Medicine describes addiction as a “brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement with a rewarding stimuli”. But take the word `addiction’ out of its medical context, and you’ll find that it usually means `blame’.
Yes. Socially-speaking, addiction can be a blaming-and-shaming game. When people declare someone else to be an `addict’, there is great self-validation in that name-calling.
Why?
Because society takes such a narrow view on addiction, and therefore people can excuse themselves for compulsive and continuous behaviors in their own lives. And try to cure others of addiction from the distance and safety of their own moral high ground.
But addictive behavior is not restricted to drugs, cigarettes and alcohol. Compulsive shopping, compulsive eating, compulsive Facebook surfing, compulsive porn-watching – any chronic habit that has a detrimental impact on a person’s development and well-being is an addiction. But because these activities are not defined medically as `addiction’, people get away with calling others `addicts’, and blaming and shaming them, because their own unhealthy preoccupations are flying under the radar.
Blame, when it is coming from others, is never useful. Rarely, have I heard of any addict who was blamed and shamed by their family, friends and the legal system into recovery.
It doesn’t work like that. If anything, feeling judged on is likely to push that person deeper into his/her self-destructive habit.
But the impact of blame and shame changes dramatically when the voice is coming from the addict’s own heart.
Yes, I myself have been there.
I am a recovering online gaming addict.
I have spent not hours, but days, weeks and months, completely lost to the world, to my job and to my family because I couldn’t stop gaming.
At first, my addiction was hard to read and define in my own mind because, like I said, it is not a medical problem. Like so many others with undefined addictions, I believed it was just a `preference’ and I could stop at any time.
I couldn’t. I ruined a year of my life because I was incapable of doing anything else.
My Bible saved me. My connection with the Lord, and a life-changing event, when I screamed expletives at my wife for disturbing me while I played finally dragged me out of the funk. I went cold turkey, gave my gaming account away to a young guy on that very same day and called it quits.
For then, I mean.
I have never gone back to my addiction in the same way (or I would not have a career or a family today) but I have to confess that the habit had recently caught up with me again. I was playing a few hours only – quite moderate by my past standards – and thinking that I could manage it.
But when you’re building companies, being responsible for clients and employees, and being father to a family with two young kids, even a couple of hours a day can destabilize your existence and fill your heart with blame and shame.
I had found the path to living abundantly, you see. Abundance that comes from being totally free of inner guilt. The absence of that small voice inside your head that whispers continuously when you’re leading yourself astray. The ability to sleep soundly at night without dark thoughts racing through your mind. Never being on the back foot or living defensively because you have a secret to guard.
Once you have broken the chronic holding pattern of addiction and experienced true abundance of the spirit, it is hard to lose that freedom. So even when you indulge your addiction – just for a little bit – you come out feeling really bad about yourself. And that negative feeling influences into every other activity in your life.
Recently, I had to do some house-cleaning again. The little room in my brain that I had rented out to my gaming addiction had to be cleared out. It was a small room, but I needed that space back. As a good landlord to my own happiness and well-being, I couldn’t keep this bad tenant.
And so I did. Last week, I decided to turn the tenant out. I closed my gaming account and said goodbye to my gaming buddies.
Now I feel clean and free again. I am back on my path towards abundance.
This is the thing about spiritual knowledge of yourself. Once you know it, you cannot un-know it. I have experienced addiction, and I have experienced living free of it.
And I choose the latter. Every time.
