Harmful Addictions Quotes

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.

I was dreadfully concerned that this creature meant to harm me, but then a thought entered my mind. I am the one who moved Annette, Charles. And now, I will take you on a journey of your own.   

Above all, I didn't want to fall into the trap that Buddhists call idiot compassion - an apt phrase, given John's worldview. In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

It isn’t the drug that causes the harmful behavior—it’s the environment. An isolated rat will almost always become a junkie. A rat with a good life almost never will, no matter how many drugs you make available to him. As Bruce put it: he was realizing that addiction isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you—it’s the cage you live in.

In all of your living, don't forget to live.

The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.

We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the addict's stubborn refusal to give up something deleterious to his life or to the life of others. Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict, when as a social collective, we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations?

My hand no longer trembled out of fear, but out of anticipation. I knew I was addicted to the rush it provided, to the release it provided from the emotional mess I had become, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t drugs. It was just a few cuts on my arm.

Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems nonadapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it's only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry.

The past does not define me, it ignites me. The past is not a piece of me, it has placed me

Emotions are the lowest form of consciousness. Emotional actions are the most contracted, narrowing, dangerous form of behavior. The romantic poetry and fiction of the last 200 years has quite blinded us to the fact that emotions are an active and harmful form of stupor. Any peasant can tell you that. Beware of emotions. Any child can tell you that. Watch out for the emotional person. He is a lurching lunatic. Emotions are caused by biochemical secretions in the body to serve during the state of acute emergency. An emotional person is a blind, crazed maniac. Emotions are addictive and narcotic and stupefacient. Do not trust anyone who comes on emotional. What are the emotions? In a book entitled Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, written when I was a psychologist, I presented classifications of emotions and detailed descriptions of their moderate and extreme manifestations. Emotions are all based on fear. [...] The emotional person cannot think; he cannot perform any effective game action (except in acts of physical aggression and strength). The emotional person is turned off sensually. His body is a churning robot. [...] The only state in which we can learn, harmonize, grow, merge, join, understand is the absence of emotion. This is called bliss or ecstasy, attained through centering the emotions. [...] Conscious love is not an emotion; it is serene merging with yourself, with other people, with other forms of energy. Love cannot exist in an emotional state. [...] The great kick of the mystic experience, the exultant, ecstatic hit, is the sudden relief from emotional pressure. Did you imagine that there could be emotions in heaven? Emotions are closely tied to ego games. Check your emotions at the door to paradise.

Don’t ever forget you are beautiful, although your life, your past and your present situation may be ugly. You are beautiful.

Change is inevitable. Progression is a choice. We all move, but are you going to move forward?

One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don't realise they're self-harming. The phrase 'self-harm' brings up thoughts of 'cutting', but that's only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can't see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you've brought harm to yourself. If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can't break, you've self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you're pushing your body further than it can go. We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don't, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU.

Relief was what I was looking for that day, and I didn’t care how I got it. What I wanted - what I needed - was a pain that I could see and deal with. I couldn’t cope with the mess inside of me any longer, and cutting myself seemed to be the best solution. I knew that it would work. What I didn’t know was that I was about t engage in a behavior that was not just dangerous but highly, highly addictive.

As it devises its own system, the Qur’an takes pains to explain its reasoning. For example, the admonition against indulging in alcohol and gambling is justified by the “immense social harm” both can cause, especially the ripple effect of damage to others via drunken violence and crippling debt (addicts in Arabia often sold their own children into slavery to repay debts).

I realized I could really become hooked on these happy pills. They gave me a glorious feeling of general well-being and didn't make me fat, like alcohol. I wondered if there was any harm in being addicted to only these.

The war mentality represents an unfortunate confluence of ignorance, fear, prejudice, and profit. ... The ignorance exists in its own right and is further perpetuated by government propaganda. The fear is that of ordinary people scared by misinformation but also that of leaders who may know better but are intimidated by the political costs of speaking out on such a heavily moralized and charged issue. The prejudice is evident in the contradiction that some harmful substances (alcohol, tobacco) are legal while others, less harmful in some ways, are contraband. This has less to do with the innate danger of the drugs than with which populations are publicly identified with using the drugs. The white and wealthier the population, the more acceptable is the substance. And profit. If you have fear, prejudice, and ignorance, there will be profit.

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.

Despite what appears to be a low risk of addiction in naïve, chronic pain patients, it is reasonable to ask how much harm is actually done to patients with chronic pain by withholding opiate analgesics.

You’re not seriously telling us that LSD is less harmful than alcohol, are you?’ Of course I am!

But as we have seen, hard-core drug users do not wait to be “enabled,” and there are few harsh consequences they haven’t yet experienced. There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that harm-reduction measures encourage drug use. Denying addicts humane assistance multiplies their miseries without bringing them one inch closer to recovery.

So, don’t feel deprived. You are not giving up anything. You are simply stopping a dangerous and harmful addiction. It really is that simple to break an addiction. If you have the right attitude, staying sugar-free becomes a lot easier than you could possibly imagine.

Your identity is not in who you can be. It is in who you always have been

Stop looking back when your future is ahead of you

Not all good things are good for us.

As I grow older I will come to question 12-step programs, see their failures, all the ways they do not reduce the harms of addiction by making their harms accrue to the individual, alone.

Who taught us to bow our heads while waiting for trains? to touch lumber without regret and sing privately or not at all? To invest the season with forgiveness and coax from it a hopeful omen? Lord knows the hope would heal this little fear. But who taught us to fear?

We set limits for ourselves all the time. This imaginary line that you're positive you won't ever cross. An action that you are positive you would never do, no matter what. But what we don't consider when we draw our line is a change in our situation. An action that you were sure last week you wouldn't do suddenly becomes a viable option this week because the situation has drive you to it. Then you move your limit line and talk yourself into believing this new line will never be crossed. A man will take a stand and proclaim "I would never lie to my wife." But what if he maxes out their credit card because of his internet porn addiction? The line gets moved. I'm sure if you ask any mother or father they would not hesitate in harming or even killing someone who was about to do the same to their child. The line gets moved. A girl who is so consumed by the pain and empty ache of loneliness will be drive to do anything, no matter how degrading she thinks it is, because she wants to numb the chronic pain. The line gets moved. The line keeps moving and moving until one day you realize you're limitless. If you are being completely honest with yourself, there is absolutely nothing you wouldn't do if the situation required you to cross another line.

A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed.

