Doing my counselling course takes me down all kinds of intellectual rabbit holes, sometimes about how we think and other times to wonder at the world in general. This semester we are studying addiction . This is a subject I have often veered away from as there have been several members of my own extended family who have suffered this way and it has left me feeling that people need to just pull themselves up by the boot straps and get over themselves. But, it would seem it is much more complex than that…..
Apparently there is an 80% rise in females abusing alcohol. The rise in other kinds of other drug misuse is also shockingly high. I was horrified. Clearly something is going very very wrong. We are becoming a society that can not operate without crutches, that is diseased, un- healthy and unable to face ourselves in the mirror. And this, is just within ourselves as a personal subjective experience. External to us are the blights of war, social and economic imbalances and the existential threat of climate change. We are not living in Shangri-la!
So, is it just our human nature that is flawed or is there something else going on? Of course people have taken intoxicants in all cultures, throughout history. There will always be a few who succumb . But, judging by the statistics I was looking at , we are reaching new found peaks of substance misuse. There has to be deeper reasons for this.
This got me thinking. We all just want to be happy and lead productive useful lives. If we also wish to truly be of benefit in our world and help heal the climate crisis , social problems , injustice etc then we need to be whole and well. We can not rise to the challenges our world faces as a species that is bloated with despair, substance misuse or riddled with issues that keep us inert . Or, so poor that we are stuck on a hamster wheel of just merely surviving to exist rather than fully live.
I might be being grossly naive ( which is indeed a personality trait) but I think that there are possibly two issues here that is causing this widening epidemic in addiction. I am sure there are others but here are two I have been thinking about. There may be systemic causes and also societal conditioning that are contributing to this growing human tragedy.
These are in simple terms possibly two inter related things: capitalism and the unthinking western approach to our ego state.
Capitalism is essentially an economic theory that the industrialised human world embodies with terrifying thoughtlessness and acuity. It is based on the constant promise of ” more is better, more is possible in relation to products and money.” There are those in charge of this process and those who work for this process. Those in charge cream off the bounty leaving those working for the process no choice but to continually slave away on a hamster wheel of continual work trying desperately to accumulate ” more” for themselves. It is a system that is both flawed and unfair. Flawed because the premise of ” more” being an unchanging constant is just not true. We have finite resources in this world.
It is unfair because it pits people against each other ; there are those who have plenty and want to keep it that way and those who constantly aspire to the capitalist material dream of enjoying a land of milk and honey. But, the system only works if there are workers to fuel the system- constantly working away for the benefit of others. They are cogs in the wheel of the illusion that we can all have material plenty. The mirage that never delivers.
In the west we have used this as a paradigm for happiness. It is natural to want good things in life but we have externalised our happiness goals, thinking things will make us happy. Our ego feels we must have these things for a successful life, to feel good about ourselves. Our ” I” has taken on massive proportions and is ruled by constant externalising and want, making our own. personal. needs more important than the whole. We have not been trained to question this or to look within. We have not been encouraged to find an internal locus for our well-being and happiness. We therefore have a society that is constantly pressuring, constantly trying to earn more money, constantly busy. Parenting, wellbeing, caring and spiritual practice have been moved to the sidelines . These do not contribute in a capitalist system.
And so, we have people who feel small, miserable , express trauma from neglected childhoods or place value in things rather than states of mind to bring them happiness. The result is a huge swath of people who are so hollow, lost and small that they seek refuge in another external- a substance that allows them to forget. They become numb, pleasured in a false and easy way that allows them a moment of freedom. That is combined with natural brain chemistry and addiction is born.
Tinkering with addiction may be of some small benefit but until we tackle the internal causes and the systemic reasons for our smallness and unhappiness then this alarming epidemic will become a pandemic. Particularly now in a society where availability of everything is an accustomed norm.
Perhaps it is time to think of other ways of living our lives and what we value, how we educate and how we live and work. ” More ” is only better if we relate it to positive emotions. We need systems and ways of thinking that are egalitarian, wise and take in a holistic picture that creates balanced lives that respect each other and the natural world. Perhaps that would be a world where addiction would be a rarity rather than a prevalence.
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