Understanding Addiction

Hi again. I know I haven’t been posting much lately, but it’s time to get back on that horse. One thing I did in the interim was write a chapter for a volume on addiction. Which led to a strange conundrum…and some soul searching. But before getting to that, I’ll tell you what inspired me […] (Read the rest.)

We usually talk about addictions to substances (opiates, alcohol, whatever) or behaviours (gambling, porn, etc). But that misses the point. Addiction is entirely psychological, and I think it describes an attachment to a symbol that goes with the feeling provided by the substance or behaviour. The feeling and the symbol are coupled, bonded, and that’s […] (Read the rest.)

I continue to be obsessed with this problem of incompatible self-narratives. So, permit me one more rant on the subject. In this post I want to tell you about the dissociation I experienced myself, during my days of addiction, and the child-like freedom it brought me. I also want to compare what I experienced then […] (Read the rest.)

Hi all. I’ve been trying to write a post to follow up on the self-narrative post I put up last. I’ve found that a certain paradox stands in my way. The pull toward a coherent self-narrative is so strong. Partly because, from the outside, we look like a single person. And where do we learn […] (Read the rest.)

Here come two posts, the first one is more of an idea, the second a suggestion for practicing what the idea is about. My question for today: How can we (who struggle with addiction) reconcile our radically different self-narratives, some of which seem so ugly, and arrive at self-acceptance and self-compassion? We know that self-anger, […] (Read the rest.)