While re-addiction is clearly a hazard for some, others achieve a realistic and lasting confidence that they’ve outgrown their addictions and it’s time to move on. In fact, survey research published over the last thirty years indicates that most addicts eventually recover permanently.9 For them, the disease label may be an unnecessary, even harmful, burden.

The addiction is the repeated behavior engaged in despite the certainty that it harms oneself or others.

A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more producitve for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed.

I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept. 1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too. 2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart. 3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth. 4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party). 5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness. Undertake for one week or one month to refrain from all intoxicants and addictive substances (such as wine, marijuana, even cigarettes and/or caffeine if you wish). Observe the impulses to use these, and become aware of what is going on in the heart and mind at the time of those impulses (88-89).

When I speak at universities, in colleges, I share these statistics. I tell them that even as we are labeled criminal, we are actually the victims of crime. And I tell them there are no stats to track collateral deaths, the ones that unfold over months and years spent in mourning and grief: the depression that becomes addiction to alcohol that becomes cirrhosis; or else addiction to food that becomes diabetes that becomes a stroke . Slow deaths . Undocumented deaths. Deaths with a common root: the hatred that tells a person daily that their life and the life of those they love ain't worth shit, a truth made ever more real when the people who harm you are never held accountable.

A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed. (I was lucky to get there on my own, with the help of the women I met.) Instead, our system of “corrections” is about arm’s-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in.

In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him

As they approach true mastery of the Art of Starving, students will see that eating disorders are merely one part of a broad spectrum of self-harm. Cutting, addiction, suicidal ideation. These are all ways to assert your power. To prove that you're not weak. To show you're strong enough to control your own destiny by destroying yourself.

Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious - obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth - is what makes it so alluring. But it's misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it's hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years. It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world - while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat - but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn't be further from the truth.

I have a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. —KURT COBAIN, in his suicide note

Self-harm is an addiction and it's serious whether it's 5 cuts or 100. I myself have dealt with self-harm. I was young and alone and got beat up on all the time, and I cut to ease the pain. I realized I wasn't the only one I hurt when I cut. I found out to wait it out that it gets better. I wrote music instead of going to the blade. I found out that my little brother Mike looked up to me and I wanted to change for him. So to the fans that cut or use anything to do with self-harm, promise me tonight that you will throw away all the blades and go to what you love instead of the blade. I believe you can do it. I will be here if you feel like giving in. I love you guys so so much.

You actually believe that you have no effect on me huh? You think that I don’t actually feel the need you do. I find it hard to think about you without feeling insanely hungry. I have thought about your body every f$$king day since I got my first taste. I control my hunger for you but it is there Sam. Every damn second it is there. I told you that you are under my skin and I meant it. I crave you so badly. Your soft skin, feeling your body and the taste of you, Sam you are so addicting. I want you so badly and today not being able to make love to you drove me out of my mind. I want to bury myself deep inside of you and forget about everything else.

I am precisely the kind of nice upper-middle-class white girl whose relationship to substances has been treated as benign or pitiable - a cause for concern, or a shrug, rather than punishment. No one has ever called me a leper or a psychopath. No doctor has ever pointed a gun at me. No cop has ever shot me at an intersection while I was reaching for my wallet, for that matter, or even pulled me over for drunk driving, something I've done more times than I could count. My skin is the right color to permit my intoxication. When it comes to addiction, the abstraction of privilege is ultimately a question of what type of story gets told about your body: Do you need to be shielded from harm, or prevented from causing it? My body has been understood as something to be protected, rather than something to be protected from.

It hurts so bad that I cannot save him, protect him, keep him out of harm's way, shield him from pain. What good are fathers if not for these things?

A hand-rolled cigarette to smoke, Another one bought from the store. If he lights one, his mind's lit up Another one burns a hole..

I take opioids to treat chronic pain. Stigmatizing them will harm me.

You need to deepen the quality and intimacy of your relationships with other people. Our culture is being shaped to isolate us more and more from each other. Addiction is becoming an epidemic. When you have deep and meaningful relationships, your chances of unhealthy addiction are far less. The following are four principles for overcoming harmful defaults in your environment.

Yet for the first time I really understood how my choices made me complicit in their suffering. I was the accomplice to their addiction. A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed. (I was lucky to get there on my own, with the help of the women I met.) Instead, our system of “corrections” is about arm’s-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in.

We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon which we depend for daily strength are healthy for our character rather than harmful. We must ask ourselves whether the comforts we reach for each day are vices or virtues? Do they feed the best parts of us or do they rob us of them? Even when we are at our most fatigued and are tempted to reach for self-destructive things, we must try to seek out and take solace in those things that will lead to our eventual renewal; rather than those things that will only serve to bring us lower.

A highly placed con man does more harm to society than a stone cold killer. Perhhaps not to the single victem who's dead after his crime, but to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. And they might have lunch with the president. [...] Many con men--and women--and women are professional polititians. These people, elected or appointed, envy power and they are addicted to it. They use it to shield their actions

Social media giants need to stop pretending they are changing the world, making it a better place and come forward and admit that they are deliberately selling a product that is, in fact, addictive and harmful for us.

If in doubt, ask yourself one simple question: given the harm you’re doing to yourself and others, are you willing to stop? If not, you’re addicted. And if you’re unable to renounce the behavior or to keep your pledge when you do, you’re addicted.

Her fight with alcohol had made for contentious exchanges and, if that were possible, even more contentious silences. Tony, empathetic to the point of self-harming, felt the pain of her abstinence as powerfully as anything he'd ever endured personally.

What characterizes an addiction?” asks the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the power to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.” Addiction cuts large swaths across our culture. Many of us are burdened with compulsive behaviours that harm us and others, behaviours whose toxicity we fail to acknowledge or feel powerless to stop. Many people are addicted to accumulating wealth; for others the compulsive pull is power. Men and women become addicted to consumerism, status, shopping or fetishized relationships, not to mention the obvious and widespread addictions such as gambling, sex, junk food and the cult of the “young” body image. The following report from the Guardian Weekly speaks for itself: Americans now [2006] spend an alarming $15 billion a year on cosmetic surgery in a beautification frenzy that would be frowned upon if there was anyone left in the U.S. who could actually frown with their Botox-frozen faces. The sum is double Malawi’s gross domestic product and more than twice what America has contributed to AIDS programs in the past decade. Demand has exploded to produce a new generation of obsessives, or “beauty junkies.

