Addiction's Sacred Human Urge.

I work around people with addiction, and have had my own brushes with it in my time too and, while generalising about it is only of so much value, I think this can be said about it: The reason we take a substance or engage in a risky activity that gives us a dopamine hit is that by doing so avoids or relieves pain - it avoids some sort of suffering, and we get some relief from that suffering.

In this way it stems from the same urge to end the suffering of uncertainty and separation that drove the prophets and saints into the wilderness to seek communion with God; it stems from the same urge that drove young prince Siddharta from his life of luxury in search of awakening and an end to suffering, and to eventual buddhahood; it stems from the same human urge that the Sufi masters honoured in dropping their own sense of self to find union with divine love and an end to the uncertainty, the sense of separateness, loneliness, existential boredom, self loathing, heartbreak, guilt, and all of the rest of it...

It's the same sacred urge that has been the beginning of all human growth. It's politically expedient to hate on addicts however, and hating on them allows society to wash our hands of those who are just trying to deal with suffering in the only ways they currently know how. But that sort of moraliry is no morality at all.

Of course, in taking a substance or engaging in an activity to get a hit, we're only using a very temporary method that invariably brings its own set of problems and sufferings - it's short-lived, we need to take a bigger dose to get a similar effect over time, it might take over our lifestyle and/or kill us... and most importantly, we don't come to terms with the underlying suffering in doing so.

It'll be a better world when we see addiction as driven by what we all do in our various ways to avoid 'that emptiness inside to which I just could not relate' as Dylan called it - whether we do it by taking a shitload of ket, by becoming a big celeb or an unhappy 'successful' workaholic billionaire, or by fooling ourselves with our superior senses of self and pristine morality, or whatever.

We're all a bit lost and looking for some way to ease the pain and confusion, and we all go at it in our various ways.

"Every cripple has his own way of walking," as the great Brendan Behan said.

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