The Root Cause of Addiction

[truthtraveler]

The root of addiction is unresolved emotional trauma. When traumas, be they extreme or mild, are not resolved they leave behind a slew of painful, unprocessed feelings in the unconscious. These feelings are never content to remain silent and instead clamor for release. When they express themselves openly and without disguise this activates the healing process. The healing process, however, is so painful and potentially discombobulating that few people lacking proper external support and self-understanding can dare undertake it.

But a person’s inability to heal does not stop his unresolved feelings from needing to express themselves. Lacking healing as an option, these feelings instead express themselves as symptoms, of which addiction is just one subset. The purpose of addiction is to divert and assuage these painful, upwelling feelings into a seemingly comfortable alternative without allowing them to become conscious. In the short run this feels much more placid than healing, but in the long run it only prolongs underground psychic misery and adds new consequences to an already troubled life.

Addictions vary in their intensity, side effects, and degree of societal acceptance. Some are clearly weighted toward the conventionally negative end of the spectrum, like heroin addiction or petrol-sniffing. Others, like workaholism or membership in a cult or cult-like group, are not so definitively negative, and can receive societal approval and even perks. And some addictions, like having children and being in non-enlightened relationships, are so pervasive, accepted, and even lauded that they are rarely even considered addictions at all – and thus form the backbone of society as we know it.

At present our society, and most of our society’s healers, treat conventionally-accepted addiction by simply helping “sufferers” find milder substitute addictions or other milder symptoms. Although this might make life more consciously peaceful for the addict, it falls far short of helping the human race optimally evolve – or helping the individual find a deeper peace. There is no substitute for the resolution of trauma. Emotional wounds that are not grieved poison the psyche.

[Nesi]

I would tend to agree with what you are saying is true in 75% of the people I have encountered throughout my experiences of being an addict out of recovery for 25 years and in the process of recovery for 17 years. However, there is that 25% of people who were not emotionally traumatized or had no major crisis to speak of underlying thier addictions.....more just a form of neglect in being taught how to deal with life on life's terms. It seems that there is a whole attitude and still is of people who were never taught an internal locus of control, a healthy sense of self, and are just plain co-dependent instead of interdependent. They are driven by a sick need to validate themself externally no matter what the cost.
I would venture to say it has alot to do with childhood development and patterning. After all I have met many people who have had such tremendous trauma and woundedness in thier childhood (by my standards) that you would think that they most certainly would become an addict in some form to escape their pain, but instead were taught healthy coping skills and adopted a healing attitude at an early age, because they were also taught to love and honor themselves first.
What make these individuals different? Maybe it was because they had healthy self actualized role models that taught them how.

It does not necessarily take a crisis or a trauma to wound a child. What if a child is raised by a mother who is a victim of some unresolved trauma? She will unconscioiusly instill fear and vitim behaviors by transference in the child she is raising by simply role modeling those behaviors. This stance in life will eventually manifest later in an emotionally unbalanced adult in some form or another. it is a sneaky silent subtle erosion that takes place. Not some big event. more of a developmental neglect.

I agree that societal standards today promote unhealthy attachments, to seek outer wealth instead of inner wealth, are driven to achieve social status set by external standards and social norms that are unhelthy to begin with, and a general individualistic attitude that promotes seperation. Many people live thier lives in an unconscious state, blind to, or in fear of making choices that go against the grain of social acceptance. afraid that if they do they will somehow loose thier identity instead of looking at it as a channel to release the authentic self they trudge along in life to someone elses drummer.

At present our society, and most of our society’s healers, treat conventionally-accepted addiction by simply helping “sufferers” find milder substitute addictions or other milder symptoms. Although this might make life more consciously peaceful for the addict, it falls far short of helping the human race optimally evolve – or helping the individual find a deeper peace

I think this statement is very true. I think the collective consciousness of our planet is on a path of self defeating destruction, we have become a global village that has all the symptoms and hallmarks of domestic violence. Power and control seems to be the most valued comodity. we are all in a state of underlying fear......in some form or another.

i enjoyed relating to you comment. but I have a question? How can we promote and adopt a stance of healing and love to begin with. What does a healthy childhood look like?. What healthy skills can we teach our children at an early age that will help them deal with the inevitible crisis's they will surely face in thier futures.

Does it start with psyche or spiritual development?, (and I don't mean dictated by religion) I mean the kind of spiritaul development defined by the individual self....a connectedness that has a foundation of love and acceptance.