Any passion can become an addiction; but then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the individual or their behaviour? It’s possible to rule a passion, but an obsessive passion that a person is unable to rule is an addiction. And the addiction is the repeated behaviour that a person keeps engaging in, even though he knows it harms himself or others. How it looks externally is irrelevant. The key issue is a person’s internal relationship to the passion and its related behaviours. If in doubt, ask yourself one simple question: given the harm you’re doing to yourself and others, are you willing to stop? If not, you’re addicted. And if you’re unable to renounce the behaviour or to keep your pledge when you do, you’re addicted. There is, of course, a deeper, more ossified layer beneath any kind of addiction: the denial state in which, contrary to all reason and evidence, you refuse to acknowledge that you’re hurting yourself or anyone else. In the denial state you’re completely resistant to asking yourself any questions at all. But if you want to know, look around you. Are you closer to the people you love after your passion has been fulfilled or more isolated? Have you come more truly into who you really are or are you left feeling hollow?

Illness in this society, physical or mental, they are not abnormalities. They are normal responses to an abnormal culture. This culture is abnormal when it comes to real human needs. And.. it is in the nature of the system to be abnormal, because if we had a society geared to meet human needs.. would we be destroying the Earth through climate change? Would we be putting extra burden on certain minority people? Would we be selling people a lot of goods that they don't need, and, in fact, are harmful for them? Would there be mass industries based on manufacturing, designing and mass-marketing toxic food to people? So we do all that for the sake of profit. That's insanity. It is not insanity from the point of view of profit, but it is insanity from the point of view of human need. And so, in so many ways this culture denies and even runs against counter to human needs. When you mentioned trauma.. given how important trauma is in human life and what an impact it has.. why have we ignored it for so long? Because that denial of reality is built in into this system. It keeps the system alive. So it is not a mistake, it is a design issue. Not that anybody consciously designed it, but that's just how the system survives. Now.. the average medical student to THIS DAY (I say the average.. there are exceptions) still doesn't get a single lecture on trauma in 4 years of medical school. They should have a whole course on it, Because I can tell you that trauma is related to addiction, all kinds of mental illness and most physical health conditions as well. And there is a whole lot of science behind that, but they don't study that science. Now that reflects this society's denial of trauma, the medical system simply reflects the needs of the larger society, I should say, the dominant needs of the larger society.

Mental obsession, or going over and over something, is a part of the addictive cycle. It is also addictive in itself. I mentioned earlier the ego defense called “isolation of affect.” By focusing on a recurring thought you can avoid painful feelings. You can also avoid feelings by ruminating, turning thoughts over and over in your head. You can be addicted to abstract thinking. One of my degrees is in philosophy. I spent years of my life studying the great philosophers. In itself this is not harmful. For me, the reading and teaching of philosophy was a way out of my feelings. When I was reading the Summa Theologia of Thomas Aquinas or Emmanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Wittgenstein’s treatise on logical positivism, I could completely mood-alter my toxic shame. Intellectualizing is often a way to avoid internal states that are shame-bound. One’s very way of intellectualizing can be addictive. Generalizing and universalizing keep one in categories so broad and abstract that there’s no contact with concrete, specific, sensory-based reality. Abstract generalizing is a marvelous way to mood-alter.

Guilt is imperative if we are to create and sustain a decent code of ethics and a sound moral compass. Guilt can help us to listen to our conscience, enhance empathy, and therefore have fulfilling relationships. Without guilt, we would live in an extremely dark world. However, misplaced guilt often triggers us to be over-apologetic and people-please. Many people repeat the word ‘sorry’ without needing to, while still others feel guilty for their very own existence. Emotionally wounded, shame-based people often feel that they are constantly ‘getting in the way’. This stems from a sense of feeling unlovable. To ask for one’s own needs to be met often results in a feeling of guilt. I call this misplaced guilt. Similarly, a person may feel guilty even if they have been abused or harmed by others. Misplaced guilt or excessive guilt stifles people’s chances to live happily and peacefully.

There is little research being done on the neurological basis of porn addiction. In part this is because it is not seen as necessary. Pornography is legal and acknowledging it as harmful is not politically convenient, so there are not many federal grants to fund research on it; that is the social reality.

The reaction—attraction between us was immediate. The Italian phrase, è stato un colpo di fulmine, describes the lightning and thunderbolt experience, or the love at first sight. It was intense, unexplained, and would prove to be very harmful to many people. Dennis and I began an affair within three months.

There is a recurrent and selective amnesia that the greatest drug harms -- including addiction -- are almost always caused by legal products: morphine and cocaine in the nineteenth century, stimulants and sedatives in the mid-twentieth century, opioids more recently, and, throughout and always, alcohol and tobacco.

This is the science behind how UPF affects the human body: • The destruction of the food matrix by physical, chemical and thermal processing means that UPF is, in general, soft. This means you eat it fast, which means you eat far more calories per minute and don’t feel full until long after you’ve finished. It also potentially reduces facial bone size and bone density, leading to dental problems. • UPF typically has a very high calorie density because it’s dry, and high in fat and sugar and low in fibre, so you get more calories per mouthful. • It displaces diverse whole foods from the diet, especially among low-income groups. And UPF itself is often micronutrient-deficient, which may also contribute to excess consumption. • The mismatch between the taste signals from the mouth and the nutrition content in some UPF alters metabolism and appetite in ways that we are only beginning to understand, but that seem to drive excess consumption. • UPF is addictive, meaning that for some people binges are unavoidable. • The emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damage the microbiome, which could allow inflammatory bacteria to flourish and cause the gut to leak. • The convenience, price and marketing of UPF urge us to eat constantly and without thought, which leads to more snacking, less chewing, faster eating, increased consumption and tooth decay. • The additives and physical processing mean that UPF affects our satiety system directly. Other additives may affect brain and endocrine function, and plastics from the packaging might affect fertility. • The production methods used to make UPF require expensive subsidy and drive environmental destruction, carbon emissions and plastic pollution, which harm us all.

Despite the intervening six decades of scientific inquiry since Selye’s groundbreaking work, the physiological impact of the emotions is still far from fully appreciated. The medical approach to health and illness continues to suppose that body and mind are separable from each other and from the milieu in which they exist. Compounding that mistake is a definition of stress that is narrow and simplistic. Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people’s lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided. When people describe themselves as being stressed, they usually mean the nervous agitation they experience under excessive demands — most commonly in the areas of work, family, relationships, finances or health. But sensations of nervous tension do not define stress — nor, strictly speaking, are they always perceived when people are stressed. Stress, as we will define it, is not a matter of subjective feeling. It is a measurable set of objective physiological events in the body, involving the brain, the hormonal apparatus, the immune system and many other organs. Both animals and people can experience stress with no awareness of its presence. “Stress is not simply nervous tension,” Selye pointed out. “Stress reactions do occur in lower animals, and even in plants, that have no nervous systems…. Indeed, stress can be produced under deep anaesthesia in patients who are unconscious, and even in cell cultures grown outside the body.” Similarly, stress effects can be highly active in persons who are fully awake, but who are in the grip of unconscious emotions or cut off from their body responses. The physiology of stress may be triggered without observable effects on behaviour and without subjective awareness, as has been shown in animal experiments and in human studies.

