The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. - Johann HarriThese sentiments are augmented by a growing number of experts, including addiction specialist Dr. Gabor Maté, who cites 'emotional loss and trauma' as the core of addiction. Compare this 'emotional loss' to Johan Harri's idea about lack of connection and it is clear they're talking about a similar emotional condition.
Limbic Resonance
If connection is the opposite of addiction, then an examination of the neuroscience of human connection is in order. Published in 2000, A General Theory Of Love is a collaboration between three professors of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco. A General Theory Of Love reveals that humans require social connection for optimal brain development and that babies cared for in a loving environment are psychological and neurologically 'immunised' by love. When things get difficult in adult life, the neural wiring developed from a love-filled childhood leads to increased emotional resilience in adult life. Conversely, those who grow up in an environment where loving care is unstable or absent are less likely to be resilient in the face of emotional distress.
How does this relate to addiction? Gabor Maté observes an extremely high rate of childhood trauma in the addicts he works with and trauma is the extreme opposite of growing up in a consistently safe and loving environment. He asserts that it is extremely common for people with addictions to have a reduced capacity for dealing with emotional distress, hence an increased risk of drug dependence.
How Our Ability to Connect is Impaired by Trauma
Trauma is well-known to cause interruption to healthy neural wiring, in both the developing and mature brain. A deeper issue here is that people who have suffered trauma, particularly children, can be left with an underlying sense that the world is no longer safe, or that people can no longer be trusted. This erosion (or complete destruction) of a sense of trust, that our family, community, and society will keep us safe, results in isolation - leading to the very lack of connection Johann Harri suggests is the opposite of addiction. People who use drugs compulsively do so to avoid the pain of past trauma and to replace the absence of connection in their life.
Social Solutions to Addiction
The solution to the problem of addiction on a societal level is both simple and fairly easy to implement. If a person is born into a life that is lacking in love and support on a family level, or if due to some other trauma they have become isolated and suffer from addiction, there must be a cultural response to make sure that person knows that they are valued by their society (even if they don't feel valued by their family). Portugal has demonstrated this with a 50% drop in addiction thanks to programs that are specifically designed to re-create connections between the addict and their community.
Personal Solutions to Addiction
Ask not why the addiction, but why the pain. - Gabor MatéRecreating bonds is essential in the long term, but human connection is crucial in the immediate task of clearing trauma. When a person decides to finally face and feel the pain that they may have been avoiding for years or decades, the first steps cannot be done alone.
You have to be with that pain, but you have to have support. - Gabor MatéThis support is essentially the reintroduction of the care and support which is so important in creating the neural structure of emotional-resilience in early life. By doing so, we begin to replace what was missing, and thanks to the revelations of neuroplasticity we now know that you can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks; neural rewiring is possible in adult life. Though it is essential for addicts to feel supported in order to finally face and feel the pain they have been trying to avoid, this is ultimately an inner journey that must be taken by the individual.
Whatever you do, don't try and escape from your pain, but be with it. Because the attempt to escape from pain creates more pain. - The Tibetan Book Of Living And DyingThe Roots of Healing
When we are young, our parents care for us until we are able to do it for ourselves, after all, they won't be there to do it for us forever. Perhaps on an emotional level, this is also true: our parents love us so that we may learn to do it for ourselves. The programs in Portugal have demonstrated that addicts do remarkably well when they feel valued by their community. Whether they realize it or not, the Portuguese are creating positive limbic modeling by valuing the addicts so they can learn to value themselves. When people are there to provide loving support for an addict wishing to face the emotional pain they carry, they are loving them and caring for them until they can learn to love themselves. With this in mind, perhaps the neural-wiring of emotional resilience developed through the loving reflection of another, once fully developed, could simply be called self-love.
So beneath all forms of addiction, recognised as such, is what we call our thinking.
In a sense, THIS is our 'precious' and first born son - that gives us our reality bubble and defends it against Reality.