It seems we all have many definitions of what the problem is and what I looks like......but very few solutions towards prevention to begin with.

(I have found that Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, and ACIM - A Course In Miracles, to be very helpful on my journey towards healthy development).

Just curious........

Nesi

[jurplesman]

This is interesting reading, but it assumes that addictions are caused by emotional problems stemming from past traumas or unfortunate childhood experiences. This is typical psychoanalytic stuff, that helps little in overcoming addictions or even depression.

Let us suppose that we could pinpoint the exact occurrence in childhood when the trauma happened, then what???

There is a much simpler explanation of addictions, and I am not talking about addiction to having children, which is not an overwhelming craving for a substance.

Addictions are simply the result of a biochemical abnormality, that causes a person to crave for substances as a means of producing biological energy, that a person cannot obtain from normal food sources.

Thus when a person is addicted to alcohol, the person uses alcohol as a source of biological energy obtained from sugars, that the person has problems obtaining without the use of alcohol. Alcohol is fermented by other then human organisms from pyruvate, an essential chemical produced in normal sugar metabolism (glycolysis). By using alcohol a person can bypass about 10 biochemical reactions - all requiring biological energy - to produce that energy via a slightly different pathway after pyruvate. He saves biological energy by using alcohol. However in the process acetaldehyde is produced which is very toxic to the body. Alcohol is also an antidote against excess adrenaline, and without alcohol a person may be very anxious and depressed. Excess adrenaline production is a sign of abnormal sugar metabolism.

A similar argument could be shown in the addiction to non-alcoholic substances. They all trigger the release of excess neurotransmitters, that the person has problem producing normally, such as dopamine, giving a high to the person using heroin or cocaine. When a person lacks biological energy he/she cannot produce the neurotransmitters that would make them feel happy and content when they should.

Reducing the problem of addiction to a physiological problem of energy production, the solution can be very simple - by the adoption of a diet that helps the body overcome or reduce the effects of insulin resistance and by regulating blood sugar levels, insulin and stress hormone levels.

This can be achieved despite negative childhood experiences or traumas.

[Stu]

"Addictions are simply the result of a biochemical abnormality, that causes a person to crave for substances as a means of producing biological energy, that a person cannot obtain from normal food sources." - jurplesman


"The root of addiction is unresolved emotional trauma." - truthtraveler


Biological vs Psychological: The great debate.

This argument has been going on for decades and seems likely to carry on doing so. The reason that finding the cause seems important is that many believe that "if you find the cause - you find the cure". The issue with addiction is, that as an 'illness' it has no reliable observable pathology.

It only has symptoms.

A number of theorists have tried to establish links between addiction and observable disease/behaviour (depending on their 'camp') but these are usually forced to fit facts.

For instance it was once suggested that addiction was a punishment from God for turning your back on the Church. 18th Century Opium users had ceased attending Church regularly, so they were told that God punished had them by turning them into addicts. If they were to return to regular Church going then their addiction would be cured - and for some it worked, the support from the Church helped them overcome their addiction. Does this mean then that addiction is a purely spiritual affliction?

Because it is impossible to prove any one theory behind the cause of addiction, nobody can be proved wrong therefore truthtravelers beliefs are as valid as jurplesmans.

So what do we do in the meantime to help those afflicted (and effected) by addiction? We carry on treating the symptoms.

[Michael Lank]

There are other approaches to addiction, for example the human givens approach shows that addiction is more likely when certain Basic Human Needs are not adequately met.

The other aspect of addictive behaviour is the habitual element to the behaviour. The addiction becomes associated with certain events or emotions. Often noticable with smokers, who will link smoking with many things; getting up in the morning, relaxation, after meals, etc.

During the Vietnam war large numbers of US soldiers (GIs) became addicted to Heroin (estimated between 25,000 and 50,000 in 1971), yet only a very small number were addicts beforehand. On their return home a fair number of these reverted to their former non-addictive behaviour, and old lifestyles.

This suggests that addiction may not be linked either to 'unresolved emotional trauma' or biological factors; if this were the case then those GIS would have been addicts both before and after the war.

[truthtraveler]

I would tend to agree with what you are saying is true in 75% of the people I have encountered throughout my experiences of being an addict out of recovery for 25 years and in the process of recovery for 17 years.

So we overlap in point of view 75% of the time…from the outset. That’s not a bad start in my book!