The role of the Old Testament is to give an inspired telling of how we get to Jesus. But once we get to Jesus we don’t build multiple tabernacles and grant an equivalency to Jesus and the Old Testament. This was Peter’s mistake on Tabor. Jesus is greater than Moses. Jesus is greater than Elijah. Jesus is greater than the Bible. Jesus is the Savior of all that is to be saved… including the Bible. Jesus saves the Bible from itself! Jesus shows us how to read the Bible and not be harmed by it. Jesus delivers the Bible from its addiction to violent retaliation. Moses may stone sinners and Elijah may kill idolaters. And so violent holiness can be justified as biblical. But for a Christian that doesn’t matter. We follow Jesus!

Some protectors do eventually dissolve in their current manifestation. Cutting or purging stops. Addition to alcohol or drugs abates. Suicide plans become ideation and finally depart, although none of this happens as linearly as I have stated it. Often, they are first replaced by less harmful protectors, and then those may be able to transform, bringing helpful gifts. Most important for us ... is to welcome these parts, listen to them and let them become our guides ... They will have a better sense of pacing than we do because they are so connected to the wounded ones inside. As the ones in distress have less hold on thoughts, feelings, behaviors and relationships, we can know that less vigilance over the inner world is needed.

Often, women's symptoms are brushed off as the result of depression, anxiety, or the all-purpose favorite: stress. Sometimes, they are attributed to women's normal physiological states and cycles: to menstrual cramps, menopause, or even being a new mom. Sometimes, other aspects of their identity seem to take center stage: fat women report that any ailment is blamed on their weight; trans women find that all their symptoms are attributed to hormone therapy; black women are stereotyped as addicts looking for prescription drugs, their reports of pain doubted entirely. Whatever the particular attribution, there is often the same current of distrust: the sense that women are not very accurate judges of when something is really, truly wrong in their bodies.

Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of view, addicts are self-medicating conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or even ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anaesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort. Infant animals separated from their mothers can be soothed readily by low doses of narcotics, just as if it was actual physical pain they were enduring. The pain pathways in humans are no different. The very same brain centres that interpret and “feel” physical pain also become activated during the experience of emotional rejection: on brain scans they “light up” in response to social ostracism just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling “hurt” or of having emotional “pain,” they are not being abstract or poetic but scientifically quite precise. The hard-drug addict’s life has been marked by a surfeit of pain. No wonder she desperately craves relief.

Phaethon asked: “Do you think there is something wrong with the Sophotechs? We are Manorials, father! We let Rhadamanthus control our finances and property, umpire our disputes, teach our children, design our thoughtscapes, and even play matchmaker to find us wives and husbands!” “Son, the Sophotechs may be sufficient to advise the Parliament on laws and rules. Laws are a matter of logic and common sense. Specially designed human-thinking versions, like Rhadamanthus, can tell us how to fulfill our desires and balance our account books. Those are questions of strategy, of efficient allocation of resources and time. But the Sophotechs, they cannot choose our desires for us. They cannot guide our culture, our values, our tastes. That is a question of the spirit.” “Then what would you have us do? Would you change our laws?” “Our mores, not our laws. There are many things which are repugnant, deadly to the spirit, and self-destructive, but which law should not forbid. Addiction, self-delusion, self-destruction, slander, perversion, love of ugliness. How can we discourage such things without the use of force? It was in response to this need that the College of Hortators evolved. Peacefully, by means of boycotts, public protests, denouncements, and shunnings, our society can maintain her sanity against the dangers to our spirit, to our humanity, to which such unboundried liberty, and such potent technology, exposes us.” (...) But Phaethon certainly did not want to hear a lecture, not today. “Why are you telling me all this? What is the point?” “Phaethon, I will let you pass through those doors, and, once through, you will have at your command all the powers and perquisites I myself possess. The point of my story is simple. The paradox of liberty of which you spoke before applies to our entire society. We cannot be free without being free to harm ourselves. Advances in technology can remove physical dangers from our lives, but, when they do, the spiritual dangers increase. By spiritual danger I mean a danger to your integrity, your decency, your sense of life. Against those dangers I warn you; you can be invulnerable, if you choose, because no spiritual danger can conquer you without your own consent. But, once they have your consent, those dangers are all-powerful, because no outside force can come to your aid. Spiritual dangers are always faced alone. It is for this reason that the Silver-Gray School was formed; it is for this reason that we practice the exercise of self-discipline. Once you pass those doors, my son, you will be one of us, and there will be nothing to restrain you from corruption and self-destruction except yourself. “You have a bright and fiery soul, Phaethon, a power to do great things; but I fear you may one day unleash such a tempest of fire that you may consume yourself, and all the world around you.

Let’s remind ourselves that to be compassionate and forgiving doesn’t mean we are endorsing dysfunctional behaviour. On the contrary, it’s essential the harm that was inflicted upon us is properly validated and grieved. Forgiveness isn’t an intellectual concept or an airy-fairy idea. It’s a painstaking process. To be compassionate and to forgive mean we are gradually letting go of poisonous, toxic feelings that are trapped in our minds and bodies.

We are the heart of the heart of the heart of the crisis,” said Joe Solomon, a Charleston harm-reduction worker who leads the group Solutions Oriented Addiction Response (SOAR), and begged me to draw national attention to his group’s plight. “But when the world calls you hillbilly and hick and redneck, it’s so easy to internalize that stigma and say, ‘Who can I punch down to feel like I have worth? There’s people injecting drugs and stealing my kids’ bicycles—fuck ’em!

Mostly because of the harm they do. Not just to users,’ he says, ‘but the whole way along the chain, from poor farmers in Latin America who are terrorised by the cartels, to the organised crime and violence that goes with distributing drugs right here in Australia. And, of course, the damage it does to your body and the pain and criminal behaviour that comes with addiction. Using drugs recreationally might seem like fun in the moment but you’re supporting a whole world of violence and crime.

