Addiction is linked to a lust for material consumption
Summary
- Addiction is linked to a lust for material consumption
Details
- Fizating on wants and needs which cannot be fully filled is a result of a lack of love and focus on consumption
- Addiction makes love impossible as addicts are primarily concerned with acquiring and using their drug, whatever this might be.
- The poor show addiction more as they dont have the means to cover up, nor access to recovery programs
References
Quotes
Widespread addiction in both poor and affluent communities is linked to our psychotic lust for material consumption. It keeps us unable to love. Fixating on wants and needs, which consumerism encourages us to do, promotes a psychological state of endless craving. This leads to an anguish of spirit and torment so intense that intoxicating substances provide release and relief while bringing in their wake the problem of addiction. Millions of our nation’s citizens are addicted to alcohol and legal and illegal drugs. In poor communities, where addiction is the norm, there is no culture of recovery. The poor who are addicted and who lack the means to indulge their habit are caught in the grip of major physical and emotional suffering. Addicts want release from pain; they are not thinking about love.
In Stanton Peele’s useful book Love and Addiction, he makes the insightful point that “addiction is not about relatedness.” Addiction makes love impossible. Most addicts are primarily concerned with acquiring and using their drug, whether it be alcohol, cocaine, heroin, sex, or shopping. Hence, addiction is both a consequence of widespread lovelessness and a cause. Only the drug is sacred to an addict. Relationships of intimacy and closeness are destroyed as the addicted individual participates in a greedy search for satisfaction. Greed characterizes the nature of this pursuit because it is unending; the desire is ongoing and can never be fully satisfied.
Of course, the ravages of addiction are more glaringly obvious in the lives of the poor and dispossessed because they have neither the means to engage in the cover-ups so effectively employed by privileged addicts nor the access to recovery programs. When the case against O. J. Simpson was national news, there was little discussion of the role substance abuse played in facilitating the emotional estrangement in an already dysfunctional family. While domestic violence was highlighted, and everyone agrees that it was not acceptable behavior, substance abuse was not. It was not seen as a major factor that destroyed the conditions needed for positive emotional interaction.