However, there is that 25% of people who were not emotionally traumatized or had no major crisis to speak of underlying thier addictions.....more just a form of neglect in being taught how to deal with life on life's terms.

I think that other 25% was emotionally traumatized, just in different ways. I think that 25% of people who were seemingly not traumatized can be broken down into two basic subgroups.

1) They were traumatized and in an extreme and significant way but have so blocked it out – for various reasons – that it is no longer noticeably apparent…to them or most others.

2) Their trauma WAS the form of neglect that you speak of. Neglect, even mild emotional neglect, can be highly traumatic for a child – especially if it’s chronic. I consider that when parents do not fully understand, respect, and appreciate the true self of the child this is inherently traumatic for him. He is not being seen for who he is, and his internal reality is not being validated. This is even painful for adults! How much more so for a child!

It seems that there is a whole attitude and still is of people who were never taught an internal locus of control, a healthy sense of self

The way to teach a child how NOT to get an internal locus of control – and thus how NOT to get a healthy sense of self – is to emotionally abandon him. This is traumatic. And you never even have to lift your hand in anger or raise your voice to do it. And it happens EVERY day. To varying degrees, I see it as the norm in every family.

they and are just plain co-dependent instead of interdependent. They are driven by a sick need to validate themself externally no matter what the cost.

This is a consequence of the trauma, not the cause of it.

I would venture to say it has alot to do with childhood development and patterning. After all I have met many people who have had such tremendous trauma and woundedness in thier childhood (by my standards) that you would think that they most certainly would become an addict in some form to escape their pain, but instead were taught healthy coping skills and adopted a healing attitude at an early age, because they were also taught to love and honor themselves first. What make these individuals different? Maybe it was because they had healthy self actualized role models that taught them how.

Even one enlightened witness (a healthy role model who sees the child for who he truly is) can make a HUGE different to a child, and can give a child a basic model for self-love and self-respect – the foil for addiction.

It does not necessarily take a crisis or a trauma to wound a child.

I have a very broad definition of trauma. I consider conventional traumas to be at the extreme end of the trauma spectrum.

What if a child is raised by a mother who is a victim of some unresolved trauma? She will unconscioiusly instill fear and vitim behaviors by transference in the child she is raising by simply role modeling those behaviors.

Thus she will traumatize him.

This stance in life will eventually manifest later in an emotionally unbalanced adult in some form or another. it is a sneaky silent subtle erosion that takes place. Not some big event. more of a developmental neglect.

…which, from the perspective of the child, is a trauma.

i enjoyed relating to you comment. but I have a question? How can we promote and adopt a stance of healing and love to begin with.

Start by healing ourselves. Devote our lives to healing our own wounds. Make it our top priority. All else follows naturally from there.

What does a healthy childhood look like?

1) Enlightened parents – ones who have resolved all their own traumas
2) Parents who devote their full emotional energy to seeing and nurturing the truth that is ALREADY in their child – after all, he or she is already born perfect…and full of truth

This is the ideal.

I just wrote a piece called “The Baby’s Manifesto” which addresses this subject in more depth, and I’ll be putting it on my website soon.

What healthy skills can we teach our children at an early age that will help them deal with the inevitible crisis's they will surely face in thier futures.

A child with a strong sense of his own true self has the best tools around to deal with life’s inevitable crises – because he has such a strong sense of himself to come back to.

Does it start with psyche or spiritual development?, (and I don't mean dictated by religion) I mean the kind of spiritaul development defined by the individual self....a connectedness that has a foundation of love and acceptance.

Yes! A connected sense of self is the root of spirituality. A person connected with who they are at their deepest level is connected…with their spirit. This is spirituality.

[truthtraveler]

This is interesting reading, but it assumes that addictions are caused by emotional problems stemming from past traumas or unfortunate childhood experiences. This is typical psychoanalytic stuff, that helps little in overcoming addictions or even depression.

Juriaan, you and I come from a very different background of understanding. At basic, you don’t believe in an unconscious – and I do. I learned this in our earliest discussion.

[link to discussion: http://www.uncommonforum.com/viewtopic. ... 3039#23039 ]

Allow me to ask you this. What effect DO you think trauma has on a child…especially, let’s say, prolonged, extreme trauma? How does that effect the young child’s mind and emotional development? Do you really believe that it might not, at least to some degree, lead to addictive behavior later in life?