Most of us are finding ourselves unsettled by food in one way or another; we’re feeling not quite in control of our eating, or we’re taxed by the effort it takes to exert that control; we’re anxious that our appetites are doing us more harm than good, or we sense a disconnect between what we think we want and what our bodies need; we’re feeling the loss of the beauty, resonance, and rituals of food as it was, before we fell so hard for the convenience and other allures of the highly processed.

Yet for the first time I really understood how my choices made me complicit in their suffering. I was the accomplice to their addiction. A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed.

The major difference between heroin and alcohol is that, contrary to popular belief, heroin has no physically harmful effect. Alcohol is physically harmful to the brain, to the liver, to the nerve endings, eventually perhaps even to the stomach and intestines. Both drugs seem equally addicting, and why a person chooses one over another is probably based on experience, on availability, on legality, and on some personal idiosyncrasy not yet understood. What we do know is that the drugs work to relieve the pain and provide pleasure

Meanwhile, the state has grown as addicted to the lottery as its problem gamblers. Lottery proceeds now account for 13 percent of the state revenues in Massachusetts, making radical change all but unthinkable. No politician, however troubled by the lottery's harmful effects, would dare raise taxes or cut spending sufficiently to offset the revenue the lottery brings in. With states hooked on the money, they have no choice but to continue to bombard their citizens, especially the most vulnerable ones, with a message at odds with the ethic of work, sacrifice and moral responsibility that sustains democratic life. This civic corruption is the gravest harm that lotteries bring. It degrades the public realm by casting the government as the purveyor of a perverse civic education. To keep the money flowing, state governments across American must now use their authority and influence not to cultivate civic virtue but to peddle false hope. They must persuade their citizens that with a little luck they can escape the world of work to which only misfortune cosigns them.

motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue—smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm—and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than “really good.” Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection.

1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions, that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to emotionally and mentally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Harm reduction is often perceived as being inimical to the ultimate purpose of “curing” addiction—that is, of helping addicts transcend their habits and to heal. People regard it as “coddling” addicts, as enabling them to continue their destructive ways. It’s also considered to be the opposite of abstinence, which many regard as the only legitimate goal of addiction treatment. Such a distinction is artificial. The issue in medical practice is always how best to help a patient. If a cure is possible and probable without doing greater harm, then cure is the objective. When it isn’t — and in most chronic medical conditions cure is not the expected outcome — the physician’s role is to help the patient with the symptoms and to reduce the harm done by the disease process. In rheumatoid arthritis, for example, one aims to prevent joint inflammation and bone destruction and, in all events, to reduce pain. In incurable cancers we aim to prolong life, if that can be achieved without a loss of life quality, and also to control symptoms. In other words, harm reduction means making the lives of afflicted human beings more bearable, more worth living. That is also the goal of harm reduction in the context of addiction. Although hardcore drug addiction is much more than a disease, the harm reduction model is essential to its treatment. Given our lack of a systematic, evidencebased approach to addiction, in many cases it’s futile to dream of a cure. So long as society ostracizes the addict and the legal system does everything it can to heighten the drug problem, the welfare and medical systems can aim only to mitigate some of its effects. Sad to say, in our context harm reduction means reducing not only the harm caused by the disease of addiction, but also the harm caused by the social assault on drug addicts.

A wide diversity of treatment and social support models needs to be made available to drug users, ranging from one-strike-you’re-out abstinence to harm reduction, methadone maintenance, buprenorphine detox, heroin prescription, and subsidized employment initiatives. Treatment programs also need to take advantage of the moments of life crisis that drive long-term injectors to seek treatment. Most of the spur of the moment, crisis-driven windows of opportunity for changing the lives of street addicts are missed because underfunding, exacerbated by neoliberal audit culture, forces treatment programs to exclude risky patients.

Addiction is the result of an emptiness in the soul, not of what’s put into the body. Spiritual harm is much more insidious and is the real reason empty selves turn to drugs and alcohol. In a culture of alienation and fragmentation, people search for something to save them from their pain. For many, drugs and alcohol become substitute saviors. However, these substances are an inadequate replacement for the real thing. Drugs and alcohol can only anesthetize people, dulling life for a few fleeting moments, but they cannot satisfy empty souls. Instead, they compound brokenness and multiply the devastation of sin. Real rescue can be found only in God’s Story.

What is stealing?When is it excusable? When is it a crime?' Thomas looked uncomfortable as he read. Christian perked up. Belle saw Christian listening with interest and looked down at her shoes. 'An action becomes stealing when one of two conditions are met. First, when there is harm to the victim. Second, when the act is done for personal gain.' Thomas looked up and smiled. He seemed happy with where the speech was going, and Belle breathed a sigh of relief. Christian's face had gone white. He stood frozen in his spot. Belle smiled as if to say that things were different with him. That stealing was different in their world. She was torn between excitement for Thomas and embarasment for Christian. 'If both these criteria are met, there is no question where society stands. When of two criteria is in question, society begins to debate. For example, is it wrong when someone takes something that has been thrown away? Perhaps not, since there is no detriment to the victim. Is it wrong when someone takes a loaf of bread to feed a starving baby or taxes the rich to help the poor? Perhaps not, since the motive is unselfish.' Victoria wasn't even looking at Thomas anymore. She was glaring at Belle. She looked like she was about to lunge at her. Belle signaled to her that perhaps she should take notes. But Victoria wasn't used to preparing rebuttals without advanced notice. 'When neither of the criteria is met, however, I propose that there is no crime against ethics. Is it wrong to take a syringe from a drug addict? Of course not.

Yet, we are not Skinner's rats. Even Skinner's rats were not Skinner's rats: the patterns of addictive behavior displayed by rats in the Skinner Box were only displayed by rats in isolation, outside of their normal sociable habitat. For human beings, addictions have subjective meanings, as does depression. Marcus Gilroy-Ware's study of social media suggests that what we encounter in our feeds is hedonic stimulation, various moods and sources of arousal- from outrage porn to food porn to porn- which enable us to manage our emotions. In addition that, however, it's also true that we can become attached to the miseries of online life, a state of perpetual outrage and antagonism. There is a sense in which our online avatar resembles a 'virtual tooth' in the sense described by the German surrealist artist Hans Bellmer. In the grip of a toothache, a common reflex is to make a fist so tight that the fingernails bite into the skin. This 'confuses' and 'bisects' the pain by creating a 'virtual center of excitation,' a virtual tooth that seems to draw blood and nervous energy away from the real center of pain. If we are in pain, this suggests, self-harming can be a way of displacing it so that it appears lessened- event though the pain hasn't really been reduced, and we still have a toothache. So if we get hooked on a machine that purports to tell us, among other things, how other people see us- or a version of ourselves, a delegated online image- that suggests something has already gone wrong in our relationships with others. The global rise in depression- currently the world's most widespread illness, having risen some 18 per cent since 2005- is worsened for many people by the social industry. There is a particularly strong correlation between depression and the use of Instagram among young people. But social industry platforms didn't invent depression; they exploited it. And to loosen their grip, one would have to explore what has gone wrong elsewhere.

