I tell you honestly, we’re all inhaling something! What we particularly inhale makes the difference between us. If we stick to air, then all we are doing is fulfilling a perfectly legitimate need. However, if in addition to air, we also indulge our nostrils with some cocaine/crystal etc., then we are already entering the area of illegitimate needs, the area of addictions and vices.
We are facing a global crisis in terms of increasing drug use, and the statistics show it very clearly2. In 2021 it was estimated that there were around 296 million users2.1 of prohibited substances worldwide. That in real terms would mean that the entire population of the United States is addicted to drugs. These statistics were compiled in 2021, but the drug problem has grown exponentially worse, like a malignant tumor, including here in our sleepy Romania. But where does the interest in such experiences come from, whose end is inevitably destruction? In this series of articles, I will seek to discuss why people’s inability to be in relationships in a healthy way inevitably leads to addiction.
In the process of demonstrating this point of view, I will try to answer a series of questions, in order to uncover this new understanding step by step. It is very difficult to understand and accept deeply the implications that such a perspective brings, especially because it leads to deep crushing and grief, but once you make peace with it in the real sense, the necessary process for cultivating a humble heart in the face of life’s intrinsic fragility can begin within you. And why am I talking about the humility necessary in the face of life’s fragility? This is the only way to fully come to terms with the lack of control over others and the unpredictability of life, and by avoiding the typical pitfalls of fatalistic complacency or over-romantic optimism, you will be able to enter into the true healthy logic of mercy towards those caught in the web of addiction. So that you can then create in yourself the education and courage of a heart that is willing to start taking concrete and constructive action. Those actions truly have the power to help addicts on their path to liberation. A road that we are all on, after all, while there are still areas in our lives that need to be simplified and harmonized with the whole.
Therefore, in this first article, I propose to answer the following set of questions so that together we can understand that receptivity to potentially addictive behaviors is mainly motivated by the desire to escape from shame. This shame precedes openness to addiction because the drug provides a virtual world where the illusion of total absence of pain and shame in the present moment is created, but also the false hope that it will never be experienced again. Instead, the harmful consequences of addiction deepen the sense of shame that drove you to the drug, so that in the end everything closes in a vicious cycle, one in which things come from shame and lead to more shame.
1. Why do people end up opening themselves up to the experience of pleasure in such a destructive way?
2. What particular kind of pain do people experience being in relationships and why are most of us unable to overcome this kind of pain?
3. What are the main types of relationships we have in life and how do they relate to the structure of our psyche?
4. What is the inevitable result of this kind of pain and what aspects of ourselves do we end up rejecting as a result?
- Why do people open themselves up to the experience of pleasure in such a destructive way?
Addictions arise because we become dependent on a particular source of pleasure which makes our lives bearable. Momentary pleasure gives us the illusion of a perfect reality from which pain is excluded, and any recurring experience of an upsetting feeling is forgotten for a time. We ultimately do not become addicted to pleasure. We may even come to hate the pleasure that the drug brings us because the unpleasant consequences of addiction are very real. But, the need to stop experiencing the pain that comes with drug deprivation is too intense to control. We therefore open ourselves up to addiction, and remain in addiction, because we are captive to the desire to successfully forget all those unpleasant emotions and unpleasant sensations, which we otherwise do not know how to get rid of. And because we want to stop feeling pain, the addiction will have power over us, but the pain will not dissolve from our lives, on the contrary, it will persist and eventually accumulate.
For example, a mother who is addicted to alcohol and who drinks heavily during her pregnancy may be aware of the harm she is doing to her child. On the other hand, the addiction to the false wellness she experiences when she drinks, even if she experiences feelings of guilt about the harm, she is doing to her little one, will cause her to perpetuate her addiction, beyond the inevitable disastrous consequences. We become addicted to something that hurts us because we want to forget who we are when we are confronted with a recurring pain from our past that we otherwise don’t know how to escape.
2. What kind of pain do people experience being in relationships and why are most of us unable to overcome this kind of pain?
This specific type of pain, the one I want to talk about here, is an inescapable aspect of life in terms of our interpersonal relationships. We live in an imperfect world, a world which, however, can become a good place to live when healthy socio-political initiatives take place and real communities are formed. We need this kind of ambition, without which there can be no hope for the decisions we make, hope that offers a plausible horizon for improving our future concerning our present shortcomings. However, beyond these necessary ideals, for most of us, everyday life in this world involves, in addition to the normal dose of happiness, a great deal of suffering and bitterness.
This pain I speak of arises because of the essentially relational nature that we humans have, and it represents above all, missing the chance to be authentic with others in the relationships we have. If we as individuals are not authentic, we will be condemned to live in vain trying to please others, if we have a slave mentality, or if we have a master mentality, tyrannizing others to get strictly what we want. But to be a free man requires, on the one hand, the power to consider the desires of others, therefore validating their equality with your desires, but, on the other hand, the power to fulfill your desires, without reducing their possibility of realization and their validity to the approval and satisfaction of others. I am aware that this is a very difficult balance to achieve, but not impossible, especially when life is lived with personal ownership. For this reason, a child who will feel that he doesn’t matter within his family and only the wishes of the others in the family count will suffer an intense emotional block in terms of freedom to accept his personal choices. And this is because his individual choice could put him in opposition to the interest of others.
