A Nation of Addicts

Why does it seem that everyone we know is taking antidepressants or some other substance to suppress emotional pain? Why are we numbing ourselves, and why is it accepted as normal? What is the common denominator here?

A slow but steady detour away from the independent values that made our country great two hundred years ago has landed us in a nation of addicts: land of the numb, mind-controlled, programmed masses. As a people, we have lost our consciousness, and with it a tremendous amount of wisdom. We have confused what is considered desirable with what is life-generating. We have lost touch with our true emotions -- that voice within which speaks for inner balance and self-knowledge. Too many of us sleepwalk through life following a set of social norms that can only lead to ruin: physical, mental, and emotional.

The hard fact is that just about everyone is an addict today because a sinister social conditioning has quietly snuck its way into "normal" living: the consumption of foods unfit for the human body. These foods are profoundly harmful and highly addictive. That's right: the most insidious addiction today is not to recreational drugs, but to grains, sweeteners, food additives, and preservatives (including hormones and antibiotics, just for starters) in the mainstream diet. Addiction, therefore, is a problem for every human being who isn't highly aware of what he or she consumes.

But here's the gem: the cause and cure of addiction hinge on the same all-important factor -- consciousness. We can understand addiction as a loss of consciousness. In today's diet-lifestyle, it poisons the biochemistry of the blood and ravages the intestine, cells, and tissues. Yet, we keep eating and living according to the customs that have been programmed into us by the so-called authorities, the market, the media, and the influence of our peers. We have become little better than a nation of addicts.

When our inner voice knows better and rises up to question the status quo, to resist the whole program, we are quickly labeled "depressed" or "chemically imbalanced" and written a prescription. In the meantime, the dictates of our culture urge us to silence our distress with "comfort foods," alcohol, drugs, and other mind-numbing diversions. After all these millennia of medical achievements, we have missed the obvious universal law of nature: when there is pain, it is a call for change, not a call for suppression!

Social norms dictate not only how we should live, but also how we should feel. We are taught to avoid "negative" emotions and embrace only the "positive" ones -- and we do so routinely, without even knowing it. These repressed emotions are the harbingers of addiction.

All the spiritual leaders and great minds of history -- including the Buddha, Christ, Socrates, and Jung -- emphasized the importance of awareness. And contemporary teachers like Eckhart Tolle have made the concept more familiar to people today. However, there remains a great chasm between the desire to practice consciousness and the actual application of it. For most people, living in the present is so hard to do. Nonetheless, it is the single most essential tool of personal liberation available to us.

Any set of social expectations that fails to honor a person's spirit and allow for its honest expression is an agent of repression, and is therefore antithetical to life. The emotions of pain, anger, and fear arise to tell us to pay attention. They come to us as friends, to pull our hand away from the flame. In heeding rather than repressing them, we can let them go, and also let go of our addictions. Soon, we can bring awareness to any situation with a penetrating power of discernment. We can see through the clutter of social expectation and ask ourselves: "Is that a social conditioning or a life-generating truth?"

We are a nation of addicts because too many widely accepted norms are destructive to our bodies, minds, and spirits. Our authority figures perpetuate the madness by creating more drugs for more illnesses and building more infrastructures to keep the vicious cycle alive. Frittering away personal power, we get ever more lost in the quagmire, blind to the road signs of our emotions. Addiction feels like a normal life experience rather than an aberration of nature. The modern ethos is to pacify feelings with all that glitters and sells. "Don't feel this," our culture whispers in our psyches. "You don't need to feel sad. Here, take this instead. Have a donut and a latte. There, there. Now, isn't that better?"

The cure for depression and countless physical ailments may be far simpler than we ever realized. It is time we (a) correct our biochemical imbalances through cleansing, and (b) expose destructive social norms for what they are and cultivate the power of conscious choice. It's time we wake up to what we are really made of -- as fully empowered human beings who know our own authentic needs and desires, not mindless automatons of an addiction-fueled society.