Imagine the daughter of a narcissistic father as an example. She grows up chronically violated and abused at home, perhaps bullied by her peers as well. Her burgeoning low self-esteem, disruptions in identity and problems with emotional regulation causes her to live a life filled with terror. This is a terror that is stored in the body and literally shapes her brain. It is also what makes her brain extra vulnerable and susceptible to the effects of trauma in adulthood.                              Being verbally, emotionally and sometimes even physically beaten down, the child of a narcissistic parent learns that there is no safe place for her in the world. The symptoms of trauma emerge: disassociation to survive and escape her day-to-day existence, addictions that cause her to self-sabotage, maybe even self-harm to cope with the pain of being unloved, neglected and mistreated. Her pervasive sense of worthlessness and toxic shame, as well as subconscious programming, then cause her to become more easily attached to emotional predators in adulthood. In her repeated search for a rescuer, she instead finds those who chronically diminish her just like her earliest abusers. Of course, her resilience, adept skill set in adapting to chaotic environments and ability to “bounce back” was also birthed in early childhood. This is also seen as an “asset” to toxic partners because it means she will be more likely to stay within the abuse cycle in order to attempt to make things “work.” She then suffers not just from early childhood trauma, but from multiple re-victimizations in adulthood until, with the right support, she addresses her core wounds and begins to break the cycle step by step. Before she can break the cycle, she must first give herself the space and time to recover. A break from establishing new relationships is often essential during this time; No Contact (or Low Contact from her abusers in more complicated situations such as co-parenting) is also vital to the healing journey, to prevent compounding any existing traumas.

For many years I had tremendous problems with anger. I wouldn’t acknowledge it. It terrified me. I thought that I’d get lost in it. That once it started, it was never going to end. That it would totally consume me. But as I’ve said before, the opposite of depression is expression. What comes out of our body doesn’t make us ill. What stays in there does. Forgiveness is release, and I couldn’t let go until I gave myself permission to feel and express my rage. I finally asked my therapist to sit on me, to hold me down so I had a force to push against, so I could release a primal scream. Silent rage is self-destructive. If you’re not actively, consciously, intentionally releasing it, you’re holding on to it. And that’s not going to do you any good. Neither is venting anger. That’s when you blow your top. It might feel cathartic in the moment, but others foot the bill. And it can become addictive. You’re not really releasing anything. You’re just perpetuating a cycle—a harmful one. The best thing to do with anger is to learn to channel it, and then dissolve it.

The popular 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma illustrates how AI’s personalization will cause you to be unconsciously manipulated by AI and motivated by profit from advertising. The Social Dilemma star Tristan Harris says: “You didn’t know that your click caused a supercomputer to be pointed at your brain. Your click activated billions of dollars of computing power that has learned much from its experience of tricking two billion human animals to click again.” And this addiction results in a vicious cycle for you, but a virtuous cycle for the big Internet companies that use this mechanism as a money-printing machine. The Social Dilemma further argues that this may narrow your viewpoints, polarize society, distort truth, and negatively affect your happiness, mood, and mental health. To put it in technical terms, the core of the issue is the simplicity of the objective function, and the danger from single-mindedly optimizing a single objective function, which can lead to harmful externalities. Today’s AI usually optimizes this singular goal—most commonly to make money (more clicks, ads, revenues). And AI has a maniacal focus on that one corporate goal, without regard for users’ well-being.

I just didn’t realize until this moment that Oakley and I were so poisonous together. I thought we were happy and in love. Two broken pieces of the same soul. But maybe we weren’t? Maybe we were fire and gasoline instead. Maybe what we felt for each other was a lethal addiction. And the only way to save ourselves from total destruction is to quit each other. Broken Kingdom Page 83 It’s obvious he loves his son. And even though a parent’s love is a foreign concept to me given my own father was an absentee parent for most of my life…I do have two brothers who would do anything to protect me from harm. I just didn’t realize until this moment that Oakley and I were so poisonous together. I thought we were happy and in love. Two broken pieces of the same soul. But maybe we weren’t? Maybe we were fire and gasoline instead. Maybe what we felt for each other was a lethal addiction. And the only way to save ourselves from total destruction is to quit each other. Maybe that’s why my mother made me promise her I’d never fall in love. Because she knew all along what it could do to a person. The way it could annihilate you until there was nothing left but a barren, hollow spot where your heart used to be. And that death was a fate far better than a love you were forbidden to have.

Stress mindsets are powerful because they affect not just how you think but also how you act. When you view stress as harmful, it is something to be avoided. Feeling stressed becomes a signal to try to escape or reduce the stress. And indeed, people who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it. For example, they are more likely to: Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it. Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source. Turn to alcohol or other substances or addictions to escape the stress. Withdraw their energy and attention from whatever relationship, role, or goal is causing the stress. In contrast, people who believe that stress can be helpful are more likely to say that they cope with stress proactively. For example, they are more likely to: Accept the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real. Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress. Seek information, help, or advice. Take steps to overcome, remove, or change the source of stress. Try to make the best of the situation by viewing it in a more positive way or by using it as an opportunity to grow. These different ways of dealing with stress lead to very different outcomes.

Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer. The ubiquity of chemical intoxicants in our lives is undeniable evidence of the continuing universal need for safer medicines with such applications. While use may not always be for an approved medical purpose, or prudent, or even legal, it is fulfilling the relentless drive we all have to change the way we feel, to alter our behavior and consciousness, and, yes, to intoxicate ourselves. We must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk free and as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants? I mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death. Imagine an alcohol-type substance that never caused addiction, liver disease, hangovers, impaired driving, or workplace problems. Would you care to inhale a perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air? How would you like a pain-killer as effective as morphine but safer than aspirin, a mood enhancer that dissolves on your tongue and is more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine, a tranquilizer less addicting than Valium and more relaxing than a martini, or a safe sleeping pill that allows you to choose to dream or not? Perhaps you would like to munch on a user friendly hallucinogen that is as brief and benign as a good movie? This is not science fiction. As described in the following pages, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can’t crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, perfectly safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are. This book is your guide to that future. It is a field guide to that silent spring of intoxicants and all the animals and peoples who have sipped its waters. We can no more stop the flow than we can prevent ourselves from drinking. But, by cleaning up the waters we can leave the morass that has been the endless war on drugs and step onto the shores of a healthy tomorrow. Use this book to find the way.

