Addiction & the Spiritual Crisis
> Here are some thoughts about addiction as a spiritual crisis...
> Dr. Carl Jung pointed out that it was no accident that Alcohol is also called "Spirits" & that the Alcoholic's thirst
for booze is equivalent to the soul's thirst for a "Spiritual Awakening."
> "Alcohol in Latin is Spiritus & you use the same word for the Highest Religious Experience as well as for a most
depraving poison." The helpful formula therefore is; "Spiritus Contra Spiritus." It's an Alchemical formula.
It means, in the words of a letter Jung sent to the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, that it takes spirit to counter spirit -
fight fire with fire, in other words.
> Jungian analyst Marion Woodman elaborated years later; "Looking at alcoholism & addiction as a longing for spirit
might mean that something very different is going on in our society than first appears. One might say that we don't
have a crisis with alcohol & drugs as much as we have a Spiritual Crisis."
> Freud insisted that our civilization at large is a repressive one. There is a conflict between the demands of
conformity & the demands of our instinctive energies & we seek to slack our natural thirst in any way possible.
> R.D. Laing wrote in his book - the Divided Self that; "our civilization represses not only the instincts, not only sexuality,
but any form of transcendence. Among one-dimensional people, it is not surprising that someone with an insistent experience of
other dimensions, that one can-not entirely deny of forget, will run the risk of either being destroyed by the others, or of
betraying what one knows & needs, or, destroying oneself."
> We seem to displace our longing for some kind of spiritual awakening with other things, we seek satisfaction, achieve it,
but sooner or later, we are disappointed. If this is true, it certainly shows why a spiritual awakening appears to be
almost the only thing that can make an addict well.
> In the 1930's Dr. Carl Jung commented about the rise in alcoholism among his patients; "About a third of my cases
are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis but from the senselessness & emptiness of their lives."
> the emptiness that Jung refers to hasn't diminished. If anything in today's society, it's increased!
So much so that a prominent New York psychiatrist, wrote in 1999; "It may seem surprising when I say on
the basis of my own clinical experience that the chief problem at the dawn of the 21st. century is emptiness...
while one might laugh, boredom extends to a state of futility & eventually despair which at best, only holds out
as an attraction the promise of dangers."
> the Author of Drugs, Addiction & Initiation writes; "The archetypal need to transcend one's present state at any cost,
even when it entails the use of physically harmful substance's is especially strong in those who find themselves in a
state of meaninglessness, lacking both a sense of identity & a precise role in society."
> Drug use, seen in this context, is not so much an escape from society as a desperate attempt to fit in anyway one can,
as well as a "naive & unconscious attempt at assuming identity & role negatively defined by current values."
( ie. being an outsider is better than being nothing at all. )
> The author concludes that young people of today are desperately in need of a chance to "participate fully in a total confrontation, like that between death & living, something once provided by rites & rituals" & now provided by the world of drugs!
>> We run from one event to another, from one object to another & again on to another, because the meaning of each quickly vanishes... everything is tried & nothing satisfies. Anxiously one turns away from all concrete solutions & starts looking for an ultimate solution, or at best some meaning, only to discover that there is a pervading sense of meaninglessness & despair. Everything around us promises relief - but Nothing Works!!!
> > > From the time we can speak, we are bombarded with the message that we alone are not enough... Take This: Buy This;
Have This: feel better, stronger, safer, sexier, more desirable, more secure, more powerful & none of it Works because
it's never enough & it's not enough because we're looking in the wrong place! The primary Religion of America
is Consummerisum; Capitalism is not a system, it is a way of life. We have been given a giant buildup, the greatest sales
campaign of all time, with one relentless message... Buy, Consume!!! The merchandise we're sold is faulty because of
it's built-in obsolescence... It doesn't work because the values are inverted. We are led to expect gratification
& it never happens. We are dying of thirst & the buckets all have holes! When the goods fail to satisfy us fully & we know it,
it's then that we turn to drugs. Many of us discover that they Work. We pay for something & viola' - Like Magick...
it changes how we feel, under our skin where it matters, where we live. It Works! The goal is achieved...
we feel better about ourselves - different, special, stronger, just like we've been told we should, but that
nothing else ever accomplished. Drugs seen i this context, are only the most available ( & temporarily effective )
solutions to a rampant Spiritual malnourishment.
> Indulgence in or addiction to "wine, women & song' ( ie. Sex-Drugs-N-Rock-N-Roll ) is a way of transcending the self.
the Critics complain, without really doing so... As if the work ethic applies here - as if it's wrong to sneak
into paradise thru the back door without paying the price of admission, when in reality we have paid & paid & the
problem is no one knows where the front door is! The soul is constantly searching for Transcendence, for some sort of escape
from the drudgery of it's own self. Intoxication, it appears, is better than nothing at all. If we cannot achieve
Transcendence legitimately, we will do so illegitimately.
> Nietzsche, as the heir apparent to the Romantics, defended the cult of intoxication in The Birth of Tragedy Out of
the Spirit of Music saying, "A feeling of plenitude and increased energy visit the participants - where the entire emotional
system is alerted and most alive,as in the intoxication of spring, or into the opposite, intoxication in destruction.
And under the influence of alcohol and narcotics."
> the loss of Spiritual union in modern society has left us a void we are trying to fill in the only way we can;
with whatever is available & many of the young, the passionate are turning to & finding pleasurable for whatever reason...
Sex-N-DRUGS-N-Rock-N-Roll.
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