HABITS TO ADDICTIONS: A CHESS REFERENCE

Generally, Tobacco, Marijuana, Cocaine, or say smoking, drinking in our terminologies; are considered biggest addictions and in fact we also have UN conventions, special days, exclusive events to promote the idea of de-addiction to it. No complains about that but,

Do you know: How Habits turn into Addictions and Deadly addictions later? (And when I say Deadly, I mean it literally.)

Let's first start by defining a habit, an addiction and the journey from one to the other in simpler terms before we proceed further.

A Habit: A routine or regular behaviour that gets harder to give up, the longer that behaviour goes on!

They may be brushing/bathing every morning, drinking coffee, reading a book before going to bed etc., for a regular human being of the olden times. However, binge watching a Netflix show, playing Mobile Games, sanitizing hands, wearing a mask when outside, can also be considered to be habits without any hesitation in the current scenario.

An Addiction: Scientifically, it is the compulsive physiological need for and use of a habit-forming substance/routine characterized by tolerance and well-defined physiological symptoms upon its withdrawal.

I know you are not here for science.

So, let me make things easier to understand. Addictions are more or less similar to habits but the basic difference between them being that an addiction persists you to pursue a routine even at the cost of your own well-being, say at the cost of your studies, your health or anything of that kind. In fact, addictions are more powerful and dangerous than habits. It is also seen that people who are addicted to something, experience different modes of thinking and altered brain functions.

Alarmingly, addictions of all forms combined kill nearly 3,00,000 individuals every year and many suffer throughout their lives in one way or the other. Unfortunately, the transformation period from experimenting a habit to general routine to dependence to finally resulting in a deadly addiction is very small and it happens in a flash.

Now, as you pause and think you realise the difference between a habit and addiction is both perplexing and overwhelming. And you have a lot of things running through your mind.

Naturally, your question to me would be:

So, how do we know the limit and where to draw the line?

I'm definitely not a psychiatrist nor a psychologist {And yes, both of them are different!} I seriously don’t know the answer to this question!! But I am sure to answer all your other questions or at least achieve my objective of clearing some of the air about one of the most debated topics on mental health from the last century.

Well, I know things are getting serious and there’s a little adrenaline rush in you but, I promise you will find the respite as you move further.

Okay, to calm down the readers, lets change tracks a bit and take a sneak peek into what’s happening in my life!!

My Long Story in Short:

Time: 1AM late night

If I had to define myself in the context of this story which revolves around me; I am an extremely superstitious person with a beginner’s knowledge in chess, and an extremely obstinate lad suffering from Insomnia and also a sluggish individual who finds procrastination very cool!!

(Lol, the description also sounds cool to me!!)

May be many of us are the same, but we somehow don't want to introspect ourselves because we know in the end it's only another way of procrastinating some other tasks by indulging ourselves in a comfy task of overthinking. (Well, yes overthinking is comfortable because it's imagination which asks us nothing but some of our creativity and abundantly available time.

Okay, back to the night. Surroundings were quiet except the fan making the rounds over my head and the alarm ringing in the background for the 10th time warning me to sleep as I have an important appointment the next morning. I finished my late-night snacking ritual, watched some YT, took a bath, got into my night clothes, made some plans for the next day, arranged my bed and started to think what next! How lame right? Sleep, what else. I have to sleep but I don't want to!! Then I started to look at the cloak and overthink. Suddenly, a thought flashed my mind: Why not play Chess for some time instead of wasting time overthinking? May be the Chess helps makes me fall asleep early!

I jumped out of the bed (because my inner self really wanted to do this) and ran to the charging port, unplugged the charger and took my phone in hand. (Keeping my phone out of my room is one of those ways to heal my INSOMNIAC behaviour. LOL!). I reached my room with my second batch of late-night snacks, turned my phone on ignoring the Time displayed on the home screen and then shamelessly tuned into Lichess: A Free Online Chess Server and chose to play the Bullet variant (1+0) since it takes the least possible time to finish a game (or play more games in less time) on this platform.

By this time, it was already 1.45 AM and I told to myself that you have only 15 Min strictly, not more than that in any case. I slowly got chess-zoned, picked up pace, I started to win games and climb up the rating graph from 1379 to 1410 in less than 15 min. The strict deadline set by myself inched closer but I hardly cared and extended it to 2.30 AM. I continued to play and with all focus on the rating graph and I kept playing without any break till the next deadline but sadly managed to improve only by a rating of 15 which now puts me at 1425. I looked at the cloak and it said 2.35. Naturally, just like with every one of us, I started to weigh down options; Thoughts like: What happens if I don't sleep immediately? What happens if I play for 30 more minutes? What happens if I wake up a little late tomorrow? on one side and thoughts like: Why am I still awake? What about my health? What am I going to do about my plans the next day? What is it that I will get if play chess now? Why is Chess important to me? Etc and Etc on the other side. All in all, I can say my mind itself was in two minds. Huh! Somehow, I decided with the idea of continuing to play chess for one more hour at maximum but I will not get any perks of sleeping for that extra hour the next day. I continued to play Chess with extreme vigour and enthusiasm as if it was the last time, I will ever play Chess in my life. Within no time, I reached my all-time best of 1455 and there was no stopping for me.

