As a Psychiatrist and addictionist, Vernon spent many years working in the worlds of Medicine, Metaphysics, and science, and also in the worlds of emotions and Psychology. In our last blog, we described an addict as someone trying to fill a hole in himself with something. One of the things that is anathema to an addict is boredom. It is torture to be bored. In behavioral addictions, we see drug addiction, alcohol addiction, hypersexuality, and thrilling things. Addicts are seeking a thrill. They’re trying to escape their own reality because it’s unsatisfactory or painful, and it can be boring. People are seeking pleasure, relief, and excitement. Is it a spiritual deficit they are trying to fill? Does it need something to fill the empty time?
One of our colleagues in the Addiction world, Chana (pronounced “Hana,” like the road to Hana, Hawaii) Carro, is a licensed independent Substance Abuse Counselor with over 24 years’ experience. She says, “If we are creatures who are a creation of God, a part of us remains always a part of God. Until something enriching and satisfying spiritually fills that place, then I think you can substitute addictions.” She feels that “when there is spiritual hunger for completion, for a spiritual relationship with the Creator of the universe, until that’s filled properly, people are going to try a whole variety of things to get those needs met.”
Is this a universal experience across cultures and belief systems? Is there this internal yearning for some form of a right relationship with a “higher power,” as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, however you define it? Is that what people are looking for, regardless of the culture or the part of the world that they are in?
Chana agrees that it is a human lack. Whatever way our culture gives us an avenue for finding proper spiritual fulfillment, people yearn for that. What about people who have been raised in very spiritually sound milieus, whether in an Eastern tradition or a Western tradition, and they still have that hunger? What are we to make of that? It isn’t enough to just have an external accessibility, an external means. This is an internal affair. This is a personal journey that they need to be on. Next time, more on the universality of this spiritual need.
Louise Barksdale
