Frontloading Your Suffering

In this post I will be transparent with the addictions that have tried to grapple my soul in recent years. For the longest time I have struggled with addiction to marijuana and nicotine I have only recently found a measurable amount of freedom due to spirituality.

I've named this post "Frontloading Your Suffering" because I have recently quit partaking of these two substances and it has caused a moderate amount of suffering.

I have tried to quit these substances before in the past, but a lot of times I ended up going back because of stress, boredom, and anxiety.

Typically the story went like this. I would start partaking of the substance by starting off with very small amounts, then over time I would consume more and more until I reached a place of substance abuse. This would manifest as me having to have a smoke first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. Mind you that I was using substances with THC with the intent of receiving revelation from God. THC would always help me get outside of my mind so that I could view things from an alternate perspective. This perspective would usually give me unique solutions to my most difficult of problems.

Unfortunately, after I got into the territory of abuse, I would stop receiving revelations and would do it just because it felt good. When it got to this point I would usually become self-aware of my struggle and fight back against my addiction.

In my recent battle against my addiction I woke up to the idea of "frontloading my suffering". I had realized through my spiritual practice that suffering is a part of life and it cannot be avoided no matter how hard we try. Then I thought to myself, "If suffering is a part of life, how can I logically use it to make life easier?" That's when the idea of frontloading suffering came to mind.

Essentially I became aware that I would have to suffer either on the front-end or the back end of my addiction. I could suffer on the back end by falling into addiction cycles that lead to depression, anxiety, and laziness, or I could suffer on the front end by enduring the discomfort of withdrawal and the general feeling of not having access to the substance of my addiction. I have learned that bearing the brunt of my suffering on the front end is a much wiser decision than enduring suffering as a result of my addiction.

I speculate that when we intentionally satisfy the requirements of suffering set upon us, we save ourselves from enduring that suffering as the cause of unwise decisions or actions. It's as if the universe check our records and registers that we have fulfilled our due diligence and instead of giving us suffering we receive joy, wisdom, and a perseverance that only comes through experience.

So I will continue to test and experiment with this idea of frontloading suffering and would suggest that you give it a try as well!