Addiction restructures the reality we perceive and arranges it according to its own agenda. It hijacks the basic intelligence of the body and brain and allows them to operate only in accordance with its own perspectives. The body and brain comply and are stimulated by this process which hijacks their ‘natural’ mode of expression.
Addiction is an internal Stockholm Syndrome whereby our substance of choice holds us captive and refuses to release us. In the process we fall in love with our captor and rationalize its actions as beneficial.
No matter what kind of addiction we might have, this is the dynamic. An irrational love for the substance, even in the face of abuse, often accompanied by a sense of self-loathing.
The substance can be anything: a liquor, a narcotic, a person, an ideology.
In truth, most of us are addicts in some way or another, to some degree. This is because a sense of lack is almost universal within human beings. And it seems that the journey for most people is about how to resolve that feeling of lack. While part of this feeling of lack may be conscious, most of it is unconscious. The void we feel inside goes deep.
What we call ‘life’ becomes nothing more than a series of strategies to fill that void.
Some believe that material objects will somehow satisfy that lack. So, they are driven by a need to acquire a vast amount of money, assets, homes, businesses and so on.
Some believe that emotional experiences will fill that lack. So, they are driven by a need to find the ideal partner, start a family, maintain a large circle of friends, acquaintances, social networks and so on.
Others believe that theories and concepts will fill that lack. So, they are driven by a need to acquire knowledge, build systems of thought, beliefs or ideology.
Still others believe that having spiritual or mystical experiences will fill that lack. So, they are driven by a need to attain altered states of consciousness, peak experiences and mystical union.
No one seeks in purely one direction. Most people are simultaneously seeking in more than one of these arenas of life, but there is always one area that is dominant when compared to the rest. And that is what informs the construction of our primary identity.
The holy grail is the one-size-fits-all solution that will perfectly resolve that sense of void. And that holy grail may take the form of extreme wealth, the perfect love, a unified theory of everything or spiritual enlightenment.
Yet, the hour of disillusionment is inevitable. It is the moment when we realize that no matter how much we accumulate in the substance of our choice, it can never fill the void for long. The sense of lack is always lurking in the background.
That void is a bottomless pit.
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The ‘void’ is what we create through the force of our denial of the truth that is always staring us in the face. And every attempt to fill the void is really a reinforcement of that denial. It is a refusal to accept what is real and present, by envisioning an ‘alternative truth’, an ideal reality in which no such void exists.
Hence, the irony, that it is the alternative truth that creates the void. The void is the chasm between the truth and its alternative. Between what is and what could be.
Which is why facing the void and then sitting smack in the middle of it is the only reasonable thing to do. It is usually the last resort that people arrive at when there is nowhere left to go. And as unbearable as it feels for a time, the very act of sitting and being present with it is how it transforms.
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