ADDICTIONS | OUR FEATURED TOPIC In the Dust: An Inquiry on Psychological Addiction by Matt Karayan IThere is no such thing as an altered reality, unless you consider your body experience as altered. Your mind is so powerful, it will experience what it thinks even though what it thinks is not always true. Mind is the place where spirit associates with an ephemeral vehicle. This vehicle is better known as your body. When mind assumes itself to be an aspect of this body vehicle, it seems to experience as its own the characteristics of body sensation and perception. The result of this experience is a distraction from remembering the spirit that you are. This distraction becomes your deception that you are the body you inhabit. Physiology is the study of how your body and its parts function together. Physiology cannot be studied purely because of your mind's subjective (psychological) bias to evaluate and quality associations. In other words, mind is not brain, but it does give itself over to the brain's physiological impressions. Psychological addiction is the mind's adjustment to the brain's physiological impressions. Association A mind confused with a body image will identify with the body's physiological rush (high) as a psychological reality. The psychological association of this rush is introduced to the body through various forms: obsessions with food, mood-altering chemicals, gambling and sex, to name a few. Your body naturally gravitates towards comfort. But it can only do this without the limits of the five senses. And the limits of your senses can only experience pleasure and pain. Pleasure is to be experienced and pain is to be avoided. A mind confused with a body image is not at rest. It seeks peace of mind. The problem is, it seeks this peace through the limits of the body's five senses. Confusion about your ground of being (identity) makes your mind vulnerable to the influences of your body's desire to seek pleasure. Your mind in its confusion of self-identity attributes this desire to be its own. Your body has basic physiological needs to be fulfilled for its survival. Your psychological need for peace of mind is something different. No matter how hard you try, you will not find pleasure in the mind -- nor will you find peace in a body. To not recognize this principle is to misuse your body over and over again in an attempt to search for something in a place where it cannot be found. Think of the times when you came to the place where nothing seemed to satisfy. Those are the times when you are closest to real peace of mind...if you do not allow the distraction of self-induced body pleasure as an escape from your discontentment. There is another side to push through, but it is you that must push. Remember, mind will never find contentment in a body. Mind's vulnerability As I have stated, "a mind confused with a body image strongly remembers the body's rush as a psychological reality." When, for example, mood-distorting chemicals are used to stimulate a physiological response, the pleasure center of the brain, as well as the neurological communication system of the body, are affected. The numbness and tingling that occurs is a distortion of one's sensual/body response. Mind, confused about its own identity, will not be at peace. Rather, it will be in a vulnerable state of feeling deprived. In this state, it is easily influenced to prefer to notice the distortion of a pleasurable body response. It will be tempted to associate this body response as an experience of contentment in order to fill its anxious void of lack of contentment. In fact, it will be tempted to use any kind of body stimulation as an attempt to numb its anxiety. Here is where association is psychologically reinforced for the repeating of this experience. Escape is found and obsessions of all sorts become its means. As long as contentment remains elusive to the mind distracted by the pleasurable experience of a distorted body experience, it will choose to seek that response over and over again in an attempt to fill its void of discontent. The vulnerability of mind's confusion is seen in its attempt to do the impossible, to attempt to fill a psychological void with a physiological response of pleasure. In this way does mind use the body over and over again in an attempt to deceive itself. Motivation Because pleasure is fleeting, the feeling of deprivation will return. This feeling becomes a strong motivation to repeat the false association of bodily pleasure in an attempt to find psychological contentment. The state is set for you to make psychological adjustments around the rush. This is the seed of what is called an addictive personality. Every addictive personality, no matter what form it seems to take, involves the focus of a strong orientation towards bodily pleasure. The adjustment towards experiencing the temporary nature of this pleasure is the motivator to repeat the experience in search for contentment. This lifestyle adjustment is a reinforcing orientation that limits you to seek fulfillment though a body life experience. Addiction The need to repeat the body's physiological rush is called addiction. Psychological adjustment to remember the experience of body pleasure as contentment reinforces the idea of needing to repeat the experience. Repeating the experience over time allows for dependency. This dependency becomes broad-based in reinforcement through lifestyle adjustments. Physical development