An important article on addiction and its root cause

[catherine]

So, coincidentally, I was reminded of this Gabor Mate TED Talk via a post in my Facebook feed this morning. I love Gabor Mate--he's the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which was actually recommended to me by someone in this forum.

He basically says the same thing as the HuffPo author--he quotes R.D. Laing: "The three things people fear most are death, other people, and their own minds."

Yes, he talks about the emptiness inside that is the root cause of addiction: but as I've read in his other work, that emptiness sometimes is a result of faulty early childhood wiring. His thoughts about the impact of mother's stress and environmental stresses on fetuses and young infants are fascinating (he only touches on that in this video, but he's talked about it elsewhere). So, maybe what I'm bristling against here is the question: how much can our unconditional love heal these deep systemic emotional disorders?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I'm not getting any love (no boyfriend, messed up parents), so I don't get it, where's the reward for stopping?

yea I've heard it and if every single person or person with messed up parents was a drug addict ... man every other person would be a drug addict. Maybe Nancy Reagan was right really, since ideal circumstances may not be guaranteed one (and since if one is young one is often not very well equipped to judge that anyway), it's probably better never to start with the really addictive drugs.

[kib]

If love could cure an addict my love would have. i made a commit one time that I was loving my son to death, as the police office was at my house I loved him more when I walked away. I loved him the correct way when he came back clean. 39 months and counting.

Not sure I agreed with the article. But if it helps one family or addict that is what matters.

I think the real bottom line is that it's only the addict who can determine exactly what the addict needs in order to feel ok. I tend to agree with Miss Cellane, that the whole addictive realm has its roots in depression.

The isolated rats were suffering from situational depression. Improving their situation caused them to move away from addictive behavior. But what was the tipping point? Was one other rat enough? Was a red ball and an exercise wheel adequate? Did Ratty 1 and Ratty 2 have different needs? At some point, life offered enough compensation to fill the hole of situational depression, but only the individual could say when.

Common wisdom says that there are two types of depression: situational and biological. In the case of biological depression, Rat Park may not be enough to mitigate the feelings, no matter how nice the park is. I think the answer is the same, though: only the individual knows the shape of the hole in their heart, or what is enough to fill it and make that person able to turn away from the guaranteed patch of addictive behavior.

ETA: I think addiction is so hard to quit for that exact reason. It works (temporarily), as far as the hole in the soul is concerned. It. Works. I have so much respect for people who are struggling with a hole that is not filled, and yet they keep grimly trying to find real life solutions rather than resorting to the temporary one that eases the pain and damages the life.