# Habits & Addiction > Habits persist when hidden benefits outweigh change; addiction is a judgment, and awareness converts habit to choice. - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/habits-and-addiction # Habits & Addiction In Bashar's framing, what you call a habit or addiction is not a fixed mechanism that has power over you but a belief-based construction whose persistence is information about a definition you still hold. A habit is simply something you do that you do not know you are doing — the moment you know it is there, it is already a choice rather than a habit, and the only thing that makes it seem to continue is the definition that a habit must be difficult to break. ## A habit is a construction, not a law Bashar treats "habit" as a concept like any other concept, not a fundamental law of existence. The idea of something being a habit only has manifestable reality in your physical experience when you believe that your definition of a habit is something difficult to change. It is an artificial construct — and constructs can be redefined. "A habit is hard to break" is offered as a definition, not a law of the universe. The reframe is precise: a habit, tendency, or pattern is something you do that you don't know you're doing. Once you know what's there, it is no longer a tendency, a pattern, or a habit — it is a choice if you keep doing it. The discovery of the habit is the end of the process, not the beginning of a special procedure to let it go. Continuing it after discovery means a belief says it is still the beneficial thing to do — the only question that needs answering is how continuing to do it actually serves you. ## Addiction is the assumption that the power is in the tool The teaching's core definition of addiction is mechanical rather than moral: addiction is the continuation of the assumption that the power is in the external tool — the drug, the substance, the behavior — rather than within you. All tools are valid as triggers or catalysts that can show you a state you can reach; once they have shown you, you no longer need the tool, because you can create the effect at any time, since you created it to begin with. The tool is only a projection of your consciousness anyway. Dependency on a substance is therefore framed as placing creative responsibility outside yourself. The usual connection to that idea is the removal of taking responsibility for your creations from yourself and putting it on something else — but you are still creating that. That is how powerful you are. The physiological tool is only a tool; when individuals recognize that the power is within them, they find themselves of a vibration that does not require reliance upon it. ## Judgment is what locks the cycle The reason a habit or addiction resists change is not the behavior itself but the judgment layered over it. Most of what people represent as habits they cannot change persists because they allow themselves the judgment — experiencing a projection back on themselves that they are, in a sense, not worthy — and so they become locked in the judgment itself rather than feeling the experience for what they chose it for. Feeling the experience directly, without the artificial screen of judgment, is what unlocks the repeating cycle; you cannot change something you judge. This is consistent with Bashar's broader definitions-and-beliefs teaching: the belief that you are still getting something out of the habit that you can get no other way is what motivates its continuation. Rearrange the definition so that not doing it is more pleasurable and less painful than doing it, and you are immediately motivated to stop — because motivation always follows definition. ## The 13th step: you become a person who never had it The most radical reframe draws on Bashar's parallel-realities teaching. When you change any belief, you are literally a different person — not figuratively, mechanically — because a person is an artificial construct of consciousness. Change the definition and the new you has a different history, a different past, and a different future. With regard to addictions, this means it is not that you "no longer have" the addiction — it is that you never did. When you know you never did, there is no urge, because you are a person who never experienced it. This is what Bashar calls the 13th step: the full understanding that every change is a total change. Even smoking is addressed this way: the you that does not smoke is not the same you that does. If you can conceive of a you that does not smoke, be that you, and you will automatically not contain the urge. ## Practical implications Bashar's habit and addiction teaching is metaphysical framing, not a medical, psychological, or addiction-treatment protocol, and it explicitly does not replace clinical care, withdrawal management, professional counseling, or support groups for substance use or any dependency. As teaching, it offers several practical levers that complement (not replace) such care. First, treat the behavior as a symbol showing you something about yourself. Once you allow the symbol to show you what it is showing you, you can choose another way to be that automatically no longer contains the urge — there is no need to "try to stop," and the framing is explicit that trying keeps you trying. Second, the operational question is not "how do I stop?" but "how does continuing to do this actually serve me?" — because Bashar's stance is that you always choose what you believe is to your benefit. Identifying the hidden benefit (and the belief that supplies it) is what unlocks the pattern. Third, Bashar suggests some practical physical support during withdrawal: great quantities of clean, cool (not cold) water with a little lemon, and a moment of defocusing or daydreaming at the point of intake — replacing the urge's energy with a crystalline vibration. For someone caught in a longer negative cycle, he begins with the simplest substances (water, then fruit and juice, then vitamins and minerals) to gently nurture the physical form back to a point where the self can be observed at the center of the creation. Fourth, Bashar explicitly cautions about specific substances' physiological toll. Cocaine, for example, externalizes raw self-empowerment and, with continued reliance, burns out the bodily systems — neuronic sheathing breakdown, enzymatic dysfunction, inhibition of oxygen-carrying components, electromagnetic disorientation — with a generalized mass-consciousness burnout threshold around three months of use that is not reversible. Any idea relied upon as an externalized self-empowerment will always eventually produce side effects, because you have placed the power to the side of yourself rather than within you. This is presented as attributed observation within Bashar's framework, not as a substitute for medical advice. Finally, Bashar treats the symbolic function of a behavior with respect rather than contempt: what society calls negative may genuinely serve as contemplation, prayer, or meditation for the individual (the smoke of a peace pipe, for instance, traditionally represents prayer and spirit). Recognizing the definition you have given the symbol is what eventually lets you no longer need it. ## Representative passages Once you recognize it is a habit, it is no longer a habit. … A habit is something you do that you don't know you're doing. Once you know you have a habit, you don't have it anymore, because in order to know you had it, you have to be beyond it in order to see you had it to begin with. The only thing that would make it seem to continue is your definition that a habit must always continue automatically and that you have to do something difficult to change it. "A habit is hard to break" — that's a definition, it's not a law of the universe.— Bashar, Addictions (addictions#qa-2) The idea of what you call addiction is simply the continuation of the assumption that the power is still in the tool, in the drug, and that you need the drug in order to create the effect. Once the drug has shown you the effect, you can create it at any time, because you created it to begin with — the drug is only a projection of your consciousness anyway.— Bashar, Addictions (addictions#qa-4) With regard to things like addictions, that if you truly define yourself as a different history, as a different person, and you know that to be true — remember, knowing is synonymous with action — then it's not about the idea that you no longer have the addiction. It's the idea that you never did.— Bashar, The13th Step And Parallel Realities (the13th-step-and-parallel-realities#qa-1) A habit, a tendency, a pattern is something you do that you don't know you're doing. Once you know what's there, it's not a tendency, it's not a pattern, it's not a habit, it's a choice if you keep doing it.— Bashar, Transforming Victimhood Through Choice And Awareness Bashar Nexus Point (transforming-victimhood-through-choice-and-awareness-bashar-nexus-point#qa-3) ## Related - [Definitions & Beliefs](https://sassani.app/topic/definitions-and-beliefs) - [Fear](https://sassani.app/topic/fear) - [Excitement](https://sassani.app/topic/excitement) - [Judgment](https://sassani.app/topic/judgment) - [The 13th Step](https://sassani.app/topic/the-13th-step) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/habits-and-addiction. The HTML page is the source of truth.