Lest my readers think that I’m contracted by the Dark Side (sorry, watching too much “Star Wars” lately) to encourage addictive behavior and rationalize all weakness, here are a dozen addiction zappers and depression busters I use in deficient moments (23 hours of any given 24-hour day):

1. Get Some Buddies

It works for Girl Scouts and for addicts of all kinds. I remember having to wake up my buddy to go pee in the middle of the night at Girl Scout camp (actually I was a Brownie–I never graduated to the Girl Scouts). That was right before she rolled off her cot, out of the tent and down the hill, almost into the creek. Had the roller’s buddy not been such a deep sleeper–dreaming of beatific visions–the girl scout wouldn’t have woken up in the woods.

The same method works for addicts–to help each other not roll out of the tent and into the stream, and to keep each other safe during midnight bathroom runs. My buddies are the six numbers programmed into my cell phone, the voices that remind me sometimes as many as five times a day: “It will get better.”

2. Read Away the Craving

Books can be buddies too! And when you are afraid of imposing like I am so often, they serve as wonderful reminders to stay on course. When I’m in a weak spot, and my addiction has the power–dangling me upside down like Rosie O’Donnell in her inversion therapy swing–I place a book next to my addiction object: the Big Book goes next to the liquor cabinet (Eric’s very modest stash); some 12-step pamphlet gets clipped to the freezer (where I store the frozen Kit Kats, Twix, and dark chocolate Hershey bars); William Styron’s “Darkness Visible” or Kay Redfield Jamison’s “An Unquiet Mind” rest on my bedside table; and I’ll get out Melody Beattie before e-mailing an apology to someone who just screwed me over. And there are my spiritual staples: books by Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Anne Lamott, and Kathleen Norris.

3. Be Accountable to Someone

In the professional world, what is the strongest motivator for peak performance? The annual review (or notification of the pink slip). Especially if you’re a stage-four people pleaser like me. You want nothing more than to impress the guy or gal who signs your checks. Twelve-step groups use this method–called accountability–to keep people sober and on the recovery wagon. Everyone has a sponsor, a mentor to teach them the program, to guide them toward physical, mental, and spiritual health.

In my early days of sobriety, I didn’t drink because I was scared to tell my sponsor that I had relapsed (she was kind of intimidating, which is why I chose her). Today several people serve as my “sponsor,” keeping me accountable for my actions: Mike (my writing mentor), my therapist, my doctor, Fr. Dave, Deacon Moore, Eric, and my mom. Having these folks around to divulge my misdeeds to is like confession–which I’ve never enjoyed–it keeps the list of sins from getting too long.

4. Predict Your Weak Spots

When I quit smoking, it was helpful to identify the danger zones–those times I most enjoying firing up the lung rockets: in the morning with my java, in the afternoon with my java, in the car (if you’ve been my passenger you know why), and in the evening with my java and a Twix bar.

I jotted these times down in my “dysfunction journal” with suggestions of activities to replace the smokes: In the morning I began eating eggs and grapefruit, which don’t blend well with cigs. I bought a tape to listen to in the car (which distracts me and gets me lost in D.C. and Baltimore). An afternoon walk replaced the 3:00 smoke break. And I tried to read at night, which didn’t happen (eating chocolate is more soothing after tucking in a three-year-old girl who tells you after bedtime prayers that she knows how to kiss like Princess Leia of “Star Wars,” and she likes it a lot).

Especially difficult were the times Eric and I went out socially–when my cigarette was a substitute for drinking. I think I devoured sweets on those evenings–which isn’t optimal, but, again, chocolate is a less-threatening addiction to my health than nicotine, so it wasn’t the worst thing to do.

5. Distract Yourself

Any addict would benefit from a long list of “distractions,” any activity than can take her mind off of a cig, a glass of merlot, or a suicidal plot (during severe depression). Some good ones: crossword puzzles, novels, sudoku, e-mails, reading Beyond Blue (a must!); walking the dog (pets are wonderful “buddies” and can improve mental health), card games, movies, “American Idol” (as long as you don’t make fun of the contestants…bad for your depression, as it attracts bad karma); sports, de-cluttering the house (cleaning out a drawer, a file, or the garage…or just stuffing it with more stuff); crafts (I failed occupational therapy, but it works for many a depressive) like sewing, scrap-booking (it pains me to write that word), framing pictures; gardening (even pulling weeds, which you can visualize as the marketing director that you hate working with); exercise (of course), nature (just sitting by the water), and music (even Yanni works, but I’d go classical).

