adeeeeek

Jim Paredes humming:

If we engage in an activity just to feel good and then use it repeatedly to escape our problems so that we become dysfunctional without it, then, by Bradshaw’s definition, it is an addiction. I remember hearing a Jesuit compare religion to salt. One must have it in the right doses. Too much or too little is not good. I listened to him with some incredulity then. But he wasn’t the first to express a similar view. Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar criticized Jesus’ followers for having "too much heaven on their minds." Who was it who said that saints are hard to live with?

Moderation is the key. Basically, I think what the definition of addiction also implies is that we do not really need anything from the outside to be happy, and that putting ourselves in a situation of needing and obsessing on anything or anyone to the point that we need a constant fix makes us lose our autonomy and opens us to the feeling of being incomplete. Then, before we know it, we are hooked. We are not enough. Our happiness and reason for living have become dependent on something outside.

When we find ourselves in this situation, even the world will not be enough. We discover that we are devoid of creativity and the capacity to be happy just by being ourselves. When the Dalai Lama first came to know about anorexia, he was astounded that anyone could actually be like that. And then he cried, realizing the suffering and self-loathing that anorexics go through.

The idea, I believe, is to indulge in these poisons with full attention and mindfulness. Because being mindful makes us aware when what we are doing is already bad for us. Mindlessness gets us hooked. Mindless actions can easily become addictions while conscious ones make for good practice. We become aware of the difference between our real needs and our wants.

Then we can begin to live a real life in the real world.