Paths to Recovery and Guides to Addiction Treatment

Addictions Require Utmost Attention

All addictions are aspects of a similar condition: alienation.

You can call it disunity. It clouds the mind’s mirror and deflects the light of spiritual growth.

Each part of life is like a stone that interlocks. The spirit of unity expressed in the body is the first stone dislodged by addiction.

Here’s what I mean. Thirty years ago, I was in a meeting with other people addicted to alcohol, and a fellow whom a judge required to get help admitted to being a glue-sniffer, not an alcoholic. One person muttered to me that this man was hopeless and that the group was not for him.

“Shucks,” I said. “Here I thought God,” frequently mentioned in the meetings, “could do anything!”

Decades ago, in the treatment field, too, no one paid attention to comorbid conditions. At one time, facilities separated alcoholics from narcotic addicts. There was no co-dependency, dual diagnosis, or attention to concurrent addictions.

In a move favorable to considering the unific elements of life, treatment providers eventually quit saying, “Okay, alcoholics on this side of the room and drug addicts on this side.”

We are learning that everything that brings about separation and alienation is sinister because it emanates from ignorance and selfishness. As an entity, treatment requires unity and cohesion to survive. Separation and dissension lessen survival. They pull us out of our element as humans, like fishes out of water.

Unity makes human kinship, love, and fellowship possible. Unless we develop and grow to understand the affinity in conditions of alienation like addictions, the elements of progress separate, and relationship and cohesion vanish. The actual goals of treatment and recovery inevitably fail.

Love and affinity throughout creation cause life in the biosphere and discord and separation ruin life. In drug rehabilitation, unity means survival, while discord and disagreement imply death.

We know through science and research that addiction is a chronic substance use disorder. The condition alters the structure and function of the brain, just as cardiovascular disease alters the heart or diabetes dysregulates the pancreas.

Diana Leotta writes about addiction.

Addiction exploits the brain’s drive-reward system when stimulated by pleasure-inducing substances like drinking and behaviors like gambling in susceptible people.

Vulnerability to addiction is considered a grouping of genetic/physiological, psychological, social, and spiritual factors. In vulnerable populations, addiction impairs the ability to self-regulate and leads to compulsion.

Our neurobiology drives us to do things that promote continued existence and spread our DNA. We experience motivations, compulsions, impulses, urges, desires, or cravings. For example, to survive, we want to be safe, feel good, not feel bad, and reproduce.

Our brain has evolved to experience rewards when we fulfill desire. These incentives are distress relief and pleasure. We want a break from pain, anxiety, discomfort, and other unpleasantness.

Fun can include satisfaction or enjoyment like playing, eating, and having thrills. Substances like our medication or social lubricants and behaviors like shopping, video games, and phone use can alleviate distress/pain and provide pleasure.

But this way of life is vanishing because of addiction to illegal and prescription drugs, alcohol, porn, gambling, and the internet. Entrenched in our society and affecting every family and community, addiction is our society’s most critical challenge.

The alienating condition erodes life, our schools, our neighborhoods, and our economy. It overwhelms our social structure with crime, violence, shattered relationships, and broken bodies. Addiction consumes us, destroying everything precious — our health, relationships, financial security, hopes, and dreams.

The same degree and intensity of treatment for all sources of separation must be manifested to become a cause of unity and accord and bind humankind together in genuine fellowship and harmony.

Sam writes about addiction to substances, behaviors, and thistles of the soul.

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