The psychology of addiction.. - a conversation
“Can reason overcome addiction?” this young lady asked me with a quizzical look on her face, as we were sitting in Delta’s lounge in the airport. It is was seven in the morning, and my flight was due in a couple of hours. I was sipping a cup of coffee, reading Will Durant’s “Interpretations of Life”, when she stumbled on to a bar stool nearby, and hastily requested for a shot of Makers mark. I could see her fingers trembling a bit, and she seemed rather restless. The moment the generous bartender (as they always are in airline lounge’s...) slid the glass to her with a warm greeting, she grabbed it with both her hands and gulped it down her throat. As the liquid wound its serpentine way to her stomach, her face and body palpably began relaxing; a flush of satisfaction coursed through her face coloring her cheeks with a faint flush of redness – a sign of an overwhelming ache, satiated.
It was then that she noticed me watching her, and gently nodded her head. I put down the book I was reading, and asked “Are you alright?” She realized that I had witnessed her helplessness for those brief few minutes, and apologetically told me “I had a terrible hangover, I needed this drink so very badly”. I acknowledged, and continued my reading. After ten minutes or so, we started having stray conversation, and she had by that time drowned in two more shots, but less slowly and more peacefully than the first one. Her body language was more confident, and her composure seemed to have returned. I gathered that she worked as a Business analyst for an energy company, a single parent, with two grown up girls. As we kept talking, she suddenly interjected “I had been sober for nearly five years. After my girls started going to middle school and we moved out of my ex-husband’s house, I decided to give up alcohol. I did... Went through a rehab, attended some AA sessions, and with my career on the rise, I abstained from it completely. I sincerely believed that I had sufficiently reasoned out with my doctor, friends and family that drinking is not good for me, or my children, or work… The nature of my job does put me in many situations where I am surrounded by people drinking and frolicking. During those moments, when the urge would raise its head, I would quietly slither out to the rest room, or call my kids, or quickly eat dinner to appease this dry, consuming, irritating thirst. And after that, the urge would pass away, and it felt good…
“However, over the last three months, I have relapsed. And the descent has been pretty steep. As you can see, I needed a drink at 7 in the morning…” With this she ended her monologue and paused to take a breath. I was caught in two minds here. A part of me wanted to give her piece of my realization, and the other half nudged me to keep quiet. Anyway, I decided to go ahead to say what I had in mind: “Catherine (name changed), I know exactly what you are talking about. But tell me, do you really want to quit drinking? She gave a startled look and said “of course, I do…”
“No, Pls do not mistake me. The intent of my question was to ask whether you feel in it your bones, in your heartbeat that drinking is not good for your happiness. You see, It is my opinion that unless we experience the futility of alcohol deep down as an existential fact, not merely reasoning it out, or thinking or justifying it; one never ever gets over it that way. The point can be very simply illustrated: One can spell out all the acquired wisdom, biological and scientific reasons for not poking one’s finger into fire, but nothing will deter us from doing so until the body “feels” the great discomfort, the agonizing and excruciating pain it generates on contact with it. Once the heat is suffered, then no reasoning is required to make one stay away from it. A fundamental mutation takes place inside… In fact, after that one can be as close to fire as we want to, bask in its warmth, be an inch away from it; but one will never put a finger into a glowing ember voluntarily again. Alcohol induced pleasure also takes the same route. The thinking, reasoning mind can give us all the reasons to abstain from this ephemeral bliss, but like fire, if we could feel the intensity of its inner corrosion, the utter vacuousness, the helpless dependency, the slow degeneration of everything valuable and rich around us, and above all the neurotic sense of victimization and isolation that it fosters within; it drops away, just as a dead leaf detaches itself from its branch. The fundamental principle of life is that every being aspires to be happy and peaceful. And if the psycho-somatic intelligence perceives that its happiness and peace is being sacrificed or compromised at the altar of drug induced intoxication, then it will cease to crave for it. The entire mechanism of addiction breaks down, and its place will be found a newly discovered freedom that is far more deep, satisfying and fulfilling than ever experienced. Reasoning can provide a firm scaffolding around such a realization, but rarely can it bring about the change by itself… There is a very thin line between casually entertaining alcohol and serious abuse. And it is again reasoning that provides the rationale for that thin line. But to me, to be rid of this habit is to get it out completely, irrevocably through a candid perception of its effect without any justification. This question will have to be asked deep within oneself, and the answer will flower of its own, when ripe… Until then, one has to be diligent….”
The Lounge hostess came over and reminded me that an announcement for boarding has been made. As I was leaving, Catherine shook my hands and said “It’s been a pretty useful conversation, Thanks….”
“Yes, it has… I hope you find your inner poise soon…” With that I rejoined the humdrum of the concourse outside.
During the flight, it stuck me rather forcefully how almost everything Man touches becomes an addiction of some sort. “Man is largely a creature of Habit…” Dr Stanley Hall, wrote nearly a century ago. A habit is a thought repeating itself ad nauseam... Even the most precious, intimate feelings are turned into such automatized reflexes. We have ascribed so much of importance to this one aspect of our being – “The rational brain”, that it permeates every experience that we are capable of. Love, compassion, goodness, order – all of them are measured on scales acceptable to our rationality. Aldous Huxley’s work “The brave new world” projected this dilemma at the turn of last century. The truth is: the actuality of life can never be defined by thought; it is always an aftermath. It is dead wood, never the living, vibrant, effervescent, impermanent, beautiful thing called “life” - whose patterns are ever new. Every rose that flowers is a new rose, never a dull repetition; every cloud a fresh tremulous formation, every heartbeat pulsates with renewed birth, every wave a sprightly unique crescendo. Such intimacy of living brings its own order into life; and in that unforced order one finds the suffocating clasp of abstract thought giving way to a wholesome dissolution into life; and every experience lived and enjoyed without the compulsive push of a thought encrusted brain…
God bless….
