The Purpose of Addiction and the Secret of How to Change
Addictions are needs in drag, unfulfilled, legitimate longings that require a temporary stand-in.
If you break a leg, you use a crutch until you are healed. In the addict’s case, the leg never heals and the crutch is needed in order for him to function. If you remove his crutch in an attempt to help him, he falls down because his leg is still broken. Now he has a broken leg and no crutch. Now what? This is what is called white-knuckle recovery, in which the individual has forcibly removed the addictive program or substance and now has neither the leg nor the crutch.
Now what, indeed.
If addictions are substitutes for what is truly needed, then What is it that is most needed, exactly?
If I address my spiritual, emotional, mental or physical needs first, won’t I have a better chance of dealing with my addiction effectively?
Yes.
If I accept responsibility for meeting my needs (an act of love), then surely I will find a way that is life-giving and not just more broken legs and crutches. In being responsible for my state, and to it, I gain power and choice and my freedom is restored.
Therefore, the best way to overcome addiction is to own it. I created it, I can un-create it.
However, I ain’t gonna do it if I have to both live without my needs being met PLUS having no crutch.
If my leg heals, I forget about the crutch. I don’t have to go to AA or work on the so-called addiction, the “problem” of “having a crutch.”
It disappears on its own.
This is the Secret Of How To Change. Don’t throw your crutch away and call that “recovery.” Fix the broken leg. Do what is most life-giving, more pleasurable and fulfilling than the crutch. Who would not rather have two good legs over a crutch? No one. When the needs are met, the crutch is unnecessary. But not until.
I like crutches when they are needed. I broke my ankle recently and managed to work and survive because of my crutch. I do not condemn or criticize crutches. They’re necessary.
I criticize stupidity. Especially my own. I kid you not: There have been times in my life when I have actually chosen crutches over two good legs. What an idiot.
Here’s the biggest idiocy of all, the King Kong of all addictions, the very one which fuels all the rest. It is the most vile, the worst, degraded horror of them all:
The Cult and Empire of the Counterfeit Self.
The one who imagines himself to be “abandoned and rejected by Life.”
The Perpetual Victim, Tyrant, and Vampire.
He can’t get any Juice from Life, so he steals it from you. He cut himself off, now you’re gonna pay. Marooned on an Island of Flesh, he’s a cornered rat. God abandoned him, he feels worthless, and is hungry for pleasure, satisfaction, and distraction from the Dungeon of Horrors.
What do you expect? Roses? Cutting yourself off from Life and Love is the absolutely worst thing you can possibly do, worse than putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. It’s worse because you die a slow, agonizing, miserable, horrible, tortured death. You bring everything and everyone down with you. Your lovelessness contaminates everything.
Instead of being open to the blissful Current of Life Energy, you feel sorry for yourself because you’re so “worthless” and “unlovable.” You don’t radiate love and happiness, you stink. Plus, it’s everybody else’s fault. You’re a victim. You don’t have to take responsibility for yourself. That’s what’s so great about victimhood. You get to blame others, Gods, and substances for your state and fate. What could be better?
People ooze down into this shithole on a regular basis, then wonder why they like heroin so much. Or fame. Or materialism. Or power.
These are distractions, consolations in the midst of suffering.
Undo the suffering, distractions are no longer needed.
Authentic, complete, permanent recovery from all addictions is possible only when we take full responsibility, as an act of love, for owning, honoring and meeting our spiritual, emotional, and physical needs. Those needs include the ability to love, and to be love, under all conditions. We also need emotional openness, freedom, happiness, purpose, mission, destiny, excitement and pleasure. These are not mere ideas and there are no real, permanent substitutes for them any more than a crutch is an actual substitute for a leg.
Find out for yourself.