Good friendship, in Buddhism, means considerably more than associating with people that one finds amenable and who share one's interests. It means in effect seeking out wise companions to whom one can look for guidance and instruction. The task of the noble friend is not only to provide companionship in the treading of the way. The truly wise and compassionate friend is one who, with understanding and sympathy of heart, is ready to criticize and admonish, to point out one's faults, to exhort and encourage, perceiving that the final end of such friendship is growth in the Dhamma. The Buddha succinctly expresses the proper response of a disciple to such a good friend in a verse of the Dhammapada: 'If one finds a person who points out one's faults and who reproves one, one should follow such a wise and sagacious counselor as one would a guide to hidden treasure' If we associate closely with those who are addicted to the pursuit of sense pleasures, power, riches and fame, we should not imagine that we will remain immune from those addictions: in time our own minds will gradually incline to these same ends. If we associate closely with those who, while not given up to moral recklessness, live their lives comfortably adjusted to mundane routines, we too will remain stuck in the ruts of the commonplace. If we aspire for the highest — for the peaks of transcendent wisdom and liberation — then we must enter into association with those who represent the highest. Even if we are not so fortunate as to find companions who have already scaled the heights, we can well count ourselves blessed if we cross paths with a few spiritual friends who share our ideals and who make earnest efforts to nurture the noble qualities of the Dhamma in their hearts. When we raise the question how to recognize good friends, how to distinguish good advisors from bad advisors, the Buddha offers us crystal-clear advice. In the Shorter Discourse on a Full-Moon Night (MN 110) he explains the difference between the companionship of the bad person and the companionship of the good person. The bad person chooses as friends and companions those who are without faith, whose conduct is marked by an absence of shame and moral dread, who have no knowledge of spiritual teachings, who are lazy and unmindful, and who are devoid of wisdom. As a consequence of choosing such bad friends as his advisors, the bad person plans and acts for his own harm, for the harm of others, and the harm of both, and he meets with sorrow and misery. In contrast, the Buddha continues, the good person chooses as friends and companions those who have faith, who exhibit a sense of shame and moral dread, who are learned in the Dhamma, energetic in cultivation of the mind, mindful, and possessed of wisdom. Resorting to such good friends, looking to them as mentors and guides, the good person pursues these same qualities as his own ideals and absorbs them into his character. Thus, while drawing ever closer to deliverance himself, he becomes in turn a beacon light for others. Such a one is able to offer those who still wander in the dark an inspiring model to emulate, and a wise friend to turn to for guidance and advice.

Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.

What, then, is addiction? In the words of a consensus statement by addiction experts in 2001, addiction is a “chronic neurobiological disease… characterized by behaviors that include one or more of the following: impaired control over drug use, compulsive use, continued use despite harm, and craving.” The key features of substance addiction are the use of drugs or alcohol despite negative consequences, and relapse. I’ve heard some people shrug off their addictive tendencies by saying, for example, “I can’t be an alcoholic. I don’t drink that much…” or “I only drink at certain times.” The issue is not the quantity or even the frequency, but the impact. “An addict continues to use a drug when evidence strongly demonstrates the drug is doing significant harm…. If users show the pattern of preoccupation and compulsive use repeatedly over time with relapse, addiction can be identified.” Helpful as such definitions are, we have to take a broader view to understand addiction fully. There is a fundamental addiction process that can express itself in many ways, through many different habits. The use of substances like heroin, cocaine, nicotine and alcohol are only the most obvious examples, the most laden with the risk of physiological and medical consequences. Many behavioural, nonsubstance addictions can also be highly destructive to physical health, psychological balance, and personal and social relationships. Addiction is any repeated behaviour, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others. Addiction involves: 1. compulsive engagement with the behaviour, a preoccupation with it; 2. impaired control over the behaviour; 3. persistence or relapse, despite evidence of harm; and 4. dissatisfaction, irritability or intense craving when the object — be it a drug, activity or other goal — is not immediately available. Compulsion, impaired control, persistence, irritability, relapse and craving — these are the hallmarks of addiction — any addiction. Not all harmful compulsions are addictions, though: an obsessive-compulsive, for example, also has impaired control and persists in a ritualized and psychologically debilitating behaviour such as, say, repeated hand washing. The difference is that he has no craving for it and, unlike the addict, he gets no kick out of his compulsion. How does the addict know she has impaired control? Because she doesn’t stop the behaviour in spite of its ill effects. She makes promises to herself or others to quit, but despite pain, peril and promises, she keeps relapsing. There are exceptions, of course. Some addicts never recognize the harm their behaviours cause and never form resolutions to end them. They stay in denial and rationalization. Others openly accept the risk, resolving to live and die “my way.

Ultimately then, as one gets ready for kundalini awakening, the goal is to help those chakras clear, open, and align. Kundalini will respond with the greatest ease of motion accomplished and will demonstrate how well it knows what to do. As you begin to work through these chakras blockages or energetic reversals, you may find that those struggles look something like this. Blockages for the root chakra may look like low energy, general fear, persistent exhaustion, identity crisis, feeling isolated from the environment, eating disorders, general lack or erratic appetite, blatant materialism, difficulty saving money, or overall constant health problems. For the sacral chakra, blockages or reversals may look like lack of creativity, lack of inspiration, low or no motivation, low or no sexual appetite, feelings of insignificance, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unaccepted, feelings of being outcasted, inability to care for oneself or persistent and recurrent problems of relationship with one's intimate partners. Blockages may look like identity crises or deficits for the solar plexus chakra, low self-esteem, low or no self-esteem, digestive problems, food intolerance, poor motivation, persistent weakness, constant nausea, anxiety disorders, liver disorder or disease, repeated illnesses, loss of core strength, lack of overall energy, recurrent depression with little relief, feelings of betrayal, For the chakra of the heart, reversals and blockages may seem like the inability to love oneself or others, the inability to put others first, the inability to put oneself first, the inability to overcome a problem ex, constant grudges, confidence issues, social anxiety or intense shyness, the failure to express emotions in a healthy way, problems of commitment, constant procrastination, intense anxiety For the throat chakra, blockages might seem like oversharing, inability to speak truthfully, failure to communicate with others, severe laryngitis, sore throats, respiratory or airway constraints, asthma, anemia, excessive exhaustion, inability to find the right words, paralyzing fear of confusion, nervousness in public situations, sometimes extreme dizziness, physical submissiveness, verba. For the third eye chakra, blockages or reversals might seem like a lack of direction in life, increasingly intense feelings of boredom or stagnation, migraines, insomnia, eye or vision problems, depression, high blood pressure, inability to remember one's dreams, constant and jarring flashbacks, closed-mindedness, fear, history of mental disorders, and history of addiction. For the crown chakra, blockages may look like feelings of envy, extreme sadness, need for superiority over others, self-destructive behaviors, history of addiction, generally harmful habits, dissociations from the physical plane, inability to make even the easiest decisions, persistent exhaustion, terrible migraines, hair loss, anemia, cerebral confusion, poor mental control, lack of intellect.