Now, it was 3.45 but I still felt like playing for fifteen more minutes just to make my rating more fancy something say 1475 or 1500 if at all I am fortunate. Suddenly, tables turned, the deceleration started, the back pedalling began, the tides reverted back, the superpowers overpowered me! I may be using any of these existing idioms or some self-made ones but the truth is that: the rating started to come down abruptly, it came down to 1345 in just 30 min. In fact, it is no big deal because I was now playing against some of the best Chess brains (at least when compared to me!). However, as a natural consequence arriving from a strongly superstitious and obstinate person like me, I could not believe what was happening before me and decided to continue to play until I reached my best. In a more figurative sense, at that time, it felt as if the sky and land exchanged positions. Poor me! I fell in the trap and I could not realise this until my mom bashed into my room at 6.30 AM seeing my room with all the lights turned on very early in the morning. The first and the last statement she made as she left my room was "I know you are against the idea of waking up early but does that mean staying awake 24/7", a little sarcastically with a tint of anger.

Well, this happens to me all the time and from what I have known after discussing with my friends is that it happens with most of them. And the trap I was discussing was the journey from playing Chess being a habit to getting addicted to it. At first, I was about to sleep, then allowed myself 15 MIN to play, which got increased to 45 MIN after a request from my inner self, later to 2 HR and then without my knowledge to almost 10 HRS that is till 10 AM, the next morning. I could not believe myself, I played over 200 Games in one single night.

Look, how all of this happened in a flash. So, this is exactly the journey/transformation, I was talking about in the beginning of this article.

Let’s break down things and understand one after the other continuing our earlier discussion.

1. Typically, these addictions are linked to the rewards systems in the brain, which helps explain their overarching power in stripping people from the ability to make rational decisions. In my case, I was of idea to reward myself sleep time only if I win a considerable amount of games/ reach the peak of my rating graph.

A science study also tells that an “addiction is brought about by the repeated pursuit of highly attractive goals and corresponding inattention to alternative goals." In my case, I completely ignored my schedule the other day.

2. According to a study published on Forbes and according to my experiences, the journey from small scale addiction to deadly addiction may happen in a flash but before that, in the habit phase you still have control over yourself and are aware of your behaviours. Surprisingly, almost all of us weigh the pros and cons every single time we turn to a new habit and it is suggested that you do it more often. So, this basically makes you more aware of yourself and your habits and then you are much likely to develop healthier habits.

3. A simple way to understand how habits work is to look at how they affect

a. Your Daily routine/Plans

b. Your Decision Making and Thought Process

c. Your lifestyle and life as a whole.

Once, you are able to understand these effects, you will surely make wiser decisions.

4.I surely had fire in me, the fire in me to achieve the best (Highest rating in this case) and I would say, it was indeed a good aspect to it but, maybe I could have used it in a better way or I could have at least made few strict rules for myself but nevertheless I feel it’s sometimes okay to let your heart be your guide.

(However, it is always suggested to take right decisions at the right time, do what’s more important to you because, naturally the consequences are huge at a later stage as it is difficult to shake the habits later on and moreover as the old saying goes “Time and Tide wait for none”!)

In simpler terms, it is always okay to do anything you want to until it does no harm to you, your well-being and the people around you.

Mental happiness/pleasure is naturally important to homo sapiens. And ignoring smaller pleasures for doing entirely a different thing, will in fact lead you to a more dangerous mental disorder of unhappiness. However, it is always important to have control and understanding of our actions/behaviour in a longer run for a happy, healthy and comfortable life.

At the end, the thoughts/ideas mentioned earlier may not be more serious for an addiction described in my case. It might seem simple, funny and more silly reference to explaining this phenomenon but, in a larger context, for addictions of extremely high negative consequences as we see in our everyday life, it is important to give a thought and take wiser decisions. This anecdote from my life was chosen to explain this phenomenon only because of its relatability, simplicity and conveyance to spread an important message of extreme importance in the current times which is often ignored seeing the title even before going into details.

Ironically, this article was also written post my late-night rituals, procrastinating some other work and pondering over my disturbed schedule of tomorrow. That happens regularly, never mind!!

HAHA!! You all must be wondering what happened to my rating now. Lol! I continued to play Chess, I started at around 1AM and continued till 10 AM with Zero breaks and finally reached a respectable rating of 1400 according to me and uninstalled all the Chess and related applications on my mobile phone and continued with my schedule as per the plan, just that I skipped sleeping the next day (I felt that's the only way back then. However, it's soon going to be back on my phone after a couple of weeks and all poised with heads up to reach the next milestone of 1500!). Any Chess nerds, Chess fans, Chess enthusiasts, Chess Maniacs up for the challenge, I'm up for it!

(Of course, other than the LDS Lads who are always there!

Mentions:

Nishal Sir, Vishal, Pushkar & the expert at Chessbuzz.com: Mayank Sir)

In the end, I once again quote,

“Not all habits will lead to addictive behaviours, but it’s still important to recognize the dependent nature of some substances and practices. It’s not often that people begin with full-blown addictions; instead, addictions develop over the course of time. During the early stages of habit formation, people may still have the power to mould their behaviours and practices and it’s important to realize this very fact.”