I would be very curious to hear your reply.

This aside, I never said that just because someone intellectually understands the emotional root of their addiction it suddenly becomes easy for them to overcome it. Intellectual understanding does NOTHING on its own to helping people overcome addiction. These truths must be integrated on an emotional level.

Addictions are simply the result of a biochemical abnormality, that causes a person to crave for substances as a means of producing biological energy, that a person cannot obtain from normal food sources.

I agree that there is a biochemical component to addiction, but I see this “biochemical abnormality” as a consequence of trauma as well.

If I burn my hand of the stove, it too will have an effect on my biochemistry – but I wouldn’t label my now abnormal biochemistry as the cause.

(This said, I do not wish to make light of the positive effects I would imagine your nutritional models can have on helping people take steps to recover from addiction. And I’ve said this all along. I don’t want to be guilty of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I still feel I can learn a lot from you – though I admit, certain aspects of your point of view make it hard for me to do!)

[truthtraveler]

Biological vs Psychological: The great debate.

I don’t see it as such a great debate. I expressed my point of view on this in the above posting.

This argument has been going on for decades and seems likely to carry on doing so.

Sadly, I don’t doubt you there.

The reason that finding the cause seems important is that many believe that "if you find the cause - you find the cure".

Yes, and I have found the cure. But that does not mean that very many people can tolerate it! It’s hell to grieve our deepest wounds. It’s hard enough for most people to even face them…for a second.

The issue with addiction is, that as an 'illness' it has no reliable observable pathology. It only has symptoms.

Perhaps not a “reliable observable pathology” to you. I see it pretty clearly.

Because it is impossible to prove any one theory behind the cause of addiction, nobody can be proved wrong therefore truthtravelers beliefs are as valid as jurplesmans.

When you get into feelings and behavior patterns spread over decades, conventional scientific proof becomes largely irrelevant. I’m actually a trained scientist myself (a biologist), and this is why I left the field! But just because you can’t prove something, it doesn’t mean it’s not true. The soul speaks louder than the statistical T-test.

So what do we do in the meantime to help those afflicted (and effected) by addiction? We carry on treating the symptoms.

Remember, I feel the whole addiction itself IS a symptom of the deeper problem. Sometimes, I grant you, you do have to get the symptom to a manageable place before you can address its deeper causes (i.e. detoxing a heroin addict), but sometimes unless you address the deeper underlying causes – the ancient, existential pain fueling the addiction – nothing will change.

[truthtraveler]

There are other approaches to addiction, for example the human givens approach shows that addiction is more likely when certain Basic Human Needs are not adequately met.

I don’t feel my point of view about the root cause of addiction conflicts with Roger Elliott’s viewpoint on the Seven Basic Human Needs. His idea, for the most part, makes a lot of sense, but I still feel it doesn’t even come close to addressing addiction’s root cause. The root cause I describe – emotional trauma – could totally lead someone to become stunted in being able to meet their seven basic human needs.

The other aspect of addictive behaviour is the habitual element to the behaviour. The addiction becomes associated with certain events or emotions. Often noticable with smokers, who will link smoking with many things; getting up in the morning, relaxation, after meals, etc.

Agreed, but this has nothing to do with addiction’s root cause.

During the Vietnam war large numbers of US soldiers (GIs) became addicted to Heroin (estimated between 25,000 and 50,000 in 1971), yet only a very small number were addicts beforehand. On their return home a fair number of these reverted to their former non-addictive behaviour, and old lifestyles.

This suggests that addiction may not be linked either to 'unresolved emotional trauma' or biological factors; if this were the case then those GIS would have been addicts both before and after the war.

As a therapist I have worked with – and have been colleagues with – many Vietnam combat veterans. My experience discounts your suppositions.

For starters, very small numbers of Vietnam vets were addicts pre-Vietnam…because they were just kids when they left – mostly around 18 or 19. Most had never even seen heroin before Vietnam.

Secondly, heroin was readily available during Vietnam, especially in the later years, and tons of people used it (and other drugs) to numb themselves to the horrors they were experiencing, and could not process, while overseas. When many of these addicted vets returned to life in America, they found their stress levels decreased, and they “got back on track” and kicked their addictions – at least the most serious and socially aberrant ones, like heroin. My experience suggests that many of these vets who got clean upon returning home were emotionally healthier to begin with – that is, had experienced fewer childhood traumas and thus had a lower susceptibility to addiction. Thus, they had more emotionally supportive environments to begin with…not to mention to return home to.