Now, with all seven of these chakras revolving in the right direction with no blockages whatsoever, your kundalini would not be able to help itself from rising into that state of bliss, which it perceives above. Ultimately then, as one gets ready for kundalini awakening, the goal is to help those chakras clear, open, and align. Kundalini will respond with the greatest ease of motion accomplished and will demonstrate how well it knows what to do. As you begin to work through these chakras blockages or energetic reversals, you may find that those struggles look something like this. Blockages for the root chakra may look like low energy, general fear, persistent exhaustion, identity crisis, feeling isolated from the environment, eating disorders, general lack or erratic appetite, blatant materialism, difficulty saving money, or overall constant health problems. For the sacral chakra, blockages or reversals may look like lack of creativity, lack of inspiration, low or no motivation, low or no sexual appetite, feelings of insignificance, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unaccepted, feelings of being outcasted, inability to care for oneself or persistent and recurrent problems of relationship with one's intimate partners. Blockages may look like identity crises or deficits for the solar plexus chakra, low self-esteem, low or no self-esteem, digestive problems, food intolerance, poor motivation, persistent weakness, constant nausea, anxiety disorders, liver disorder or disease, repeated illnesses, loss of core strength, lack of overall energy, recurrent depression with little relief, feelings of betrayal, For the chakra of the heart, reversals and blockages may seem like the inability to love oneself or others, the inability to put others first, the inability to put oneself first, the inability to overcome a problem ex, constant grudges, confidence issues, social anxiety or intense shyness, the failure to express emotions in a healthy way, problems of commitment, constant procrastination, intense anxiety For the throat chakra, blockages might seem like oversharing, inability to speak truthfully, failure to communicate with others, severe laryngitis, sore throats, respiratory or airway constraints, asthma, anemia, excessive exhaustion, inability to find the right words, paralyzing fear of confusion, nervousness in public situations, sometimes extreme dizziness, physical submissiveness, verba. For the third eye chakra, blockages or reversals might seem like a lack of direction in life, increasingly intense feelings of boredom or stagnation, migraines, insomnia, eye or vision problems, depression, high blood pressure, inability to remember one's dreams, constant and jarring flashbacks, closed-mindedness, fear, history of mental disorders, and history of addiction. For the crown chakra, blockages may look like feelings of envy, extreme sadness, need for superiority over others, self-destructive behaviors, history of addiction, generally harmful habits, dissociations from the physical plane, inability to make even the easiest decisions, persistent exhaustion, terrible migraines, hair loss, anemia, cerebral confusion, poor mental control, lack of intellect.

Smartphones are a great portal for knowledge, but when the people do not know how to use them, those very devices do more harm to the inner wellbeing of a person, young and old alike, than they do good.

Under the British System, drug addicts were not stigmatised or seen as moral failures. They often lived otherwise ‘normal’ lives, with jobs and families, and were simply helped to manage their condition in the least harmful way possible.

As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you.

Yes, there were worse vices which he could have turned to. Many times, he'd considered dabbling in them; drugs, alcohol, porn... but that wasn't his style. What happened to him during the event he dubbed 'Operation: End Turn' was a one-time occurrence. He'd never go off half-cocked on some dangerous adventure like that again, so what use was there in submitting to temptation and risking addiction to influences more harmful than caffeine? That was for people like James Bond or John Constantine; guys who had been to Hell and back and were still knee deep in the filth of the world.

Yes, there were worse vices which he could have turned to. Many times, he'd considered dabbling in them; drugs, alcohol, porn... but that wasn't his style. What happened to him during the event he dubbed 'Operation: End Turn' was a one-time occurrence. He'd never go off half-cocked on some dangerous adventure like that again, so what use was there in submitting to temptation and risking addiction to influences more harmful than caffeine? That was for people like James Bond or John Constantine; guys who had been to Hell and back and were still knee deep in the filth of the world.

If we agree that alcohol has some control over you once you start drinking, enough that drinkers regularly drink more than they set out to, surely alcohol can make you do something you never imagined yourself capable of. I am appalled by how many awful things I did under the influence. Addiction is humbling, and I have been humbled enough to know that I am capable of anything, no matter how abhorrent, if the circumstances are right. Anyone is. Believing yourself immune to mistakes increases your chance of committing a repugnant act. All humans are painfully capable of failure. We are only human. It only takes one slip-up, one lapse in judgment. Don’t be fooled—everyone makes mistakes. No one intends to kill another person while driving drunk. Yet it happens all the time. In the U.S., someone is killed by a drunk driver every 51 minutes.154 Have you ever gotten so drunk you threw up? Did you set out to do that? If your judgment is perfect, would you have allowed that to happen? Even if you consistently make great decisions and keep yourself and others out of harm’s way, do you want to be the person at the party who cannot shut up? The person whose breath reeks of wine but can’t tell because their senses have been numbed to the smell? We all know the person who goes on and on, and unfortunately, unlike on Facebook, we can’t skip to the next interesting story. I know from experience, no one wants to spend time with “drunk Annie,” who can’t stop talking or laughing loudly at her own jokes. You may feel that a little alcohol is good for your conversation skills or your golf game. The problem with alcohol is that once you start drinking you can’t judge the point where a little is good and a lot becomes a disaster. When you are making a fool of yourself, or when your conversation skills wane, you remain unaware. Even if you could gauge the exact amount to drink, booze doesn’t make you cleverer, funnier, more creative, or more interesting. There is nothing inherent in alcohol that can do this. More often when a shy person gets drunk, they end up emotional, weepy, and repetitive. We don’t realize how bad we look when drinking because we are drunk and so is everyone else. It’s the old question: If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you? With alcohol, as a culture, our answer is disturbing—yes.