Addiction - A Spiritual Deep(er)Dive
Addiction is a multi-headed phenomena, beyond the materiel and social science and common recovery models lays a vision of a deeper path to healing.
The Backdrop-
Like most material science systems, the brain disease model of addiction neglects to see the social, economic, environmental factors contributing to addiction not to mention the spiritual.
Brain disease model: Addiction is a biopsychosocial disorder characterized by repeated use of drugs, or repetitive engagement in a behavior such as gambling, despite harm to self and others.[3][5][2][6][7][8] According to the "brain disease model of addiction," while a number of psychosocial factors contribute to the development and maintenance of addiction, a biological process that is induced by repeated exposure to an addictive stimulus is the core pathology that drives the development and maintenance of an addiction.[3] Many scholars who study addiction argue that the brain disease model is incomplete and misleading.
Luckily for most addicts, the human element has not been forgotten by therapeutic helpers and programs. The disease model eschewed by most recovery programs encompass these factors and concludes that: abstinence from said behavior coupled with rigorous self-honesty, accountability, community support, and the therapeutic value of one addict helping another plus a fearless self-inventory and selfless service will open up the individual to reprieve and awakening.
The biological model is being advanced upon by research in genetics and the massive role they play. Even much more than environmental stimuli, including social cycles of abuse and neglect. This emphasis on the biological may seem like a "blame the victim" position, which the sobering facts seem to unveil, but it is a more significant opening for intervention. The biological or medical model can start to aid the social and psychological one again. And this opens a space for a deeper inquiry where spirit and converging meta factors enter less mysteriously as the biological causal inquiry simply points to…yep…Karma. Our bodies seem to point towards an event horizon or nexus where interdependence with the environment builds long and deep habits that include continuums of awareness. The metaphysical space emerges when we notice that nothing is destroyed in nature and energy, the antecedent property of awareness, mutates and finds manifestation where it can. Reincarnation in many ways is a physical process. It is simply one on occurring on more discrete planes that interact with the ones we have the tools to observe, namely DNA and the genome.
In the psychological and spiritual investigations of self and reality I've engaged in through my healing journey and the journey I have been assisting others with- I see deep habits and behavioral expression that reflect a causal origin or tracking space that rolls back way further than early childhood development or even traumatic events.
Early childhood attachment theory posits that a few attachment styles tend to animate a persona’s version of psychic integration.
The sense of abandonment, not trusting the caregiver for love, or being actively abused - this carves out into more fine manifestations such as a chaotic caregiver, an inconsistent one, a dissociative one, etc.
Gabor Mate and many other researchers and addiction experts discuss this well. (On the term "expert" for one moment- the most prominent experts are addicts themselves. We can tell you the maze-like suffering that addiction can induce—the hopelessness and the therapies and treatments that work. We can tell you all about our moods, habits, patterns, cycles, and the direct first-hand experience of being split into two - the observing ego or witness I, and the compulsive addict mind that propels self-destructive behavior. We can diagnose and describe.)
Non the less, experts who study addiction currently center their study on environmental poisons, communal breakdown of trust, abusive social policy, and capricious law. They look at epigenetics and early childhood abuse and abandonment as key.
Addiction is a deep and rich field. One that, if examined with a whole heart, will enlighten us all. Whether we identify as an addict or someone who has lived near or with addiction we need to look at this. The ripple effect where co-dependents, enablers, and activities all swirl together is the collective sickness. Our media and culture by virtue of its very mediating tools, now fully engage with the biological and very physical hooks where addiction takes hold.
The contents of culture and the hermeneutical intricacies and values we celebrate and endorse all-breed hopelessness. They enhance the propensity for exhaustion and surrender to a sensual dimension where addiction and its effects are normalized and inevitable. That, in my opinion, is moral relativism and the divorcing from spiritual values prompted by industrialized, materialist violence, and its mesmerizing spell.
So! What more can we do to heal across all levels of addiction.
I believe and have for a long time, that a true examination and the self-reckoning of a deeper insight into the addiction will liberate the human family.
We are beings with cellular, genetic, atomic, conscious, and less conscious habits. Material science hones in on our physical bodies' habituations. Adaptation and evolution through time in this realm is a violent and haphazard one. The data suggests that adaptation includes "bad" habits as well as "good" ones (meaning adaptively healthy vs. degrading for overlapping vectors like the individual, the family society, etc... it’s complex what "bad" might mean). Psychic habits and karma are similar to these physical ones. Dispassionate, impersonal, and not just humancentric. We are talking about larger systems at play.
Back to the physical for a moment. For example, the latest research shows that autism and "schizophrenia" are all aspects of a mental expression of health/fitness that are close in expressed genetic quality. The old way of delineating mental illness or its quality is moving away from us. It seems to be becoming more dialectical -which is funny considering how thick the DSMR currently is.
Essentially our modern-day science speaks of a type of hemispheric interaction and how an "openness score" will show up as "illness" when it is too far skewed to one "side," giving rise to many types of mental illness. Other adaptive biochemical or genetically produced states will present as rigid and conformist - a kind of groupthink, pattern-seeking but suppressing mind- if we can generalize. These all have beneficial and destructive aspects in the extreme or conversely in moderation - and they all show up socially to shape our world differently. But what of the more subtle features of the mind and reality? The deeper patterns that scientific tools cannot track.
The spiritual deep-dive -
Intuitive, psychic, and spiritual work has taught me to integrate the materialist paradigm with the metaphysical one. Of course, these overlap. The way we behave has physically observable causes, "subconscious" and difficult to identify causes and even deeper karmic ones that do not register in unconscious behavior but rather as subtle field resonances.
These resonating layers enmesh with the Akashic layer of mind or mental, energetic produced imprints that sit on this planet's morphogenic field. This layer of info is where akashic readers and psychics glean their information and impressions of a client. So, we can identify personal psychic habits, traumas from past lives, and unseen influences from the etheric fields that contribute to addiction. This activity would have been the providence of shamans in the past. Before their being mostly decimated by industrialized society.
But the same approach is taken by Akashic readers and spiritual healers/assistants today. We see a layer of information and personal, transpersonal, and psychic historical truth that is liberating for the other and ourselves. One piece of info from a past life or a current life beyond the reach of the individuals' awareness can detonate a domino of self-realization that allows the seed of suffering and the loop trying to express and release to be accessed.
Most of us have multiple lifetime generated patterns of belief that spring from arrangements and events that animate a sequence of constraints. Those constraints follow a being in the subtle energetic layer and the mindstream as it transmigrates life to life, dimension to dimension. These manifest as similar "disorders" where the individual is trying to work out a problem. The problem is usually a betrayal or confusion. These betrayals can be self-regenerated through unconscious relationship choices life to life. I mean relationship to substances, behaviors or people, etc.
These confusions are the same. They are a blind spot that is following the individual. So, they may seem to be showing up in some authentic way we can capture and analyze in this life, but if we can sense deeper levels of consciousness and living systems such as the Akashic records, we can see the roots.
The roots also entwine with all humans' origins, all sentience, and the cosmos' energy. The qualities I am discussing also enmesh with celestial events such as the astrologers would tell us and the overall era of the earth's energetic spiritual life. The time we are in counts. These factors are all at play. These are the interdependent aspects that go into building a being we call a self.
Addiction is a great way to dig deep and realize our interdependence with our families, communities, culture, planet, the cosmos, all consciousness and the nature of life, and our ability to work with it.
If that is not the spiritual solution, I don't know what it is. And when we talk about praying to a higher power - we can attribute personalized voices and anthropomorphize the cosmos into a god. Still, we are looking into the most extraordinary mirror there is.
The reflection is the way out.