Perception and Addiction

Unless I judge I cannot weep.  Nor can I suffer pain, or feel I am abandoned or unneeded in the world.
-ACIM -W-301:1:1-2

Oh what a tangled web we weave 

I am thinking of  those famous words from Sir Walter Scott's poem, Marmion.  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.  The word "perceive" would also substitute for deceive and apply beautifully in today's topic about addiction.

I have been dealing with and thinking about the  conundrum of  life threatening drug addiction, any addiction really.  What causes it?

Many of us, as humans,  feel pain from time to time.  It sucks to have to do so. We naturally want relief from the pain...so we look to something outside ourselves to 'numb' it with.  If we find something that  works  we do it again the next time we feel pain, and the next and the next.  And then fearing future pain we begin to numb before we have to feel its dreaded and much avoided presence in our lives. We begin to use the substance or activity to avoid pain all together.

We easily become very attached to our choice of relief and pain prevention. It becomes a lover we do not want to lose.  We fear that it may be taken from us and jealous and obsessed  we cling with all our might.  We may resort to lying, cheating, stealing and God knows what else just to keep that numbing relief in our day to day existence. This leads to more and an increased need to do.  We need more and more of that thing to get the numbing effect.  We create a massive tangled web around our lives and the lives of those we love when we do.  This is addiction.

So what are the issues that lead to addiction, in spiritual terms?

Most people would be quick to say that 'pain' is the cause of addiction.  Would you say that? A person who uses,  abuses or partakes in any type of numbing activity is usually seeking to relieve pain, right?  It is true that many opiate addictions begin with a need for physical pain relief.  Many people reach for the bottle when they are depressed.  Even in recreational use, a person reaches for an addicting thing in order to relieve the pain of boredom.  We naturally just want to relieve pain and feel better. Correct? So pain definitely has a part to play in the creation of addiction. But is it the cause of addiction?

Does Life cause addiction?

To say that pain causes addiction is to say that Life causes addiction. Every human being has pain at some point in their life, so why isn't every human being an addict? We all have the potential to be addicts but some are said to be more genetically prone to taking substance use to the next level because the way their brains are wired.  That is true but I believe that what makes  our society as a whole  so 'addiction prone' today goes beyond pain and genetics to choice. 

Choice

We all have heard of that choice/illness argument in understanding addiction but when I use the word choice I am referring not so much to the choice to use or not  use but the choice to deny pain or allow it as a part of being human.  I believe the real cause of addiction is our refusal to accept and understand the pain experience for what it is, our resistance to accepting Life for all it is. 

The Choice to Resist Pain

Most of us resist feeling pain and avoid it at all costs! When we resist anything, what happens? It persists and magnifies into some great sense of suffering.  Ego steps in and adds story and identification to it...so the pain becomes a part of you rather than something you are just experiencing. You become an addict...a person addicted to the process of avoiding and resisting anything that you judge as bad.

Judging pain as a bad thing

Every thought is a kind of judgment. Eckhart Tolle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VysaqZR44VY)

Why do we resist?  We resist because we judge pain as a bad thing.  We are conditioned to believe that it is something we need to prevent or  relieve ourselves and others from right away.  We try to fix it, minimize it, avoid it.  Judging pain as a bad thing is a societal norm.  We judge momentary slips from comfort a bad thing, life events that do not go exactly as we planned as a bad thing, and physical and mental aches and pains as bad things. Instead of just seeing pain as a temporary part of the human experience, we judge it as a bad thing that needs to be avoided or ended right away.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to perceive

Could addiction actually be a perception problem? Could it be that we need to examine our need to avoid certain experiences in life that we judge as bad as being the cause of most of our so called suffering?   I believe that pain is not the problem...the avoidance of it is. 

Do we need to examine, then, the way we look at things?  Maybe we need to reconsider our dualistic need to distinguish good from bad. I am compelled at this point to bring you back to Hamlet Act II Scene II Nothing is neither good or bad but thinking makes it so.  (Shakespeare). 

What if we took a second look at the things that cause pain and that we feel so desperate to avoid?  What if that person who was feeling depressed looked differently at depression and seen it not as a never ending thing that would define them but as a temporary physical world experience that they could simply watch themselves pass through?

What if we just learned...truly learned to allow the moment to be as it is and be willing to sit through what it offers, to observe it without fear.  If we stopped resisting just how fleeting and doable would pain become, I wonder? What if we simply learned to sit through our feelings?  I know that sounds so simple but it isn't for about 90% of this population.

Preventing Addiction

Could we not put our energy and focus more into preventing addiction rather than spending so much energy and resources into treating it with things that may actually make it worse?

How would we do that? What if we started teaching our kids at a very early age at home and in our institutions to feel all emotions and to experience the magnificent beauty of all Life's many contrasts?

 Let's put away our good and bad, right and wrong judgments when we speak to them and instead infuse them with the beauty of "it simply is" . What if we stopped teaching them to 'resist', avoid, hide,  pretend, deny  and fight their way through the so called 'bad things' that show up?  Of course...we still need to protect them from the choices of other egos until the world smartens up...but let's not be afraid to show them that Life is worth living with clarity and full awareness, that it is not something they have to numb themselves from. Nothing is either good or bad...

Unless we judge we can not weep...

Please know, that I am not diminishing the drastic life altering effects addiction and certain 'pain' can have on the life of the addict and their loved ones ...believe me, I know how challenging it is.  But Letting go and Letting God is one of the major twelve steps in recovery for a reason, don't you think?  Let's let go of our judgment and start living.

 I'll stop rambling now. 

All is well.