Dear Vices

Miami is known and often referred to as the “Vice City”, and the famous series (and movie) only made the name even stronger, the good looking, sun kissed, perfect weather, full of palm trees and night clubs, luxurious city is actually the perfect place to make people surrender to vices very quickly, but what is it about vices that makes us so drawn to them? And when we actually surrender to our vices, when do we know we have become junkies? Is there a way to be addicted but not a junkie?

Vices come in all shapes and forms, some of us are easily drawn to food, some others alcohol, pills, designer drugs, shoes or even sex, but the X factor that makes us addicted is not the actual vice, it is something that sometimes we do not even realize and/or when we do we never associate it with the vice! When we need or choose to use something in order to feel happy and we do so and so strongly, at a point that we cannot stop, that we count the hours of the day for that moment we are going get home and finally be free to “trip”, we basically think that we do it because it makes us feel good, so good that we cannot live without it anymore, it is our reward, one of the reasons we work for, but we always forget one little detail, we CAN live without it and in some cases (most cases I must say) we SHOULD live without it.

I remember many occasions when I had conversations with different people addicted to different stuff (all kinds of vices, you would be surprised with the variety) they all had something in common: their lives were not the way they wanted it to be! We grow up having dreams and making plans, but sometimes (if not most times) our dreams and plans are not achieved, and we suddenly find ourselves living the life of a stranger, a life that we did not designed according to our wills, a life that does not meet the expectations we had back then when we had dreams and plans, and when this amazing life we dreamed about for so long simply does not become our reality we usually try to find happiness somewhere else, and when we do we usually recur to "dear vices" to at least have “doses” of happiness in order to be able to live a “not so happy” (or not happy at all) life. It is hard to know when to stop, when to change, because we build a whole new reality when we are “high”, we feel happy and suddenly life is not so bad anymore because you have those moments of happiness, I personally believe you can only stop your vices or change for good when you actually change your life, when you change your “sober reality”, because your “trip” is not going to last forever so the whole idea is to have a reality that makes you happy, to feel “high” simply because you love your sober reality and that fulfills you more than anything, in order to stop getting a temporary "happy high" you NEED a lasting "sober high".

Do you remember when you were a kid or a teenager and you had a whole dream life planned for you? Even your plans were figured out! You knew how to get there and live that life and so you tried… but you failed! You failed so many times it actually seemed impossible even immature and delusional to keep trying to reach that dream life, so you gave up… When you have a sober reality that does not make you happy you recur to other “resources” that will give you a temporary happiness, that is going to work as makeup to make your reality look more attractive, the problem is when it wears off and you need more to feel that short-lived happiness, next thing you know you live for that! That is when you know you became a junkie. When you cannot spend A DAY without it, when you dedicate A LOT of time and money to those habits, and it became such a huge part of your life that you do not even know how to change anymore, not only do not know but do not want to, because “at least” you have these dear vices to keep you going, your precious reward, but that is when you have to realize you are not living you are just PROSCASTINATING, going through life.

First thing you HAVE to do is to remember everything you wanted for you, every dream, every plan, then you analyze what is possible (of course if your dream was to become an unicorn that is not going to happen so it is better to stick to your vices), then you have to use all those times you failed to reach those dreams as experience, what was the problem? What was the X factor the kept you from reaching your goals? And then you have to dedicate all the time and money you were dedicating to your dear vices to your new fight! “But I am too old, it is too late” if you are not old enough to get “high” then you are old enough to TRY! The most amazing thing is that you are going to build AMAZING memories doing something you love! People say the real happiness is not the destination but the journey, well they say it for a reason! You are going to realize you feel fulfilled again but in a healthy way, because you are doing something you love and that keeps you happy, you are not dead, you are not too old because if you can still feel it so you can still DO IT! So go ahead and do it! You are going to get really high with a sober happy reality, and the most amazing thing is that after sometime you will realize you are living the life you always wanted or you are at least getting there! Make your old-self proud of the person you became, instead of looking forward to get home and surrender yourself to those private moments when you become your “vicious-self” and dedicate precious moments of your short life to your dear vices, go fight for your dreams, go after everything you ever wanted, go build, go create, go get high with a dear reality instead of a dear vice, I promise you, you are going to get great things in return and the “high” never wears off!