We all want to lead great lives, but a life of worldly achievement is only possible through a healthy, balanced, and beautiful inner life. Let us feel deeply and allow our emotions to nourish our personal growth through smart, life-enhancing choices.

Comments

[cktirumalai]

Your comments are capable of rousing the receptive reader into thought.
Realizing that one is leading a programmed life followed by the willingness and determination to break the spell, first in small ways and then perhaps in major ones, can indeed make a difference.

[runswithscissors]

Addiction of any kind has as much to do with what's missing in life as it does with any particular substance and/or activity. Americans live in their own personal bubbles. Even close friends are rarely allowed in anymore...it's so much easier to just text them. And you can even do it one-handed, so you don't have to put down the credit card or 1200 calorie triple-decker burger with 6 pounds of who-knows-what kind of sauce on it. More and more homes are even becoming bubbles, as gated communities are becoming more popular than ever.

When did our population grow so terrified of itself? This is the root of the anxiety, which leads to the depression. Hunmans are social animals. The need for human contact is as real as the need for food. We're depriving ourselves of one, and substituting a poison form of the other in its place. On top of that we work way to much and sleep way too little. What little family time is left over suffers as a result. To put it simply, we live a dangerous, destructive lifestyle. I recognized this some time ago and have been able to make some positive changes, some drastic and others fairly easy. It's a process, but life really has gotten better as a result. I guess the point is that WE can still control our personal situation, but only if you're willing to sacrifice some of life's conveniences

[GrumpyOldGeek]

Apparently, you've never tried to help anyone recover from alcohol or drug addiction nor been close to anyone who has been suicidal because of actual depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or brain injury. Referring to bad habits and poor life choices as addictions is a poor choice of words. But I digress.

I actually agree with much of what you say. We are, in a sense, addicted to bad habits. We are complacent, lazy, self-centered and egotistical, uninterested, disrespectful, and socially intolerant.

That inner voice that you mentioned confirms our faults and bad behaviors. This knowledge alone will not make us change. We must be confronted with a compelling reason. Too often, a suitable reason arrives too late, maybe a diagnosis of a serious medical condition. Even then, we may decide not to change. Our self-justification is that we're going to die anyway, so why not die happy.

You can eliminate bad behavior and live a happy, joyous life. Just start emulating Senator Kennedy's behavior. Whenever you find yourself feeling down or discouraged, change your thoughts to someone you can help. Then take action. Even the thought itself will lift you. All religions try to teach that 'you are what you think'. So change your thoughts. Force it at first, if you must. It will change your life.

It is wise to consult a professional, especially if that inner voice agrees.

[alansky]

"...there remains a great chasm between the desire to practice consciousness and the actual application of it."

I totally agree that the entire population, give or take a few relatively enlightened souls, is totally asleep at the wheel. Not to mention terrified to wake up because of what they know deep down they might see if they do.

But you cannot "practice" consciousness any more than you can "practice" running for your life to escape the jaws of a hungry tiger. You either run like hell, or you don't. There is no "practice" for saving your life when circumstances conspire to take it from you.

And this is the situation we are faced with. Everything from crappy food to crappier entertainment, managed news and the instilling of insane values is conspiring to turn the American people into clueless zombies who march passively to their deaths like sheep going to slaughter. And for what? So a handful of twisted, broken megabillionaires can scarf up more profits, and then more profits, until there is not one penny of additional profit to be made anywhere--and no world for the rest of us to live in either.

[odyssey58]

The corporate elite are addicted to money and we are their brain dead enablers.

[dmyron]

As a survivor of the sixties(who neither did nor does drugs), i can attest to the growing lack of resistance to the proliferating addictive products and activities society encounters daily.Woe be to our children and granchildren if we do not reverse the process and bring it to a halt.We have become a nation of mindless followers,without reason,without conscience,without dignity.