Drilling Down to the Root Cause of Addiction

Alignment disorder

I am an editor of ILLUMINATION. In a moment that illuminates the wonderous synchronicities afforded to every single person on Earth, just a few minutes ago, moments from an intention to return to bed, I hopped into our “Q” and at the very top of the list of articles awaiting review for submission, I found Fahim Chughtai’s story The Root Cause Of Addiction. Instead of struggling to go back to sleep or struggling to write through tiredness, I now find myself so energized by the serendipities I just discovered that I found myself dancing in my chair to Every Teardrop is a Waterfall by Coldplay and then to Pumping On Your Stereo by Supergrass, and now every tear has indeed turned into a waterfall as Candy Flip’s beautiful cover of one of my favorite songs by my all-time favorite band, the emergence of whose innovative sound proves the existence of higher powers, Strawberry Fields Forever, caresses my senses.

As an INTP-Aquarian, I march to the beat of my own drummer, and thus I do not seek out articles at the bottom of the Q to clear into acceptance — I look for articles that say “Marcus, thank the Gods you found me.” This is the first time I grabbed the most recent submission, which coincidentally had been lucky-for-me/us rejected by Stephen Moore as not a good fit for whichever publication(s) he edits. I published Mr. Chughtai’s story almost immediately.

12-Step Programs’ Abysmal Performance

I have an unfinished article in my draft folder on which I have worked on and off for months tentatively entitled, Why Take 12 Steps to Relapse When You Can Take 6 Steps to Recovery, Look Within Yourself and Adapt this Program to Suit Your Unique Vitality. I began working on that article in April or May when I first started reading on Medium, at which point my subconscious had not yet revealed my talent for writing, which must stem from being in the same soul group as some archetypical writers, as I have no formal training nor history in this lifetime of material writing.

The inspiration to write about addiction arose out of having read here on Medium, indirectly, I suppose, The Surprising Failures of 12 Steps (The Atlantic, March 2013). That article discussed a then-new book, thusly:

“Peer reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between five and 10 percent,” writes Dodes. “About one of every 15 people who enter these programs is able to become and stay sober.”

This contrasts with AA’s self-reported figures: A 2007 internal survey found that 33 percent of members said they had been sober for more than a decade. Twelve percent claimed sobriety for five to 10 years, 24 percent were sober for one to five years, and 31 percent were sober for under a year. Of course, those don’t take into account the large number of alcoholics who never make it through their first year of meetings, subsequently never completing the 12 steps (the definition of success, by AA’s standards).

Even AA’s self-reported statistics are abysmal. I will write in detail at a later date about how and why a program that preaches humility has such hubris to refuse to alter its ways in the face of lousy success rates. The short answer is a 42 BILLION DOLLAR industry has grown out of AA. The treatment centers preach AA as the only game in town so they keep sending people to AA and doctors keep sending patients to treatment and it’s a never-ending cycle. I am not blaming AA. I blame the centers, which even if not-for-profit, are paying executives what would be profits in salaries; and the doctors with addiction specialties who seem satisfied with results below the Mendoza line (a baseball reference to a batting average under .200).

I blame them for complacency; I blame them for profiteering. I blame the perversion of capitalism that cares more about profit and the resultant concentration of wealth than societal benefit at the expense of the workers and the middle class; in this instance, I blame the system that allows a few to get rich on the backs of the sick.

Destigmatize Substance Abuse

Now I will focus on the big picture of what needs to change. As noted by Fahim Chughtai, society stigmatizes substance abuse. This form of discrimination must cease. I recently pledged to donate 36% of any Medium Partner Program earnings from an important article of mine on an entirely different topic to charitable causes that promote:

the destigmatization of substance abuse and recognition that substance abuse is a societal problem that just is — it would neither be my fault resulting from lack of willpower nor not my fault caused by me having a disease — those unnecessary binaries are societal constructs.

The stigma attached to substance abuse exacerbates the demoralizing aspects of failure and the anonymity concept, which I urge AA to drop, is a tacit reinforcement of the stigma.

I make the same donation-pledge with respect to this article.

According to Dr. Harris Stratyner, Ph.D., a nationally renowned expert in the field of addiction treatment:

• According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 19.7 million American adults (aged 12 and older) battled a substance use disorder in 2017.1
• Major depressive disorder affects approximately 17.3 million American adults, or about 7.1% of the U.S. population age 18 and older, in a given year. (National Institute of Mental Health “Major Depression”, 2017)
• 1.9 million children, 3–17, have diagnosed depression. (Centers for Disease Control “Data and Statistics on Children’s Mental Health”, 2018)

We’ve all seen advertising campaigns with celebrities to remove the stigma from depression. It’s high time for the stigma to be removed from substance abuse.

As I noted above, substance abuse is not a question of choice — and the battle between the it’s-a-failure-of-willpower-folks and the it’s-a-disease-folks is a fucking red herring. The resolution of that dispute is irrelevant. Dr. Stratyner also points out:

• Drug abuse and addiction cost American society more than $740 billion annually in lost workplace productivity, healthcare expenses, and crime-related costs.

That does not include the costs of alcohol abuse nor deaths from driving under the influence.

This is a societal problem and the cost is so severe that society has to stop caring who is or is not at fault and simply treat the issue. In Take Responsibility for A World You Did Not Create, It’s the spiritually mature approach to the problems we face as a society, Patrick Paul Garlinger writes:

One of the most common responses to many of the world’s problems is to say that it’s not yours to solve.

That response might take the form of “my ancestors didn’t own slaves, I didn’t participate in slavery, I’m not racist, etc.” and therefore, “this isn’t my problem to solve, I’m not part of the problem, so no I don’t have white privilege and shouldn’t pay for reparations with my tax dollars.”