But my god, what I witnessed time and time again with the most traumatized (and often addicted) vets was an incredible link between their childhood trauma histories and their reaction to adult traumas. Vets who experienced high degrees of childhood traumas were more susceptible to all sorts of atrocious symptoms – heroin addiction being just one.

Of course, at a certain point, when combat traumas became horrendous, even the vets with the healthiest childhoods broke down too…

[Stu]

Perhaps not a “reliable observable pathology” to you. I see it pretty clearly.

Not me, this is a quote from the World Health Organisation

But just because you can’t prove something, it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

I never said that - and I never could. My exact words were "nobody can be proved wrong"

Sometimes, I grant you, you do have to get the symptom to a manageable place before you can address its deeper causes (i.e. detoxing a heroin addict), but sometimes unless you address the deeper underlying causes – the ancient, existential pain fueling the addiction – nothing will change.

I could not agree with you more.

.

[Nesi]

I find everyone's input very interesting.....but the one underlying "theme" i have noticed throughout these discussions....is everyone seems to be addicted to the "need to be right" . When that becomes the focus of the conversation valuable information is lost and diluted and filtered out by the ego.

I am just curious.....have any of you experienced addiction first hand? or have you "been" an addict yourself?

do you really know what it is like to wake up homeless, hopeless, in such devestating despair....with no choices left in life, but to again repeat the self-destruction of suicide on the installment plan, hit by hit, fix by fix? minute by minute, day by day, year after year?

Imagine being stuck in a loop of such emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual pain that the only thing that makes life bearable is a drug or somehow altering your reality because your inside reality is a living hell.

Imagine that you are no longer an accepted part of society (and never will be in the future)....because you have created so much physical, legal, and social wreckage in your life.....that even when you turn your life around....it will never be recognized.....becaue it is impossible to erase that wreckage by societies standards.

Imagine that you have no car to drive, have lost the ability to hold a job, your family, children, and friends hate you, you have no safe place inside you or outside of you to find a moment of peace or rest.

Imagine that you have lost the ability to trust yourself and the world around you....and the only thing you have found reliable in life is the "feeling" the next fix gives you. and every minute that you don't have it you are in such self loathing that you wish and pray that the next hit would just kill you anyway.

Now imagine that the only thing that was reliable...(your drug - your relief zone....stops working. your tolerance is so high that no amount can again bring you the relief you seek. You are thrown into a perpetual state of unending frantic panic. and you cant go back to who you use to be because you have no "self" left to hold on to.

Imagine that everyday you wake up - you get to look forward to another day just like I have described. running from the cops, living in fear of being shot by gangs, dishonoring and humiliating yourself in every way to just get that one moment of "relief". and you chase it and chase it and can never again regain it....but you really have nothing else that has ever worked.

Have any of you ever experienced this first hand? If you have I would like to hear from you and how you put your life back together including all the treatments you have endured yourself.

I was homeless out there at the street level for 14 of the 25 years i was an addict, living on the side of the freeway in a pallet house, cardboard boxes, abandoned gas stations or looking for a warm bush to crawl under. I certainly didn't care if I lived another day or not. is a matter of fact.....I wished more than anything that I was dead because at least that would stop me from the suffering I was experiencing on a dialy basis. I got my clothes and food out of dumpsters, I cleaned myself in restaurant bathroom or under garden hoses. I couldn't tust anyone around me at that level because they would cut my throat for a crack pipe. the cops would play us all agianst eachother, take our money, give us our dope back and tell us we were paid up for the month, to have a nice day and call it street justice. the shelters would not let you in unless you stayed overnight and I could not go all night without a fix. I could not go to a meal line unless I had alrady had my fix because I could not eat without it. Every single function in life depended on my drug of choice.

Every single day I put my life, my health, my freedom, my mind and my spirit on the line...without thought, I was on automatic pilot, just existing. By all standards I was already a walking dead person. I had killed off any resemblence to my real self - To the little girl i use to be, to the morals and values I was riased with, to the standars of priorities i use to have, the things i used to depend on were long gone. I was at a level of basic survival....and the monster of obsession and compulsion and intense craving dictated every move I made.

