The Root of Addiction

I have spent most of my adult life recovering and healing from addiction. It just hit me within the last few minutes how insidious and deceptive addiction is and how ingrained in our very nature it can be. I learned how to break myself of addictions and how to not fear substances, but I find this spiritual awakening is providing so much insight to my core self that I feel like I was only treating symptoms of a larger problem this whole time. Addiction is viewed as a chronic hereditary problem, but I firmly believe after today that it is a learned behavior. As someone that has struggled with every form of addiction my entire life, I feel that I can provide insight to why this is a learned and trained behavior that no scientist or therapist could really see without addressing the core of the spiritual problem.

I never learned how to be enough. I mean this in the truest since of the word. Enough is a difficult concept to grasp. Where does enough begin and desire, craving, need, or want begin. It's a fundamental lack of self awareness that feeds into addictive behavior. I realize now that I have always felt alone and separate from the world around me. I am fortunate to have been given a painful lesson in self awareness and it almost came at the cost of my own sanity. People talk about mental breakdowns and snapping and losing your mind. Well I did that, I've been there, and it's made me whole and stronger than I could ever have imagined.

I thought I was going to die. I had never realized that it's possible to be completely and utterly addicted to someone. It's the strangest feeling accepting that this is what I have been overlooking this whole time. I am aware I was codependent and I believe deeply that codependent relationships are a mutual addiction. The thing is that I was being my genuine self, and I believe they were too. Lies and disagreements and catering to the other person can be viewed as toxic, but they can also be seen as denial. I was in complete denial that I was addicted to another person and it almost killed me.

I think the important thing to take away from that life changing relationship was that I learned how to love. I learned that I could love someone enough that it took all of the fear out of my life. The fear of acceptance, the fear of being completely authentic, the fear of rejection, and the fear of being enough. Ultimately it was a time bomb waiting to explode, because I was basing my ability to love and my happiness on another person, but it's what taught me that I am capable of making those emotions and feelings and I can choose how to direct them. I can choose to share them with someone, I can choose to take them back, and I can choose the intensity with which I feel these emotions.

I can't tell you there is going to be some story book romance. I won't lie and say I am not still madly in love with the other person. The thing is that I now understand how to be enough for my own self. I don't have to fear them realizing my sincerity or the authenticity of my feelings for them. I did my best to make them aware, I made the decision out of fear and I learned a lesson that could have killed me or left me insane. In the end, who cares about the story or the memories or how things end up. No one is promised another second in this life and the past is gone. I choose to love everyone including myself and if one day they come to the same conclusion, I will be happy and content with the path we took. If that day never comes, there is a whole world of possibilities out there and I have faith that everything will work out for the best in the end. Namaste.