Addiction and Detox

The Burning Fire of Addiction

                Theories abound concerning addiction. Why are some things addictive and other similar things are not? Why do some people and not others get addicted to certain things? Why can some people shake off addictions easily and while others cannot? So much talk and thought happens on the subject that often the crucial element is forgotten: that, for an addict, none of these questions matter. The addict knows that thought, reasoning, rationality and common sense are all weak compared to the pull of an addiction. The addict knows that straight thinking is the first thing that goes when the addiction calls.

                Much more important than the how and why’s surrounding addiction are its observable effects on an addict’s life. In fact, the only real turning point in the life of an addict is when the damage is seen. Becoming aware of the toll that an addiction is having on the quality of one’s life doesn’t stop the addiction but is the first step towards the possibility of that ever stopping. An addict needs to know that the addiction is causing harm. Whether it is the addict’s peace of mind or the relationships he or she is in, something is deteriorating as a direct result of the addiction.

                This awareness of the harm of the addiction is combined with an awareness that this damage is and has always been increasing naturally. The addict knows that, given enough time, everything in the addict’s life will be destroyed by it. Relationships will be stretched and eventually snap (or be cut) and peace of mind will disappear entirely. Life becomes increasingly constricted and squeezed in between the temporary releases gained through the high of the addiction. An addict feels dry and drained in so many subtle ways when he or she is not indulging in the addiction. An addict hungers continually, strains to arrange the act, cop’s and then crashes. Only to start the cycle over.

                Copping is a term associated with heroin. I know nothing about heroin except that it is a legendarily addictive substance. If addictions are deep pits that pull you into them, then heroin is a black hole that many have disappeared permanently into. So I use the term “copping” to remind myself that every addiction is a mini-heroin. Every addiction has that event horizon which, once crossed, takes away self-control. Inside that zone, will-power is nowhere to be found. An addict who has crossed that line will go to great lengths, rational and irrational, to satisfy the urge, whatever it is.

                Modern society seems to put addiction at an arm’s length, mixing it with lies, so that addicts are seen only as marginalized non-normal people. The fact is, however, addiction has become such a normal component of modern life that society must use a web of lies to pretend these addictions are not all universally and fundamentally the same; to pretend that addictions don’t affect everyone in fundamentally the same way. But everyone suffering from a quiet addiction, one they are managing, has the same relationship to that addiction that addicts on the street have to theirs. The difference is only in degrees. The addiction, whatever it is, robs the addict of some mental ability to think clearly and some degree of mental peace that they would otherwise have without it. And the denial syndrome, the fact that every addict goes to great mental lengths to pretend that their addiction is not a problem but is actually helping them cope with life. That’s the lie that every addict tells to themselves whether it’s heroin, alcohol, sex, pornography, fast food, candy, ice cream or painkillers that they must have on some regular basis otherwise they go into an emotional tailspin, a depression, a mental fog until they get it.

                Those on the spiritual path must see through all these lies and recognize the omnipresence of normalized addictions within our modern lifestyles. All those who have prioritized the spiritual goal of finding a lasting sense of peace and joy and are dedicating more and more of their daily energy towards that goal must at some point come face to face with the fact that their addictions must go. At some point they must see that their addictions are holding them back in bigger ways that they seem. At some point they must begin the detox process for each and every addiction.

                There are no addictions that are easy to come off of in a lasting way. All of us addicts know that periods in which we abstain from our addictions only enhance our addictions and keep them in a “manageable” state. These types of strategies don’t and aren’t even intended to permanently free us from the pull of an addictive substance. Detoxing from any substance or activity is hard work and requires a really long term investment in most cases for most people although there are always exceptions where that rare person decides to stop “using” something and just walks away, never to touch the stuff or engage in that activity again. Usually, however, anyone attempting to “sober-up” from an addiction experiences how easily one “falls” back to the addiction in a “relapse.” Only after a really long stretch of periodic relapses in which one re-dedicates him or herself to sobriety again and again is any real progress or freedom from the pull of the addiction experienced. It seems really unfair that addictions are so easy to begin and often so incredibly difficult to end.

                Most sobriety programs recommend two basic strategies that when used together give some at least minimal chance of success. Otherwise most addicts are doomed to live their whole lives “managing” their addictions and accepting the consequences which usually they are seriously underestimating. The two basic strategies I call “isolation” and “trading up.” The first is obvious: an addict must isolate him or herself as far away as possible from the addictive substance or behavior. This is easier said than done in today’s society where addictive substances are some of the most available things. Especially with the internet and the cell phone, addictive substances have become ridiculously easy to acquire at any moment in any location even if they are technically illegal. This alone has removed sobriety from even the realm of possibility for all but the most dedicated and strong-willed spiritual seekers. It is almost a requirement that an addict seeking sobriety must give up his or her smart-phone and even all access to the internet at least in the first few years of attempting to gain sobriety. The fact that this is nearly unthinkable within our modern lifestyles indicates that we are passing into an age when sobriety will be more difficult for an addict to gain than a ticket to the moon.

                The second strategy, called “trading up,” has more promise but still is really difficult to be successful with if “isolation” isn’t also practiced to some degree. “Trading up” means that you substitute the use of the addictive substance or activity with a less harmful addictive substance or activity. In other words, you use the crutch of a less damaging addiction to help you get off a more damaging one. This strategy can back-fire terribly if one underestimates the damaging properties of the new addiction or one lacks sufficient dedication and ends up with two addictions instead of one. But this strategy has already been used successfully in well-publicized cases when “morphine” for example was given to heroin addicts to help with their detoxing.

