Down The Rabbit Hole: Stop Making Self-Destruction A Cure For Boredom

Imagine your life has nearly fallen into place. You’ve been carrying on swimmingly. Everything is dandy -- everything, that is, except for one thing. There’s just one thing that doesn’t feel quite right.

Maybe you’re tired. Maybe your job is good, but isn’t great. Maybe your lack of love life has driven you to an unfathomable kind of loneliness.

You don’t know how to fix what’s going on around you, so you turn on yourself. There’s a restlessness in you that your banal routine simply won’t dissolve.

So, you self-destruct. It’s as if you stretch just to see how much you can bend before you break; you destruct to test your limits.

Self-destructing every now and then is healthy. Sometimes, we just need to chop off all our hair or get too wasted to remember our own names to feel something. If we can’t put together the thing that’s broken, we want to break something else.

We tune into the darkest parts of ourselves and shut the blinds on the light. Sometimes, feeling everything at once is the only way to feel anything.

But self-destructing can feel like flooring a gas pedal: You go from zero to 60 in three seconds flat. Some of us foster an addiction to putting a little pressure on the pedal. Once we start, we can’t stop.

When that happens, you’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and before you know it, you’re too far down to climb back up on your own.

The ones you hold near and dear have thrown a rope down the well for you: The rope cascades down the rocks while your loved ones beg for you to come back up. Their screams are audible -- you can hear them -- you just choose not to listen.

Self-destructing enough times will make you a dead man -- even though it makes you feel alive. But it isn’t a cure for boredom.

Running to your ex is running away from your issues.

Where there is no new love, there is no anticipation. And where there is no anticipation, there is no moving forward. But why move backwards when life is steady standing still?

Starting a fight isn’t starting over.

You aren’t mad at the people who love you. But you’ve been lashing out at them, and you don’t know why. Blaming others won’t alleviate the symptoms of your self-blame.

Buying that expensive dress isn’t buying you happiness.

Retail therapy leaves us feeling brand new -- that is, until the new shirt we’ve bought is a day old, and it’s time for another new shirt.

Novelty quickly grows out of being novel; just because something is old doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Draining your bank account won’t yield substance.

F*cking a bad boy isn’t going to f*ck the pain away.

He’s bad. You’re bored. You do it because he’s there, and for that reason only -- even though you know it’ll feel so good before it feels so bad.

It’s an easy pattern to fall into, but a hard one to break free from.

The bottom of the bottle won’t keep you from rock bottom.

Drinking in the right context can be harmless fun, but there’s a difference between buzzed and blackout.

Drinking pain away is only numbing the pain. For full recovery, we’ve got to actually feel the pain.

Oversharing with your one-night stand isn’t the same as sharing with your therapist.

Spilling your guts without rhyme or reason isn't the same as divulging your secrets. A shallow conversation will never be able to take the place of a deep heart-to-heart.

Filling your schedule with dates won’t fill a void.

We’re told that being with others will keep us from closing in on ourselves. But quick chats and hasty "hellos" only go so far. Serial dating will leave you lonely at breakfast.

Fueling drama isn’t fueling your creativity.

Passion can be dramatic, but drama doesn’t always mean passion. At the end of the day, drama is just drama. It’s only when I’m feeling unfulfilled that I re-open closed wounds.

Swiping right won’t make things right.

When we’re feeling ugly, we like to be told we’re beautiful. But we don’t need to be told we’re beautiful to feel good; it’s just the lazy way out. A sappy one-liner isn’t a cure-all.

Staying awake won’t re-awaken your spirit.

Living life on full-blast keeps us busy, but being too busy eventually gets to be too much. We need rest in order to put our stresses and worries to rest.

Stuffing your face won’t help you face the world.

“Food is my only friend.” I actually uttered these words at a point in my life. Food is a friend -- that’s true -- but it shouldn’t be your closest friend.

Food is one of life’s most reliable comforts, but there’s more to life.

That little white baggie won’t lighten your baggage.

You can spend your days surrounding yourself with good friends, or you can party your nights away with friends. But relaxing on Xanax won’t relax your soul.

Hating yourself isn’t going to help you love someone else.

It’s easy to deem ourselves as unworthy when we can’t see clearly, but to quell self-destruction, we’ve got to practice self-acceptance. Picking yourself apart won’t put you back together.

Being angry at the world won’t keep you from getting mad at yourself.

The world is an imperfect place because the people who inhabit it are imperfect. You’ll never settle into it happily if you don’t accept that it’ll let you down.

Because that’s just life.