Directory of Physicians and Dentists

The purpose of this article is to help illuminate the nature of addictions. The conditions which make addiction possible are summarized in the following statements.

1. Who you are, really, after all that you have is stripped away, so that who you are is revealed, is an enlightened soul.
2. This soul you are is at perfect peace and constantly in the experience of bliss and ecstasy.
3. Your soul is bound into your body, and the presence of your body obscures awareness of peace, bliss and ecstasy.
4. The body is always in a state of hunger: for food, excitement, affection, recognition, safety and security.
5. This state of hunger constitutes a pain, which could be said to be the pain of separation from the soul.
6. As life goes on, you become more and more identified with your hungers; that is to say, your consciousness exists in the pain of hunger and not in the awareness of peace, bliss and ecstasy.
7. Anything which lowers your consciousness serves to make you less aware of both the hunger and the ecstasy. With these seven conditions, the stage is set for addiction. When you experience something which lowers consciousness, you want more of it because it provides relief from the pain of life. When you get more of it, you want even more, and soon you can hardly get enough. This, then, is a state of addiction.

Addictions are rationalized, so that you do not recognize them as addiction. People are not engaged in looking for their addictions, rather in looking for ways to conceal those addictions — not only from others, but from themselves. I can suggest that you are addicted, and you will listen only because you have made a commitment to better health through self-examination. I presume that if you have addictions, you want to know about them. That usually is not true for people.

For example, in alcoholism, the alcoholic usually is the last to notice the addiction and will lie to himself to conceal it from himself. This is called denial. Alcoholism is merely an obvious example. The mechanism concealing all addictions is the same.

Therefore, you cannot rely on your own evaluation of your addictions except to simply suspect them. The task is to identify some possible areas of addiction, to raise them to the level of suspicion. I will outline some common addictions to bring your attention to the possibility of these addictions in your life. Your job is to make a list of possible addictions. For now, do nothing about them, simply identify possibilities.

For more specific examples, click on one of the following:

Sugar Addiction or Salt Addiction.

Click here for: Handling Addictions