that is disrupted over time deteriorates. Social maladaption, isolation and spiritual bankruptcy become disease concepts of this addiction. The focus to strongly experience physiological pleasure again and again limits and disrupts your psychological ability to focus and expand (learn). Spiritually speaking, the anticipation of your next physiological rush becomes a distraction to the awareness of life beyond a body life experience. One may dry out (detoxify) with no physical desire for a fix. However, the desire to fill a void made strong over time by psychological adjustment is easily recalled. This is called relapse. This will drive the spiritually weak back for that rush. It is not physical addiction that destroys the will to change. It is psychological addiction. That is why a spiritual focus becomes needful. It fills the psychological void. Denial and progression Your dilemma is spiritual in nature. Your addiction is an effect of your decision not to choose again. To decide that a body vehicle is your only witness for life's experiences is to decide to block your remembrances of your true state of mind. No more can you deny the fact that you are more than the experiences of the body you seem to inhabit, unless you prefer to deny your spiritual self in the name of wanting to repeat the physiological/psychological rush. You are ready when you hear the call. Until then, you will not be able to understand the one who tells you, "You are not a good listener." Relapse involves one who has psychologically adjusted to the weakened state of only experiencing the fleeting pleasure and pain of the body. They exhibit minimal impulse control and are therefore easily distracted. With nothing else taking place in their life, desire for the numbness of pleasure and pain will overwhelm them. The same senses initially used to experience the body's fleeting pleasure of contentment now becomes one's attempt to distort all awareness of the body's senses into obliteration. This despair leads from institutions to jail to death. No matter how self-destructive this scenario may appear, in unawareness it is still one's attempt to heal oneself. Spiritual focus The world is the distraction through which your mind searches to find contentment. You think your body can give you the contentment your mind seeks. Because it can't, you are deceived. That is how you use a body as a means to deceive yourself. And in your attempt to find contentment through manipulating your body, you find pleasure and pain. And you repeat the experience over and over again, resigned to the body's seduction that pleasure through drugs, food, sex, gambling, etc., is all there is. There is nothing wrong with pleasure and pain. However, your willingness to be easily distracted by the senses of desire and need (as if they are the place to find your true reality) calls for a focused concentration to remind you of your primary purpose. "What is my primary focus?" you ask. For starters, be willing to stop listening to all your distractions! Then will you hear your call Then will you see the messenger sent Then will it be given you to know your purpose "But my addictions are overwhelming. I am tired of fighting them with a will power that does not avail." Then use them as a means to find focused concentration. In other words, what you beat your head against as an impossible wall to climb can be used as your opportunity to step up and rise above. "How can this be?" you finally ask in defeat. I have heard the alcoholic say: "I am not a grateful alcoholic. I am grateful that I am an alcoholic." And I ask, why are you grateful for having such a malady? The alcoholic responds, "Because it brought me to my knees in humility. I could not conquer my addiction alone. I was driven to seek the source of my strength, my Higher Power and connect with the gathering of fellow members. Rather than wander aimlessly through the wilderness, I am grateful that my addiction has been my wake-up call to speed me towards the Source of true and lasting contentment." We are all like this alcoholic, only different in form. Lessons of humility remind each of us to listen to the Source of our strength and seek out the like-minded in fellowship and celebration. It is through our weaknesses that we allow the strength of our Spirit to shine through to complete the task at hand...when we are willing. Desire nothing else You have allowed your mind to use the body to anticipate pleasure and pain. In that anticipation, you find dissatisfaction as you chase to seek pleasure or maneuver to avoid pain. To remember "now" is to desire nothing else. It will always be today where you will find the gifts needed for your healing to take its rightful place. Your focus to listen is your only need To remember "now" is to desire nothing else To recognize you are not a good listener is the place to start Any mind willing for the awareness of its own transcendent nature will find the messengers needed and the fellowship of continued support, to rise above the desire to repeat the meaningless. The joy of a transcendent peace leaves the deprivation of a psychological state...in the dust. Matt Karayan, M.A., is a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor through the State of Minnesota. He currently works as a family therapist through an alcohol and drug treatment center. For private consultation, he can be reached at (763) 684-0579. Copyright © 2001 Matt Karayan SEPT 2001