This is absolutely my experience with alcohol. A lot of the time, though, we have to quit dysfunctional behavior before we can identify what functional behavio

This is absolutely my experience with alcohol. A lot of the time, though, we have to quit dysfunctional behavior before we can identify what functional behavior looks like. I totally agree with you that there is a chicken and egg problem. My typical advice for folks is to quit the behavior completely: you're correct in identifying how blocking tools cause their own problems and just mimic the same addictive behavior. Then, at that point, it's going to be necessary to find some other behavior, but that's often a lot easier once you've got to do something... you just have to make sure that the things you choose to do are good. Like, I gave up my codependent relationship with my ex wife, and that made it possible to give up drinking, but I still have to play a shit-ton of scales on guitar and piano and about an hour of yoga or I get weird. Or I quit facebook, but now I do a a daily run of Kahn academy and working on electronics projects; that's a symptom, but it's a symptom that I enjoy.