In contrast, a child who can do as he wishes, without any limitation of his will by his parents, will also experience a great blockage in terms of being able to develop healthy relationships. He will not be able to see others as equals in terms of their desires, more specifically to develop healthy cooperative relationships. So, the real pain we experience in our relationships is the pain born of the inability to be authentic with others who in turn practice the same level of freedom with us. Unable to be authentic, we seek to find a substitute for this absence of real intimacy.
Drugs can therefore provide us with a space of sensation where we no longer feel the need to connect to anyone who might hurt and reject us, but at the same time, experience intense pleasure to make up for what we are missing. This pleasure justifies its meaning firstly because it numbs the pain we feel circularly towards our past, and secondly because it numbs the pain, we feel in the present in the face of missing the true connection. Stuck in the world of pleasure that drugs bring us, we will never have the chance to get out of this pain of inauthenticity in an empowering way, that is, by cultivating real and healthy relationships, and this is because drugs will give us enough consolation to remain inert in the hallucination of our self-sufficiency. We will lie to ourselves that we don’t need anyone to be happy, and we will lie to ourselves that we will eventually get out of addiction on our own.
3. What are the main types of relationships we have in life and how do they relate to the structure of our psyche?
The relationships we experience in this world fall into three categories and they relate to the types of experiences our psyche can have. The first type of relationship that we have because of our existence in the world is the relationship with the Absolute. The Absolute for many of us is God as we understand Him, but for those who do not believe in God, this relationship is to those elements in our minds that we do not discuss or question recurrently, but inevitably act upon.
For example, for a strictly materialist scientist, one who rejects any existence of the spiritual field because it is outside deterministic empirical validation, even such phenomena of reality as the mind are nothing more than an emergent property of matter, that is something that arises strictly from matter. He is forced to believe this because his Absolute is matter, or more precisely his current understanding of matter. So, for him, everything that is materially indeterminable by necessity does not exist. The Absolute is the set of axioms of each of us, the set of musts, and concerning the Absolute we can only enter into a relationship of acceptance and surrender of our critical faculties, and this is because they are truisms for the logic of our thinking. I may not accept the validity of the Pythagorean theorem, but that does not mean that it does not continue to be as valid, despite my approval of its status as a mathematical truth, once I have accepted it, it becomes a truism for me, a self-evident truth.
The next type of relationship we experience is the relationship with ourselves. How does this come about, can I be in a relationship with myself? Being in a good relationship with yourself means listening to yourself as an individual and your unique way of being so that you don’t end up imposing on yourself the Absolutes of others, which don’t make sense to you anyway. This is the only way you come to accept your understanding of the Absolute so that you can then be free to live in peace with who you authentically are. This is not to invalidate moral imperatives but to succeed in overcoming the feelings of fear, shame, and guilt that overwhelm us when we come to depend on others to make us feel good and safe before we can be assumed with who we are.
The last way of connecting, of those accessible to humans, is through relationships with others. This kind of relationship inevitably becomes peaceful if we have assumed our understanding of the Absolute, and as a result, we come to enjoy ourselves and not be at war with who we are. It makes sense that once we are peaceful with ourselves we should want the same for others, you cannot love others more than you love yourself, as the Holy Scripture says. Once these relationships have been healed, we can become concerned about the environment, because just as we need the Absolute and others to be truly ourselves, we also need nature, and ourselves to nurture and sustain us as well as the generations to come.
But all of these particular kinds of relationships have direct parallels in the areas of our psychological experience: The absolute concerns that area of necessity, those basic structures on which we build our right to freedom of choice, but also justify our own choices. The self is the individual expression of who we are through our desires, and the others are our community of belonging that at a deeper or shallower level shares with us various forms of the Absolute. Whether they are our closest friends, our life partners, or our fellow citizens who, by living with us in the same area, implicitly assume several obligations that any citizen of a country has. So, although we are necessarily in relation to others, and they are those who are not I (Absolute, self, others), being in this body of flesh we relate primarily to ourselves and thus the problems and pains associated with any form of defective relationships, we experience and re-experience within the subjective framework of our intimacy.
The shame of who we are compels us to want oblivion, and drugs provide it instantly. Shame blocks our authenticity and the relationships we have become incapable of providing us with the necessary context of love to overcome this fundamental shame. Shame is a social feeling because it is born through inter-human relationships and it affects all levels. Every type of relationship we have in our lives is contaminated, whether we are talking about our relationship with God, with ourselves, or with others. So no matter what type of relationship we may engage in in this life, this shame will always be internalized and felt in ourselves, in the flesh that we carry. This inner place of shame towards the freedom of being truly ourselves will be our primary pain, the space from which we will operate in all our future relationships, unable to be healed by the unconditionally accepting love.
4. What is the inevitable result of this kind of pain and what aspects of ourselves do we come to reject as a result of this process?
Shame turns you into either a cunning beggar or an insensitive tough guy, but our true vulnerability, the one born of the desire to be loved and fulfilled in a free relationship, will become unknown and inaccessible to us, because confronting its existence, as well as our failure to realize it, would be too intense a pain for us to handle. Drugs provide a temporary anesthetic to this pain, but because of the body’s ability to adapt to drugs, their effects diminish considerably over time, requiring increasingly stronger drugs and larger and more frequent doses to achieve the desired effect.
But the price of seeking pleasure and fulfillment outside the reality of life is death. Because any illusion has a huge price to pay for keeping it alive in the face of reality. In this case, the price you will pay is the health of your body, immense socio-emotional damage, and finally, the death of your spirit, which will gradually feel more and more alone in the shell of your body weakened by this illusory pleasure.
Choose life, choose reality!
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