That there is another way of being in the world than fear, defence and struggle is often unrecognised until the COST of such mind and world is recognised - however dimply - and a willingness, or curiosity stirs within us. To the defended mind, any change that is not and extension of the self-possession and control is feared threat and denied or subverted as such. So it isn't that healing or Reminding messengers are not coming - but that from a rigidly defined set of conditions, they are ruled out.
It seems that some can heal or some things can heal - but in truth healing is accepted - even if through specific 'permission slips' by which the mind can retain its current sense of integrity, for even madness or death can be resorted to in defence (and defiance) against feared or hated or shaming truth. But that last phrase demonstrated doublethink - because truth is ONLY itself - and attacks NOT. The intention of attack is projected onto Life as a result of accepting it within our self - and so self conflict has a self-hatred or self-rejecting dissociation.
The desire to heal is the basis for its acceptance or to put in terms of love, an active willingness to extend an appreciation is the way to have it and discover that what we appreciate, appreciates. This is no less true of a negative appreciation but SEEMS to be at the hand of an OTHER, a fearful or hateful past, a cruel 'god' or a meaningless and nihilistic existence in which hate is normalised but not thereby undone or truly put behind us.
No one can heal themselves of what the secretly or even openly want to persist in despite the pain or BECAUSE of it.
The identification with the body as a separated and isolate or dissociated 'thinking' of some tiny but magnified sense of self-referencing possession and control, is using the body as a marketising and weaponising purpose. Letting the body serve communication (on all levels of our experience) is the awakening of true purpose from a dream that turned to nightmare. The always already Connectedness is within a silence or unconflictedness of being. It is only necessary to want to heal, and then listening and moving with the healing opportunities, so as to grow from a new place than self-lack projecting to a world of denial.
Because you know the mind can deceive you must also know that you cannot use the mind that set you in lack and compulsion, to free or awaken from it. That there is MORE than the reality that we think and have adapted or indeed maladapted within is a basis for an honest curiosity such as you are BORN WITH and have only covered over - not lost. That you can hurt yourself is evident, but that your true self or being is broken is false - and yet it is wise to keep the crutches until we can feel the sustaining power of life through our limbs.
The mind that follows or serves the heart of a true listening is NOT backwards, but moments of sanity to appreciate -rather than a basis for blame for 'losing or betraying' Until the script is recognised AS a script it is as if your OWN THOUGHT.
Phishing ruses operate by passing of the false in the forms or seeings of true.
Seeking fantasy gratifications of an essentially unshared or private - even mutually private nature is not just a vanity but in vain; futile.
The way to break a habit is to bring it into awareness such that it is recognised as a choice and looked at in terms of what that choice is enacting or embodying. What we resist, persists, and what we do not use, fades from non use.
The willingness to align or realign in conscious purpose - anyway and in any way that we find that works for us - is living FROM a sense of worth that is fundamentally shared instead of towards a fantasy or within a network of fantasies that mitigate or seem to at least temporarily escape self conflicts that are unrecognised because the mind is active in dissociation - and repeating or re-enacting the core beliefs of unworthiness, rejection, betrayal and all the range of permutations of the negatively defined self - perhaps successfully for while under a socially presentable persona that seems to have become powerful or gained possession.
The 'world' is an addiction by which the awareness and embodiment of our true being is lost.
But the 'world' of healing is predicated to serve a different purpose. Looking at - and feeling into what arises in our life as an opportunity for healing instead of a call to defence (attack) is not to choose to identify as victim - nor to be a doormat for abuse by yourself or others. There is no shame in our starting place - in this and any moment of willingness - and the release of such baggage and framing makes otherwise hellish experience, bearable, and then transformable to eventually recognize the Truth of you was Never absent - but that is the gift of a recognition and a gift accepted because you are now willing to live and give from who you Are - instead of trying to make what you are Not - become real for you.