Basically once I decided to quit I just used the remaining stash to wean myself off as much as I could, reducing my dosage daily. After I ran out I went cold turkey. Make no mistake, the withdrawals were horrible. It's like a combination of utter restlessness combined with being so tired you can hardly move. But you can't sleep either. It feels like death. However, after a week or so, the worst of the withdrawals will be over with, and you will feel a sense of pride that you managed to accomplish it. There are some longer-term affects you may have to deal with. For me, even though the worst of the withdraws were over I still could hardly sleep for several weeks after quitting cold turkey. I was averaging maybe 2-3 hours of sleep a night for about a month. For some reason Kratom addiction messes with your ability to sleep. However, after about a month, this too went away, and I began to be able to sleep normally again... it was like something just switched in my brain and suddenly I was completely back to normal.

Ever since then, I've made a fuller recovery at an emotional level. Less outbursts. Less anger. Less sadness. And at the same time I've evaluated the root causes of the emotional pain the Kratom was bringing out of me and managed to make some greater realizations at a psychological and spiritual level. So I wouldn't say it was a complete waste.. the Kratom did help to force me to confront some things from my past that I had been ignoring.