The last year of my using crack cocaine.....I blew 98 thousand dollars up in smoke. and didn't have a ciggarrette to smoke the next morning, not a car or a house to live in, not one single shred of dignity to look forward to. not a friend or a family member to count on. not anything that you all so casually take for granted in your lives. Everywhere I looked on a daily basis I saw faces of contempt, disgust, and shame looking back at me. I avoided mirrors because I could not stand in my own refelction because what I saw some horrible evil monster looking back at me ready to take my life at every turn.

I even got to the point where jail was a step up from where I came from. It was a relief to find myself in the back of a police car and know that the war was over and know that i would be going to a "safe" place. Because I had long ago lost the ability to keep myself safe. But everytime I went right back to what was familiar, what I knew, as destructive as it was......it was what I had become. jails and institutions became my second homes.

the only thing that I had to hang on to was that "sliver" of the indestructable human spirit. That little light inside all of us the refuses to go out. that one piece of my soul that had been untouched by all the damage I had created. That samll section of my spirit that was still whole, perfect, and complete and beyond the impact of all the woundedness, disease, disaster and crisis, I had experienced in my life. And the only way I found that was through a near death expericne at the hands of a truck driver who tried to kill me. then I became obsessed with risk addiction.....trying to regain that small glimpse of the other side of life - what we all call the spirit realm.

there is no one single simple way to treat a person at this level. it is a rebuilding of a life that we are talking about. not just the compartmentalized treatments and solutions you all offer.

Imagine waking up tomarrow morning and being stripped of everything you have ever known. what would you hang on to....to rebuild your life?

Intellect and knowledge can only take a person so far......after that you have to tap into spirit.....that is what keeps you moving forward. That is what makes you ultimatley get out of bed in the morning to go to your job, come here to post, seek greater knowledge, and improve your life and want to love and be loved and be a contributor to life.

Becaue in the end.....that is all you will have.....you don't see hearses with u-hauls behind them....all you will take with you is your soul. That is the one enduring element of energy that will never be taken away or redefined by human knowledge, treatments, biochemical alterations, psychoanalytical jargon, scientific studies. the ego is what makes us seek all the rest of this stuff. the spirit already stands in the truth.

Why do I ask if any of you have experienced addiciton first hand? because it adds credibility to your statements when you have experienced it, endured it, risen from the ashes, and know what a long multifaceted road it takes to recover and rebuild your life. Other than that you can only give a portion of your knowledge in what you have learned from others, from your educaiton, from your training, and observation of addictions. The root cause, definition, and solutions can all be found in textbooks written in variations by others.....but when you have lived it....it takes on a whole new meaning and tends to make you more believeable.

I commend every one of you for being in the profession you are....without your contribution in the specialties that you offer were would we be? I am so glad that everyone of you have done your own research....in your own way.

I have done my own as well and am still in the process of learning...that is why i am here.

I still enjoy learning from all of your perspectives....but the need for all of you to be "right" is getting in the way. A much higher purpose could be served if we all took a learning perspective from eachother instead of a know it all one.

Just my contribution to the discussion.

Nesi

[Greenteeth]

Yes, and I have found the cure. But that does not mean that very many people can tolerate it! It’s hell to grieve our deepest wounds. It’s hard enough for most people to even face them…for a second.

I'd say this is quite a bold statement. I would also say that what is right for you is not necessarily what it right for everyone else.

I would ask why it is so important to you that everyone else heals themselves? Surely that is something that no one, as an individual, has the ability or the right to have any control over. It would be nice if everyone dealt with their fears, but unfortunately this does not happen with our particular race.

Addiction is an individual thing, in that it is up to the individual, on a society level, help can be offered and at it's most extreme and unacceptable, people can be locked up, but to quote an old phrase, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

On the outset, I fundamentally disagree with your quote. We live in the present, not the past, so why focus on it. In some cases to delve into that past would be more traumatising than good, and to condemn someone for not wanting to go into that, is not what I would call compassion and understanding.

As an addict or recovering addict, would you not say that some understanding goes a long way?

[jurplesman]

Of all the contributions I found that by Nesi the most instructive.

She is so right that many 'philosophical' discussions are about THE NEED TO BE RIGHT.

You cannot debate with Truthtraveller because he refuses to define "Addiction" and therefore we don't know what we are discussing. To me it is just an interesting game that people play: "I win, you lose". In science a definition is usually independently observable and measurable. In philosophy definitions are personal opinions. Most philosophical debates are about definitions or assumptions or major premisses.

