People can be addicted to heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, gambling, gaming and alcohol just to name a few of the obvious ones we may think of when we think about addiction.  Addicted people suffer.  They lose their teeth, their beauty, they lose their wealth, they lose human relationship, and yet nothing can force them to give up their addiction.  The addiction is more powerful.  The question is why?  To understand addiction, you can’t only look at what is wrong about the  addiction, you must also look at what is right about the addiction. 

What
is the person getting from the addiction? 
What an addict gets is relief from their pain, a sense of peace, a sense
of control, a temporary sense of calmness. 
This is why the real question about addiction should not be ‘Why the
addiction’ but instead ‘Why the pain’?   Why are people in pain, you can’t order a
blood test for the answer, you have to look at their lives.  In the case of highly addicted individuals,
it is very clear why they are in pain. 
It’s because they have been abused all their lives.  They began as abused children, physically
abused, neglected, sexually abused, abandoned over and over again and that’s
why the pain. 

Our
brain develops with the environment we grow up in, so the kind of environment a
child grows up in will actually shape the development of that individual.  The addiction is all about trying to fill
that emptiness from the outside. 

From this perspective you can understand that there are many addictions, there is addiction to drugs but there is also addiction to consumerism, addiction to sex, to the internet, to food, for each person there is a different way of filling the emptiness.  But the emptiness always goes back to what we didn’t get when we were very small.  Some people are addicted to power, addicted to wealth, addicted to acquisition, they want to make themselves bigger.  The power is not outside yourself but within yourself, find the light within.  We have to find that light within ourselves, find the light within communities, and in our wisdom, our own creativity.  If you find the light within, you find your own nature, then we will be kinder to ourselves.  We are social beings, when we feel disconnected or alienated we experience pain.  Addiction, depression, anger, and violence are different ways we react to pain.  To heal, we must heal our emotional wounds at the root of our pain.  

When you next see a person, a man, a woman, a teenager, a fellow human who may be in an altered state from being high on drugs or somebody who is a gambler or an alcoholic and more.  In judgement, also take a minute think about what is their pain and how deep are their emotional wounds?  While they may appear as a spectacle to some, the fact remains that whilst in this altered state they are getting temporary relief from the pain and deep emotional wounds locked within.