Addiction

Addiction in its most obvious forms carries heavy stigma in today's society. It carries signs of weakness and wrong choices. It provides good premises for judging individuals without having to take surrounding factors into account. With this text I want to shine a more humane light on the topic of addiction. It is something that concerns us all, it is extremely human and it needs understanding rather than condemnation.

I want to start by presenting Dr Gabor Maté's definition of addiction because it is so humane and easily understandable.

"Addiction manifests in any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, but suffers negative consequences from, and yet has trouble giving up despite these negative consequences"

Dr. Gabor Mate

A coping mechanism

With that starting point, it is much more helpful to ask what the addiction does FOR you and not what it does to you. Typical answers you will then get are "I get free", "I feel valuable", "I feel alive" or "it removes shame". All of these are normal human needs, aren't they? So purely psychologically, addiction is an immediate coping mechanism to solve a problem . Because in broad terms it is about pain relief. For some it is direct pain, physical and psychological. For others it is from a slight itch to great anxiety. Some attribute it to the pursuit of excitement. Restlessness. But the common denominator is that where you are right then when the need for addiction arises, it is uncomfortable to be there. Some encounter this discomfort in specific situations, others carry it all the time.

Means of addiction come in all shapes and forms. Drugs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, overeating, undereating, exercise, shopping, power, money, sex, porn, gambling, computer games, TV, smartphones, working, etc. They all serve the same purpose. Numbers, distractions, painkillers. So with this in mind, you can see that addiction is a big part of today's society. I think there are very few people who can say on their deathbed that they have been 100% free of some addiction during their lifetime.

Addiction is not the root cause. It never is. I like the theory that there are no bad survival parts in us. Everyone is created with a positive intention to solve a problem, no matter how many new problems the parts may later create in life when the world and you change and the mission of the parts no longer fits. Just as shame, depression and anxiety are initially created to solve a problem in the psyche, so too is addiction, in all its forms. Defining addiction as a disease and/or focusing on all the negative consequences that follow in the wake of addiction, inflicts shame and unworthiness on the person concerned and one loses sight of the original positive intention of the addiction, and thus the clue to the root cause. In the ultimate consequence, it inflicts an even greater need for addiction on the person by creating more painful feelings that need to be diverted and numbed.

So to get to the root cause, the question is not what does addiction do to you, but what does addiction do to you? What is the addiction trying to solve? What is it trying to distract you from? What feelings is it triggering? What new feelings is it creating in you?