Yes Nesi, I too was addicted for many years. It started off with a "mental breakdown", visits to psychiatrists and psychologists and then drugged to the eye balls, for depression and anxiety attacks for many years. I know what is is like to make sure that I had my next fix. I walked around with a sufficient tablets to pleasantly overdose, just in case things became unbearable. But my wife and daughter kept me alive. I too recognize the spark in me that kept me going and I desperately wanted to know why....why? I soon realized that the wise old men - father Xmases - in the form of psychiatrists and psychologists to whom I looked up as the source of all human wisdom could not help me. I got worse and worse on drugs and psychotherapy.

I must say you were in a worse position, and your description really touched me. As a retired Probation and Parole Officer you described the life of many of my clients who did consider jail as their home and place of security.

And you are so right, that an addict at that level you are talking about is not generally understood by the average citizen. It is a whole different life at the bottom of society. They need to reconstruct their lifes from bottom up. It requires the reconstruction of a whole new personality.

When I discovered the wonderful world of biochemistry I was able to cure myself of depression and anxiety attacks. At first very slowly, because there were a lot of things we did not understand. I had no real proof that the hypoglycemic diet could help addiction, alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive gambling, sexual offenders, violent behaviour and so many other kinds of mental illness. But the fact was that alcoholics and drug addicts - the main group of offenders in jail - did recover from their addiction once they adopted the hypoglycemic diet. Now I have a btter understanding why.

Those who were not on drugs - for instance depressed housewives caught shoplifting - recovered much quicker. Now I know that people on drugs - legal or illegal - take much longer to fully recover, and now I know, that this is because studies have shown that it takes about 9-14 months for the body to repair damage done to receptors for neurotransmitters.

My experience is that this can be accelerated with the hypoglycemic diet.

And again you are right that personality needs complete reconstruction.

I am often accused of ignoring the psychological side of personality, but then they are not aware of the self-help psychotherapy course at our web site or the chapters in my book. It devotes one chapter to nutrition and seven chapters to psychotherapy. Thus psychotherapy is most important, BUT and this is a big BUT, no amount of psychotherapy is going to help when you are dealing with an underlying biochemical abnormality.

In fact I am very critical of psychotherapists imposing psychological solutions to biochemical abnormalities. This happened to me, when I was in therapy. The psychotherapy I received reinforced the idea that I really was STUPID!!!! It made me feel even worse. Little did I or the therapist realize that my problem was biochemical and not psychological!!

This is why I picture personality to be like an onion - with layers of egos - the inner most core to be the biological or biochemical self. Thus an abnormal biochemistry will produce abnormal ‘psychological experiences’ and ‘abnormal cognitions’, that are so often confused with the causes of mental, illnesses by traditional therapists.

The next layer in personality I see to be the self-image. Thus the self-image is at the core of personality proper. Our reactions to the world around us stems from the way we judge ourselves. Thus a person with a faulty biochemistry is going to have a negative self-image, simply because he has no control over his ‘endogenous’ emotions. He is not in charge of the self.

The advantage working with drug addicts is that they KNOW their problem to be mainly biochemical. Alcoholics steeped in the belief of a Higher Power also may have some problems accepting the biochemical nature of their disease. Many of them are told that their disease is ‘mental’ or ‘psychological’ or ‘religious’.

In fact, druggies are amateur biochemists. So they are much relieved to hear that there IS a biochemical abnormality that causes them to be addicted. And that there is a non-drug method of stabilizing their mood swings

People with emotional disorders not primarily associated with drug use, find it much harder to accept that many of their ‘abnormal cognitions and feelings’ are biochemical and not psychological in nature. The point is that a biochemical reaction is so fast - that the psychological reaction (response) is perceived as a reaction to thoughts or cognitions.

For instance, in anxiety attacks the amount of adrenaline is increased to a thousand fold in a fraction of a second. Thus the confusion between biochemical and psychological reactions is understandable.

The other controversial aspect of my approach to mental illness is that I believe, based on many years of experience as a therapist, that the hypoglycemic diet is a near universal remedy for mental illness. The idea that there is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ remedy in mental illness is usually rejected on the ground that mental illness is COMPLEX and therefore has no easy solutions. I agree, but then why accept drug therapy or psychotherapy as an easy solution?

