Addiction: The Disease Fallacy

Wanting to change the way that you feel goes on in just about every moment of everyday in people’s lives. The things used are only addressed in the way they affect one’s life.

I know main stream society says addiction is a disease, but it isn’t contagious, so how is wanting to use something to change the way that you feel a disease? Everyone does this, it’s just that different things are used. Being addicted to using an assortment of things, the gym, programs, food, money, power, sports teams, work, the spiritual path, and so on is no different than being addicted to alcohol, drugs, sex, or gambling. The consequences may be different, but the bondage is the same. Years ago 1935 to be exact, a man who used alcohol for most of his life to change the way that he felt, stopped drinking for six months. Once he took alcohol into his system, it set off an allergy that caused a reaction which couldn’t be controlled, much like someone who is allergic to peanuts. One day he went to Akron, Ohio on a business deal which didn’t go his way. Because he didn’t like how this made him feel, he wanted to go back to using his pacifier of alcohol to change this. He initially stopped drinking alcohol by creating the distraction of helping others, so this is what he reverted to. Now there’s nothing wrong in helping others, but if you don’t understand why you need to change the way that you feel, you will keep needing to reach for a pacifier, in this case helping others. This means you will always need the suffering of others to appease yourself. And this is a disease in what way?

Grow up, that’s what I say. Stop needing a crutch to live life and face what arises as it arises and stop reaching for a pacifier to change the way that you feel. Feelings aren’t factual, they become real to the individual in the way they’re used to create a story. Change the story, change the feeling, but this will only distract you from the truth that all you’re doing is reaching for something to change the way that you feel. When the story that addiction is a disease is truly investigated, it will be seen only as a story. There’s nothing factual in wanting to change the way that you feel, except that there’s a created story of needing to reach for something and saying this is a disease. It may fit nicely into the story of main stream society, but there’s no actual truth to it because it’s only a story being used because life isn’t the way that you want it.