6. Sweat

Working out is technically an addiction for me (according to some lame article I read), and I guess I do have to be careful with it since I have a history of an eating disorder (who doesn’t?). But there is no addiction zapper or depression buster as effective for me than exercise. An aerobic workout not only provides an antidepressant effect, but you look pretty stupid lighting up after a run (trust me, I used to do it all the time and the stares weren’t friendly) or pounding a few beers before the gym. I don’t know if it’s the endorphins or what, but I just think much better and feel better with sweat dripping down my face.

7. Start a Project

Here’s a valuable tip I learned in the psych ward–the fastest way to get out of your head is to put it in a new project–compiling a family album, knitting a blanket, coaching Little League, heading a civic association, planning an Earth Day festival, auditioning for the local theatre, taking a course at the community college.

“Try something new!” the nurses advised us as we chewed our rubber turkey. “Get out of your comfort zone.”

I knew that Eric would love it if I became more domesticated–actually notice the dying plants and do something like watering them or pulling off the dead leaves. So, partly to please him, I went to Michael’s (the arts and crafts store) and bought 20 different kinds of candles to place around the house, five picture
boxes for all the loose photos I have bagged underneath the piano, and two dozen frames. Two years later, all of it is still there, bagged and stored in the garage.

However, I also signed up for a tennis class, because I’m thinking ahead and when the kids go off to college, Eric and I will need another pastime in addition to reading about our kids on Facebook. I met a wonderful friend with whom I’m training for a triathlon (which distracts and burns calories simultaneously), and I enrolled in a writing class, which gave me enough confidence to launch Beyond Blue. (If I weren’t training for a triathlon and writing Beyond Blue, I might be smoking (and doing a few other less-than-healthy activities) as I try to organize our pictures.

8. Keep a Record

One definition of suffering is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results. It’s so easy to see this pattern in others: “Katherine, for God’s sake, Barbie doesn’t fit down in the drain (it’s not a water slide)” or the alcoholic who swears she will be able to control her drinking once she finds the right job. But I can be so blind to my own attempts at disguising self-destructive behavior in a web of lies and rationalizations. That’s why, when I’m in enough pain, I write everything down–so I can read for myself exactly how I felt after I had lunch with the person who likes to beat me up as a hobby, or after eight weeks of a Marlboro binge, or after two weeks on a Hershey-Starbucks diet. Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but the case for breaking a certain addiction, or stopping a behavior contributing to depression, is much stronger once you can read the evidence provided from the past.

9. Be the Expert

The quickest way you learn material is by being forced to teach it. That lesson is fresh on my brain this morning after an hour of tutoring a student on a paper about the history of the Supreme Court. Sometimes that’s how I feel about Beyond Blue–in cranking out spiritual reflections and mental health secrets, I have to pretend to know something about sanity (even if I feel like one crazy and warped chick). I adamantly believe that you have to fake it ’til you make it. And I always feel less depressed after I have helped someone who is struggling with sadness. It’s the twelfth step of the twelve-step program, and a cornerstone of recovery. Give and you shall receive. The best thing I can do for my brain is to find a person in greater pain than myself and to offer her my hand. If she takes it, I’m inspired to stand strong, so I can pull her out of her funk. And in that process, I am often pulled out of mine.

10. Grab Your Security Item

Everyone needs a blankie. Okay, not everyone. Mentally ill addicts like myself need a blankie (and a pacifier to suck on when trying to quit smoking), a security object to hold when they get scared or turned around. Mine used to be my sobriety chip. Today it’s a medal of St. Therese that I carry in my purse or in my pocket. I’m a bit of a scrupulous, superstitious Catholic (the religious OCD profile), but my medal (and St. Therese herself) give me such consolation, so she’s staying in my pocket or purse. She reminds me that the most important things are sometimes invisible to the eye: like faith, hope, and love. When I doubt all goodness in the world–and accuse God of a bad creation job–I simply close my eyes and squeeze the medal.

11. Get On Your Knees (Of Course)

This would be the addiction-virgin’s first point, not the eleventh, and it would be followed by instructions on how to pray the rosary or say the Stations of the Cross. But I think that the true addict and depressive need only utter a variation of these two simple prayers: “Help!” and “Take the bloody thing from me, now!”

12. Do Nothing

Which means you’re on the third level of recovery that I talked about above–not a bad place to be.