Being Addicted

Most of us think about drugs when we think about addiction. Gambling and sex have been included as potential addictions. Addiction to food is pretty well known. Addiction is not a thing that people aspire to be. No one thinks they will be an addict. In fact I doubt that anyone but addicts, or addiction specialists, spend a lot of time thinking about addiction at all. The only time it comes up is when it's unavoidable. Like you are confronted with it in the workplace, with family or friends. Then it is always an unwanted ordeal and most will walk away from the situation if they can. It's not hard to figure out why. It's uncomfortable dealing with a problem like addiction. It's very confusing and frustrating. It seems so obvious to the person who doesn't share the addiction that the answer is simple. Just stop doing what you're doing. It's that simple right?

Let's look at a nuance of addiction that has recently come to the awareness of at least a few. There was a study done in which a person with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was given a certain drug. This drug would have little or no effect on the person without the disorder but to the person with the disorder it set off a PTSD type episode. What does this mean? That the PTSD brain is different from the non PTSD brain. What does that tell us? What is PTSD? A syndrome brought about by traumatic stress. The significance is in the brain itself. The usual trigger of the traumatic event was not present. But the episode took place. Why? The brain chemistry has been altered by traumatic stress. So how would we, now, define traumatic stress? Any traumatic event that caused an alteration in brain chemistry? We'd pretty much have to - knowing what we now know. So what does this mean to the world population. What does this new knowledge tell us about our brains?

Good Doctors will tell you that stress is the number one factor in health problems. Trauma alters brain chemistry. This is significant if we understand that the brain is a electro-chemical machine. That's really all we know about the brain. When the machine is altered what can we expect?

That's gonna take a while. But lets say, for sure, any number of processes will be affected. What I want to talk about here is how this plays out in the world of addiction. Dr. M. Scott Peck has long said that all addicted people suffer from the real or imagined effects of abandonment. There are what appears to be abandonment issues present in addicts. However many have never experienced what we would commonly classify as abandonment. If one were to classify abandonment where would we place it? What column would it be in? How about trauma? That's what it is a isn't it? A form of trauma. A child who has been abandoned, faced with abandonment, has a stress induced episode. The thought of further trauma sets off the chemical event that results in fear. This is exactly the same process that occurs in the brain with PTSD. Trauma is always associated with fear. Likewise, stress is always associated with fear.

Fear could be considered the opposite of happiness. Security is a quality of happiness for a child. It doesn't really change as the child grows. Ideas about security change but not the need for security. One can realize that "we will live out our lives amidst a host of nutty people and their nutty ideas and then we grow old and die and move on to different worlds" and feel secure in the knowledge that this small span of time isn't all that important. One could. How many do? How many don't? Long term insecurity is traumatic. One of the main factors in insecurity is confusion. Being confused brings on the fear type event. Staying confused for a long time, living in the fear that insecurity brings, must alter the brains chemistry. It has to - since it is traumatic. We already know that trauma changes brain chemistry. What we aren't settled on is the definition of trauma. I am suggesting that there is enough constant underlying stress in our everyday lives to induce a PTSD type condition in an ever increasing percent of the population of, at least, the United States.

The result of this doesn't produce a majority of well known addictions. But what is an addiction? Don't people become addicted to acts or substances that relieve there unwanted conditions (feelings)? The biggest addiction people suffer from today is not drugs or sex or gambling. It's an addiction to things. Most people are addicted to things. Peoples brains have been altered from the stress and confusion of everyday life in a nutty society. Insecurity messes with the chemical balance of the brain. Constant strain, pressure, stress and fear of failure permanently alters the brain. The most dire result being the inability to think clearly. Add to this a severe case of nation wide malnutrition and you wind up with a population of stressed out, scatterbrained, frightened, addicted people. There is a lot of evidence that says this - stressed out malnourished society - has been intentionally created. But that's another topic.

When the average person suffers from this trauma induced syndrome most of them seek solace in some level of societal success. They do this because they are told to. By priests and teachers and congressman. Parents, Pastors and professors. Gurus, Life coaches and Motivational speakers. All saying we just need to understand how to manifest wealth and success from our society. Take what society has to offer and make happiness from it. Make something of yourself. That's just a lie. Anyone who says this is just as delusional as the person seeking answers. The teachers are traumatized, same as the, would be, student. You cannot make something out of nothing. You can not whip up a batch of happiness out of insanity. First we must understand and recognize happiness and sanity. Is society, our society, sane? Is it happy? Is happiness something you can find? That would mean it is a thing that is in a place. Right? Then what does the pursuit of happiness mean? Is it even a sane statement?

The answer to all this addiction and unhappiness is to remove trauma. For all of us over the age of four or five it's to late to undo the memories. The resulting ideas are racing through our heads all the time. That doesn't mean we can't learn to be different. Like a drug addict we have at our disposal ways of changing ourselves. But, like the drug addict we must recognize the problem. We have to admit we have a problem and the chances of fixing it ourselves, with our current understanding, is pretty much non existent. We also need to accept that if we don't fess up and become willing to "go to any length" to get better, our lives will only get worse.

So where is all this trauma coming from? People. There are only two places that things come from on this planet: nature and people. Nature does not induce the type of trauma that drives us crazy. People and their ideas cause the conditions for trauma. People think up war, society, god, creation stories, right and wrong, rules, laws, all the "isms" one can imagine. Traumatized brains create traumatic environments and it just keeps growing and getting weirder and the trauma gets embedded in the psyche of the society and passed on through generations until we wind up in what we see today. A traumatic environment. Throw in the overall toxicity of the food and drug companies and no one is not effected. The healthiest happiest people on the planet have nothing to do with us. They have had little or no contact with us and don't pay any attention to us. To them we are a kind of sickness. If we decide to get healthy we must become their students. We can not pretend to be OK any longer. We cannot pretend to be sane people. At this stage pretending is also traumatizing. When you start to look closely at us and our society it's all traumatizing. We have little in our lives that is not traumatizing. Children are sent to school and told to be still. That's traumatizing. Usually not enough to destroy the brains ability to function but that's just the beginning. If they don't obey orders they are drugged. For they're own good. That is a move into the deeper waters of insanity. They are forced to participate in the continuance of a insane society. To find "happiness" through achievement. By this time the stage is set for a complete breakdown of the mental system. The break is complete when subservience is accomplished. There is at this point no person left. A program has been installed and that's what most people operate on. To get off the program is to get outside the machine and there isn't anything left out there. The machine has encompassed the globe. It has rid itself of most indigenous people and there ideas. It has buried, destroyed and hidden the history of the world. It has criminalized words and ideas like conspiracy, rebellion and independence. All natural occurrences are being eliminated. We have become trauma. We are fear. There is nothing to do but stop.

The first thing all addicts do on the road to sanity, and the restoration of their minds and lives, is stop. The symptom is arrested. What is the symptom of our global addiction? Stuff. Smiles, acceptance, medals, money, houses, cars, fame, people...Just a long list of things. An addiction to things is the result of an excellently executed campaign to control the minds of the masses. We live in pursuit of these things because we are conditioned to associate happiness with them. Even if we deny it, and quote from other books, we obsess. Even in our dreams we strive for the things we don't have or can't get. What don't we have? The road out of the woods may be long. But the first step is simple. Stop. Know that we are being lied to - and Stop.