Fetishes/Substance Abuse : the 'Withdrawal' and the positive insights from it

 I equate fetishes and substance abuse as the Set/Subsets of each other. Substance abuse is just the tangible form of fetishes, the psychological initiating expression for the substance abuse. For that reason I want to talk about fetishes to show its connection to substance abuse.

The conventional definition for fetishes is: A fetish (derived from the French fétiche; which comes from the Portuguese feitiço; and this in turn from Latin facticium, "artificial" and facere, "to make") is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object. 

The "attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object' is not confined/restricted to a 3-dimensional object. It can be to an intangible entity. Your favorite TV-show/video, music or anything else with which a sensation is precipitated by the thought of it is, IMNHO, a fetish. Tangible objects, such as idols or drugs are the tactile version of a connected thought-initiator.

Just as with any tactile drug from which you seek a withdrawal, a similar experience occurs with your fetishes. The triggering conditions for the habit have to be REPLACED by the new dimension of focused thought. Even that is a nurtured and developed process over time.

Formerly, I have written of how serendipities supplied the mental and temporal portals for providing other and better options for me to choose and pursue. For you who haven't had that experience I will seek to do a back-engineering of my experiences to give you some suggestions/clues/hints of what can be done.

There are events that can give one a greater visceral aversion to a past habit, I had been such a regular user of 'weed', aka marijuana, that I gained the pejorative of 'de Spaceman'. I thought it was more a hyper-characterization of my weed use, though I was a comparatively more frequent user than others thought of their use. After I learned of the events occurred with the people who took the train to Brooklyn to attend the wake/funeral of an associate who had OD'ed on prescribed depressants (sedatives, tranquilizers). On that trip they had indulged themselves with weed and other psycho-inebriates. I, 'the Spaceman', was so disgusted by that behavior that I became a lesser user of psycho-affecting drugs. A better example of a loosening emotional grip of some triggering behavior on me was the receipt of a put-down letter reply which dramatically ended my pedestaling of my candle of desire I'd held for a gal for over 25 years. 

A more insidious emotional grip is with our emotional relationships. 

 The ingrained responses to and with others could be seen as analogous-even as the precedential prologue-to the more tangible substance abuse.  The bonds based on presumed status by direct or extended blood relationships, and social bond created from mutual and collaborative activities of the past become the foundational predicate for a web of emotionally mutual expectations. Those expectations can be come anachronisms that subtly diverge with each one's separate unique experiences. In not recognizing nor accepting such changes leaves you vulnerable to compulsive impulses of coherence or knee-jerk adherence to the emotional bonds of loyalty of the now anachronistic  past.

Similarly, this is so with substance-abuse. the visceral need is more profound than the counter-options available, so you stick with the behavioral option that gives you the more secure piece-of-mind though it is on the adverse side of the spectrum of outcomes. This is also so with fetishes that have a personal investment by you for and with them. No matter the possible degrading and degenerative affecting behavior, you continue to do so because of the supposed level of  "more intense" fulfillment with them, than without them.

A serendipitous intervention, usually by circumstances, compels, then obligates you for expedient means and short-term convenient ends          to alter your reaction to the trigger. With consistent  and recurring, affirming results, the circumstantial intervention becomes the genesis of a natalistic behavior for you. Such affirmations will have to be strongly or overpoweringly competitive stimuli for these renaissance of choices becoming part of your triggered responses.

Fetishes, much as a substance abuse, exists from ingrained patterns of thought with an expedient vehicle of kinetic manifestation for it. Whether a person, inanimate object, or an sensory stimulus, once one builds or has built a pattern of behaviors and attitudes justifying your reaction to any of those elements you develop a fetish that can further degenerate into an abuse. Being cognizant of how your triggered (and 'played') by your cognitive responses you regain an agency of control for your choices as functionally procreative and proactive, than reactively dependent.
  

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