Human biochemistry is far too complex for single remedies like a drugs or a combination of drugs, or even single nutritional supplements or herbal remedies to rectify a biochemical imbalance. That notion is popular because it is being pushed along by drug companies with a vested interest in satisfying their investors, not necessarily patients. Progress in science is money driven, not by scientific curiosity or for the benefit of improving health in the community!.

The adjective ‘complex’ goes with any other disease that is poorly understood. Flat-earthers have problems understanding that the earth goes around the sun, instead of the obvious observable fact that the sun goes around the earth.

My main justification for claiming that the hypoglycemic diet is a near-universal remedy for mental illness - I am not claiming each and every form of mental illness - is that most of these illness have one problem in common, and that it involves a disease of energy production. All biochemical reactions in the body need biological energy in the form of ATP. It is required in the synthesis of most neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine by means of energy hungry ‘methylation’. Methylation is a mover and shaker, it alters biochemical molecules and is dependent on energy.

The brain although two per cent of the body required 80 per cent of all available energy floating around in the body. That energy is derived form glucose found in the food we eat. When we have a problems absorbing that glucose, as in the case of insulin resistance (hypoglycemia), then we have problems producing biological energy. The brain is starved of energy and we have ‘psychological’ problems. We cannot think properly!

The hypoglycemic diet is a natural diet especially adapted to overcome the hypoglycemic condition so wide spread among depressed people. Being a diet we are meant to eat since the times of Neanderthals, it will provide all the ingredients and forerunners of enzymes, coenzymes necessary in the production of the right neurotransmitters. It is usually supplemented with special vitamins and minerals missing among mentally ill people. It is a diet that should be designed for the individual biochemistry of the person. In that sense it is not universal.

It is especially designed to reduce the wild mood swings, unstable blood sugar levels, insulin and stress hormone levels that are responsible for the ‘abnormal’ cognitions and feelings.

If I sound simplistic, repetitive, one-eye, rigid or even arrogant, it is the science that brought me to this conclusion. I just hope that it may lead to a simpler solution to the pandemic of mental, illness now raging around the world.

At least I consider this the first step in treatment then followed by psychotherapy.

[Stu]

Of all the contributions I found that by Nesi the most instructive.
She is so right that many 'philosophical' discussions are about THE NEED TO BE RIGHT.

Now come on jurplesman, we can all see that Nesi didi not say that!

I find everyone's input very interesting.....but the one underlying "theme" i have noticed throughout these discussions....is everyone seems to be addicted to the "need to be right" . When that becomes the focus of the conversation valuable information is lost and diluted and filtered out by the ego.

Your undeniable passion for your own methods makes you as 'guilty' of this as anyone else!

.

[truthtraveler]

truthtraveler wrote: Yes, and I have found the cure. But that does not mean that very many people can tolerate it! It’s hell to grieve our deepest wounds. It’s hard enough for most people to even face them…for a second.

Greenteeth wrote: I'd say this is quite a bold statement. I would also say that what is right for you is not necessarily what it right for everyone else.

Yes, a bold statement. We’re so taught in our world to hide our bold truth. Hiding my light hasn’t gotten me anywhere. So I’m trying a new way.

I would ask why it is so important to you that everyone else heals themselves?

When one remains unhealed, we all suffer. We are all connected to a deep, universal truth.

Surely that is something that no one, as an individual, has the ability or the right to have any control over.

I agree. I have no control over what anyone else does, nor do I purport to.

It would be nice if everyone dealt with their fears, but unfortunately this does not happen with our particular race.

True also.

On the outset, I fundamentally disagree with your quote. We live in the present, not the past, so why focus on it.

We live in the present, except where our past history has us all tied up in knots…and distorts our present view of the world.

In some cases to delve into that past would be more traumatising than good,

That’s like a doctor saying “I can’t operate on you, sir, your cancer is far too advanced and metastasized.”

I don’t know if I would use the word traumatizing in relation to opening up past traumas, but perhaps it fits… Opening up the past must be done with much gentleness, respect, patience, and care. Since this is difficult for many, they instead prefer to avoid it. And I understand why.

and to condemn someone for not wanting to go into that, is not what I would call compassion and understanding.

Condemn. That’s rough talk. I condemn no one. I would say, however, that someone totally blocked from entering and sorting out their own traumatic past has been condemned…but not by me…instead by their past itself.

As an addict or recovering addict, would you not say that some understanding goes a long way?

Some understanding, yes. But understanding the full truth is very scary for most people. Instead they run from it.