It’s Hard to Get Enough of Something That Almost Works

“It’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.” – Dr. Vincent Felitti

I remember when I heard this quote on a podcast years ago. The host was talking about addiction and brought it up. In 9 words it captures the essence of addiction.

“It’s hard to get enough of something that almost works” or of something that works for a little while.

It’s true of drugs, alcohol, food, and of social media distractions.

We all have things that we go to make ourselves feel better that only kind of work even if we don’t think of it as an addiction.

A glass of wine after a hard day, ice cream after a loss, we cover up our problems with something that makes us feel temporarily better but ignore the deeper issues. And, as a result, we get stuck. We try over and over again, but it never really works.

I was thinking about this recently in regards to the habits people have with social media. Most people say that they want to spend less time on social media than they currently are, but they never follow through.

They set a hard rule for themselves, no social media, or only 20 minutes a day, but never look at the root cause of what problem they are almost solving. Instead of trying to fill the hole, they attempt to build a fence around it.

When you look at your life, where are you trying to solve a problem with something that only almost works? What is the root problem and what are the things that can actually help you solve it?

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