Addiction, further thoughts

It has been remarked by many people in what gets called the Recovery field that there is something spiritual in it.  I am listening to William James “Varieties of Religious Experience”, and he described in 1904 experiences of the sort that led some 30 years later to AA.  He talks about alcoholics having major religious experiences, of warmth and light, of God.

I would of course like to have such an experience, but my path is a slow one, a long one, but also one where I can take notes, find waymarkers, map out the route.  I can say “I have been there.  I have felt, I think, what you are feeling.  I understand terror, sleep disturbances, addiction, loneliness and isolation.  I have been there, and I have walked through it.”

And it occurs to me that most of human life is characterized by addictions–lies which conceal the whole truth–and that this is the essence of what the Buddha taught.  Tanha–craving–is what submerges us in unwholesome loops which make us unhappy.  As I have commented on occasion Duhkha–suffering–is best understood as anything less than complete contentment and happiness.

And at root, it is the insight that almost all of what we are taught to value arises as mutually reinforcing tanha.  To be different, you have to see differently.  To get out of the swamp, you have to see it is a swamp.

And addicts are well positioned to see, having known all-pervading craving, to see how common it is, how universal it is, and in giving up one addiction, giving up the rest of them, if they have stopped running.