Another version goes something like, “I am not responsible for all the plastic in the ocean, and I didn’t produce all the methane that’s heating the planet, and I recycle and sometimes compost, and so I don’t feel like I’m responsible for cleaning up the environment.”

Those are just two examples of the logic that shapes the predominant model of responsibility: It’s not my fault, so I don’t bear responsibility. We rely on a model of responsibility based on individual liability — if your actions are the primary or sole cause of harm, only then you are held responsible for them. This model also depends on that individual’s actions resolving the problem.

The same analysis applies to substance abuse. PPG goes on to say:

Spirituality Offers a New Model of Responsibility

Can we create a sense of responsibility that is not rooted in individual wrongdoing? Another model of responsibility would extend to issues that you in your individual capacity believe you did not cause or contribute to them. This is where spirituality meets social and political change.

We need a model of responsibility that says that the problem exists because I participate in a system that collectively suffers from this problem — and I am part of that system. It endangers the entire system, and therefore I have an interest in doing what I can to solve it, even if I am not at fault.

Well, here, it is actually the system that is responsible for much of the problem. Humanity is spiritually ill. We have created a system that favors attachments over spirituality — a system that values the accumulation of wealth over one’s health — a system that defines happiness based upon the acquisition of possessions, including other people, over spiritual alignment.

Life’s purpose is to learn and one aspect is learning how to satisfy the human wants while not offending the soul’s spirituality. I recently concluded choosing a career to support a lifestyle is ass-backwards. One should choose the career that fits whom one is at their core, and then choose a lifestyle that such career can support. This is the opposite of what society teaches and this is at the root of much of addiction.

Do not get me wrong — substance abusers still have the ultimate accountability for their actions and a duty to do what they can to recover. In fact, my brand of spirituality requires accountability from everyone. When one stands by and allows people to act in discordance with the spiritual purpose of their souls, the souls of the unaligned get stained with entitlement. So, holding people responsible for their actions is a great service to their souls here and now, for the after-life, and future life cycles. See, Accountability, and responsibility to mitigate the karmic debt of the sinner as well as the saint.

I provided Dr. Stratyner with a draft of this article for his review and comment. Dr. Stratyner wrote to me:

I read every word — you’re an excellent writer and your basic point that addiction must be destigmatized is excellent. My research on my approach of “carefrontation” says all people with co-occurring illness must be treated with dignity and respect, but held accountable for taking responsibility for their respective illnesses and the synergistic effect each has when they come together.

Stated another way, “carefrontation” means compassionate accountability. Nothing can be more spiritual.

The Root Cause of Addiction

According to Mr. Chughtai, the root cause of addiction is:

attachment trauma that disconnected us from our first core relationships and our authentic self.[emphasis added]

Oh, you are so close and I applaud you. Attachment trauma is a cause of the root cause — not the root itself.

There is one thing that most if not all substance abusers have in common. Often heard around the rooms is “I never fit in,” “I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin,” which I thought meant socially, but I realized it means, at least for me, we weren’t following the path for which we were destined. This combined with genetics is the root cause in many people of substance abuse. Living life according to god’s plan, also often heard, means discerning one’s path.

You have probably heard, “try as you might, you cannot fit a square peg into a round hole.” Not heard is that a round peg will fit a square hole, but not well. If the diameter of the circle is just a smidge smaller than the sides of the square, it will fit ok but there will be lots of unfilled/unfulfilled space. That’s ok. Maybe. But if the diameter is any smaller than that, it will endlessly slide around and get bruised banging into the walls of the square, or worse, one’s round peg could be in a too-large round hole with no anchor whatsoever, or possibly worst of all, the round hole is too small and one got shattered trying to fit-in.

What I have described and what Mr. Chugtai’s description have in common is a life out of alignment with one’s core purpose. The root cause of addiction is an intense conflict between one’s conscious mind and one’s subconscious — if you believe in souls, between one’s human side and one’s spirit. As I have written in Positive Impacts of My Soul’s Emergence/Awakening:

There is a yin and yang to life’s purpose. There are human wants and soul wants. A life will be harmonious when those two are aligned.

Finding that alignment will lift the compulsion to abuse substances.

I am living proof thereof, which I finally accomplished outside of any 12-step program (AA failed for me many years ago). I will detail my six-step program when the Universe signals me to do so.

Thank you to my spiritual homegroup here on Medium, Know Thyself, Heal Thyself (“KTHT), and to the other groups I visit, Queen’s Children and Grab a Slice, to my co-editors, 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊., who owns KTHT and has inspired many of my deep-dive-essays on spirituality, and Anthi Psomiadou, whose spiritual poetry is unparalleled and who has called me on my shit at times and leads by example, to my channeler, Ane, whom I met in 2010 and brought to Medium with me, to my Spirit Guides, my Lord Rama, and most of all, to my soul partner Sitara, who:

agreed to exit Earth after a mere 36.5 years so that I could heal the wounds of my 53 years as well as those karmic wounds that I carry from previous lives, and thus, buoyed with her love every day, not only is vulnerability my superpower, fear is not my kryptonite as I spit at the notion of fear.

Lindsey died in the suddenly-tragically-without-any-warning-whatsoever-here-one-nanosecond-gone-the-next-manner so that I could experience the Thor’s-Hammer-knee-capping-version of spiritual awakening. I most assuredly shall not allow that sacrifice to be in vain. I live my life now to make Sitara proud. I may not always succeed in my endeavors, but I assure you I am invincible.

Society needs to do its part to understand addiction, remove the stigma, and make proper care affordable not only for addiction but for mental health generally.

In Rama I create,

Marcus

Please see the follow-up piece to this story, inspired by your meaninginful engagement.