A person cannot separate the control or surrender of the human will from addiction.  Why?   Because the the human will is addiction.

The existential phenomenon of  addiction has been around since the human organism first experienced pleasure.  Although pleasure has remained a constant, the only changes have been the mediums used for pleasure.  The use of alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, food, exercise, drawing, gardening, writing, reading and so on, are all pleasurable mediums that are open to function and dysfunction in terms of use and abuse.  Abuse is not addiction and addiction is not abuse.  In fact, for those in the field who “treat addiction” by focusing on the medium of abuse, they are doomed to fail as they escape efficiency by writing off addiction as a chronic relapsing condition.

Addiction is not a substance, a mutant gene, or a behavior (e.g., pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting).  Addiction does not occur outside of oneself.  There are no substances that radiate a magnetic field that capture a person to reach out and initiate consumption.  In what world of logic and rational thinking would a person take a sharp piece of glass, throw it on the ground, step on it, tend to the wound, and then throw the glass back on the ground and insensibly repeat the process?  From my matter of perspective, the only reasoning at all for such behavior would be “addictiveness” or the insatiable need to compensate for one’s feeling of lacking substance through something or someone outside of oneself.  The need to compensate is not addiction, it is addictiveness.

I have never witnessed a bottle or pill drop down off a shelf, open itself up and pour or pop itself down a throat.  That is not to say that people are not addicted to substances like alcohol and drugs, of course they are, for addictiveness is a bio-psychosocial mind-set.  In the context of my interest, addictiveness is a mind-set; a matter of perspective of thinking and feeling.  It is the irrational and dysfunctional experience — played out through the self-defeating expectations of helplessness, stagnation, and emptiness — that something outside of oneself is necessary for relief.  In fact the platform from which I help those overcome and change behavior is, “Those of substancelessness abuse substances for substance.”   Since addiction is not a behavior, then, what is it?

Addiction is the habituated want for __competence and independence over incompetence and __dependence.  It is the need of the wanting human condition never satisfied.  Addiction is the extreme of the human will that we all share in varying degrees of frequency, intensity, and duration; the will that drives all human behavior and more.  In terms of addiction and its variance in frequency, intensity, and duration as well it’s outlets, there is functional and dysfunctional addiction.  In common nomenclature, dysfunctional addiction would be alcohol and drug abuse, anger-based aggression and hostility, and entitlement-based power and control, while functional addiction would, for example, represent romantic relationships.  There exists a fine line.  Experienced, addiction is the ineffable emptiness of self.  It is not chronic depression nor anticipated excitement, these are symptoms.

Self-regulation of addiction is born of what I refer to as the InGroup.  We are all card-carrying members of the InGroup.  In security, no one is totally secure, we all share a platform of desire.  Here, the difference between function and dysfunction is found in “insecurity” as a weakness or strength.  When construed as an insecure weakness, then conflict is a barrier, whereas as a strength, conflict is then an opportunity.  If you should hear someone say he or she is secure, then there is something that person is protecting as insecure.  Within the InGroup, as with the experience of addiction and its function and dysfunction, the difference is how we manage our “in.”  “In” management is the management, coping of approach and avoidance.  In approach and avoidance, we are either without dependence, with dependence, without competence, and with competence.  It is our innate human will, drive to approach comfort and avoid discomfort.   For example, if your condition within the InGroup is of wanting rigidity and inflexibility, as marked by categorical imperatives of “I need…, I must…, I have to…,” then your “in-management” is representational of timidity as you wallow in “intimidation.  Such an experience of intimidation is self-limiting, in sort debilitating to your behavior as marked by your perspectives of: “I am not good enough, This is too hard, I will never…,” and alike.  If your condition of wanting is of the same, then you embrace yourself without significance, adequacy, and/or feriority.  The result is your life-way, a way marked by insecurity, insignificance, inadequacy, and inferiority.  As your eyes look out and you experience within, within and through your deficiencies, you are motivating you to look outside of yourself for relief.  Indeed, you are then your worst best expert enemy.  Alternatively, you are your best expert.  The difference is how you sit in the experience of your addiction, your human will.

All behavior is compensatory to human will.  It is the human condition of competition between the want of competence over incompetence, independence over dependence, that manipulation of “in” to approach and avoid comfort over discomfort to your real or ideal needs.  Born of our primary relationship, that relationship that exists between our personal and social self the human will manifests zones of comfort. Threaten, breach those zones of comfort, self protection and the mask of defiance ensures.

Tags: Abuse, Addiction & LADC, expectations, power and control