It was then that she noticed me watching her, and gently nodded her head. I put down the book I was reading, and asked “Are you alright?” She realized that I had witnessed her helplessness for those brief few minutes, and apologetically told me “I had a terrible hangover, I needed this drink so very badly”. I acknowledged, and continued my reading. After ten minutes or so, we started having stray conversation, and she had by that time drowned in two more shots, but less slowly and more peacefully than the first one. Her body language was more confident, and her composure seemed to have returned. I gathered that she worked as a Business analyst for an energy company, a single parent, with two grown up girls. As we kept talking, she suddenly interjected “I had been sober for nearly five years. After my girls started going to middle school and we moved out of my ex-husband’s house, I decided to give up alcohol. I did... Went through a rehab, attended some AA sessions, and with my career on the rise, I abstained from it completely. I sincerely believed that I had sufficiently reasoned out with my doctor, friends and family that drinking is not good for me, or my children, or work… The nature of my job does put me in many situations where I am surrounded by people drinking and frolicking. During those moments, when the urge would raise its head, I would quietly slither out to the rest room, or call my kids, or quickly eat dinner to appease this dry, consuming, irritating thirst. And after that, the urge would pass away, and it felt good…
“However, over the last three months, I have relapsed. And the descent has been pretty steep. As you can see, I needed a drink at 7 in the morning…” With this she ended her monologue and paused to take a breath. I was caught in two minds here. A part of me wanted to give her piece of my realization, and the other half nudged me to keep quiet. Anyway, I decided to go ahead to say what I had in mind: “Catherine (name changed), I know exactly what you are talking about. But tell me, do you really want to quit drinking? She gave a startled look and said “of course, I do…”
“No, Pls do not mistake me. The intent of my question was to ask whether you feel in it your bones, in your heartbeat that drinking is not good for your happiness. You see, It is my opinion that unless we experience the futility of alcohol deep down as an existential fact, not merely reasoning it out, or thinking or justifying it; one never ever gets over it that way. The point can be very simply illustrated: One can spell out all the acquired wisdom, biological and scientific reasons for not poking one’s finger into fire, but nothing will deter us from doing so until the body “feels” the great discomfort, the agonizing and excruciating pain it generates on contact with it. Once the heat is suffered, then no reasoning is required to make one stay away from it. A fundamental mutation takes place inside… In fact, after that one can be as close to fire as we want to, bask in its warmth, be an inch away from it; but one will never put a finger into a glowing ember voluntarily again. Alcohol induced pleasure also takes the same route. The thinking, reasoning mind can give us all the reasons to abstain from this ephemeral bliss, but like fire, if we could feel the intensity of its inner corrosion, the utter vacuousness, the helpless dependency, the slow degeneration of everything valuable and rich around us, and above all the neurotic sense of victimization and isolation that it fosters within; it drops away, just as a dead leaf detaches itself from its branch. The fundamental principle of life is that every being aspires to be happy and peaceful. And if the psycho-somatic intelligence perceives that its happiness and peace is being sacrificed or compromised at the altar of drug induced intoxication, then it will cease to crave for it. The entire mechanism of addiction breaks down, and its place will be found a newly discovered freedom that is far more deep, satisfying and fulfilling than ever experienced. Reasoning can provide a firm scaffolding around such a realization, but rarely can it bring about the change by itself… There is a very thin line between casually entertaining alcohol and serious abuse. And it is again reasoning that provides the rationale for that thin line. But to me, to be rid of this habit is to get it out completely, irrevocably through a candid perception of its effect without any justification. This question will have to be asked deep within oneself, and the answer will flower of its own, when ripe… Until then, one has to be diligent….”
The Lounge hostess came over and reminded me that an announcement for boarding has been made. As I was leaving, Catherine shook my hands and said “It’s been a pretty useful conversation, Thanks….”
“Yes, it has… I hope you find your inner poise soon…” With that I rejoined the humdrum of the concourse outside.
During the flight, it stuck me rather forcefully how almost everything Man touches becomes an addiction of some sort. “Man is largely a creature of Habit…” Dr Stanley Hall, wrote nearly a century ago. A habit is a thought repeating itself ad nauseam... Even the most precious, intimate feelings are turned into such automatized reflexes. We have ascribed so much of importance to this one aspect of our being – “The rational brain”, that it permeates every experience that we are capable of. Love, compassion, goodness, order – all of them are measured on scales acceptable to our rationality. Aldous Huxley’s work “The brave new world” projected this dilemma at the turn of last century. The truth is: the actuality of life can never be defined by thought; it is always an aftermath. It is dead wood, never the living, vibrant, effervescent, impermanent, beautiful thing called “life” - whose patterns are ever new. Every rose that flowers is a new rose, never a dull repetition; every cloud a fresh tremulous formation, every heartbeat pulsates with renewed birth, every wave a sprightly unique crescendo. Such intimacy of living brings its own order into life; and in that unforced order one finds the suffocating clasp of abstract thought giving way to a wholesome dissolution into life; and every experience lived and enjoyed without the compulsive push of a thought encrusted brain…
God bless….
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