                Detoxing isn’t well understood but it is the real key to getting off any addiction. Every addiction creates certain chemical and neurological pathways in the brain and the body. The more the addiction is experienced the more solidified those pathways. The deeper rutted those pathways are, the more difficult it is to drive the mind or the body in other directions. The tires always fall back into those well-worn tracks. Detoxing is the hard work that fills in those ruts, evens out the road, so that the mind and body can go in a new direction. Unfortunately, since these “ruts” in the road are actually chemicals in the body, detoxing involves deconstructing the chemical structures in the body that have solidified the addiction. These chemicals are actually seen as “toxic” by the body because they are not a normal part of a healthy body and so their elimination is the same as taking out the trash. Because this trash is leaking and smelly it is a very unpleasant job as everyone who has done a serious and legitimate detox program can attest. It is physically, emotionally and mentally very very uncomfortable to clean out the body and mind in this way. One has to be willing to withstand not only unusual physical discomforts but also periods of depression and anger as part of the detox process. This is why it is so easy to start an addiction but so difficult to stop. One has to withstand so much pain to truly get free of even one of the “seemingly” harmless addictions like cane sugar, white flour, salt or caffeine.

                The straightest path to sobriety is therefore the most painful and uncomfortable and this is a powerful detox program practiced in an isolated setting. The most effective of all these programs currently available that I have studied and experienced is the Gerson Therapy. It is an incredibly complicated and difficult program that, in terms of detox power, is like one of Elon Musk’s rocket planes into space. It immediately causes the body to clean itself out in quick and very uncomfortable ways but it does so while providing the necessary tools to manage the physical discomfort and keep going. I have never heard of any other program for detoxing from anywhere around the world that comes close to the effectiveness of the Gerson Therapy when one wants to stop an addiction in its tracks as quickly and finally as possible. Because it relies on fruit and vegetable juicing in tremendous quantities, however, it is not cheap to follow. As of this writing, in 2022, anyone following the Gerson Therapy is juicing close to $1000 a month in organic fruits and vegetables. The cost, the fact that one cannot work during administration of the Gerson Therapy and that it requires a 3-6 month commitment (in my estimation from my experience) to overcome an addiction means that it is impossible for the vast majority of people today. Nevertheless, for those who have dedicated all their energy to the spiritual pursuit of some degree of lasting peace and happiness, detoxing from all addictions, one by one, is an absolute must that no amount of meditation, yoga, scriptural study will ever make up for.

Blessings on your journey!

Book 3, Sutra 10: Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

“Transformations are powered and directed by our own inherent drive for peace.”

tasya praśánta váhitá sanskárát

In the last sutra Patanjali mentioned the two primary sanskara-s; towards developing and towards disappearing. These are the most fundamental of our desires or tendencies that the transformations (parinamah) gradually erode, on our way to seedless samadhi. Ironically, Patanjali says in this sutra that the transformations are powered by one of these two fundamental sanskara-s. So one of the two main sanskara-s, through the practice of yoga (specifically sanyama), cause both to eventually cease (nirodha). This makes sense actually when we consider that the very nature of sanskara is active (a desire for something that we don’t yet have or that we haven’t yet achieved) and so, the sanskara of disappearing is an active desire for inactivity. We actively strive and yearn for a state in which we no longer strive or yearn. And that desire, too, has to cease because it is a vrtti, or disturbance of the mind, but first it must drive the yogi towards cessation or nirodha. It’s like using a thorn to remove a thorn. Afterwards, both are thrown away as potentially harmful. In this way, the mental desire for peace eventually erodes itself in the process of delivering that very peace.

Book 1, Sutra 2:Patanjali Yoga Sutra

“YOGA IS MIND
WITHOUT DISTURBING FLUCTUATION.”

Patanjali doesn’t waste any time and jumps right into the heart of the matter with his definition of Yoga, itself. As I warned earlier, the beginning and the end of his Yoga Sutras are for the most advanced students and so are naturally the most condensed and the most profound. The simplicity, though, is a double edged sword. If it is not translated correctly, the most profound and concise statement of spiritual truth becomes nothing but vague and confusing. On top of that, a mis-translated concise but profound sutra opens Patanjali up to attack from many other practitioners as fierce debate ensues over the accuracy of the statement. This sutra is case in point. There are many, many different attempts to translate this sutra that makes it seem as if Patanjali defines yoga as a still or vacant mind. To many critics, Patanjali would be wrong if he were stating this because a still or vacant mind is short of the highest state described by so many other texts. The Buddha warned not to think that a still mind is the highest achievement and many Hindu texts do the same. If it were the highest achievement then someone hit over the head with an iron bar in just the right way may experience the highest state of enlightenment, if only for a half an hour or so. No, it is clear to many commentators on this sutra that a still mind can simply be a very dull or inactive one and that’s nothing to commend as the highest achievement.

In the Bhagavad Gita we learn that “yoga,” for Krishna, means a type of UNION, or merging of the mind with God, or, stated another way, a merging of the mind with the eternal infinite. And this sense of yoga is captured in the translation that I derived for this sutra and is stated above. Patanjali, here, is stating that yoga can be described as a mind that is permanently fixed or established in a state that is impervious to AGGRAVATING fluctuations based on events or experiences. Yoga is a mind that is grounded, at peace, unchanging and SO, eternal. This is the essential definition that Patanjali will build on in the following sutras.

But don’t think that this sutra covers it all. It just sets a good base that Patanjali can build on. The important thing to remember is that yoga creates some type of consciousness that is forever fixed in a positive way and so, at peace. We may continue to go here and go there and do this and do that but if we have a perfected yogic mind then it doesn’t go and do in the way that our body might. It stays grounded, fixed, established, positive, undisturbed, unworried, not anxious, not manipulative, not analytical, not fearful, not guarded. But what is it established in, you may ask? Let’s see if Patanjali will answer that at some point.