The Huffington Post – Politics – The Blog – “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered and It’s Not What You Think” – Posted: January 20, 2015
For those who have followed previous posts attempting to make sense of random acts of violence such as the Sandy Hook shooting, I have always felt strongly that the impetus for the actions that become tragedy is disconnection. “Social recovery — how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog” is at the root both of the deepest rages turned outward to harm innocent people AND, as Johann Hari’s post vividly demonstrates, is at the root of the seduction of addiction.
Hari’s book “Chasing the Scream: The First and last Days of the War on Drugs” elucidates his conviction that disconnection drives addiction. Hari’s conclusion in his blog post is that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, rather, it is human connection. “Addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you. It’s your cage.”
Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction. “We have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live — constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.”
While Hari’s theory resonates, the broad strokes (to make his point) are a bit coarse. “A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else.” We can all reference people whom we care about, or ourselves, who are addicted AND who are social, extroverts, connected to meaningful others etc. The internal experience of isolation is a shifty gremlin; the longing for a certain quality of relationship (ie. the yearning for closeness and to simultaneously eradicate anyone who is at risk of really seeing our faulty, insecure selves) is a complicated puzzle, not for the weak of heart.
Navigating healing from the bruises of old efforts to connect meaningfully and creating joyful and satisfying relationship in our adult lives is key to staving off the urge to lose ourselves in our addictions-of-choice.