Addictions

We hear of the addiction to alcohol and some people refer to those who drink too much as alcoholics.

We also refer to the heroin user or the meth user as drug addicts.

Indeed, what is an addict?

Perhaps an addict is someone who uses any defense mechanism, and the downside, the side-effect, if you will, is significant.

Psychoanalysis has referred to some defense mechanisms as more mature, while others are less mature.

What if the "alcoholic", or the heroin user, is simply a person who is utilizing a defense mechanism that is rather immature?

Is this necessarily the worst type of addiction - or defense?

Alain de Botton has said: "We tend to imagine that we can only become addicted to a few sorts of things. But real addiction is about using something, anything, to keep our real emotions, fears and hopes at bay. There are many more addicts among us than we think." https://www.stashmedia.tv/school-life-why-addicts/

This audiobook takes the view that addictions, in fact, can be divided into two main groups: the addictions, or defense mechanisms with a strong negative side-effect, which have a payout rather early in their usage, vs the addictions with a payout rather later in life.

If we look at it this way, we might then start to envision how the use of defense mechanisms involving distractors that are not chemical in nature, for instance, can have significant negative effects in the future, but not in the immediate shorter period.

These might range from the addictions leading to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, a stroke, or even Alzheimer's. These are often referred to as Modern-day afflictions, or one might say, negative side-effects from the use of addictions - defense mechanisms - that are so frequently an option to buy and use in the modern age.

They do not result in car accidents, or prison time, or loss of public reputation, per say, but yet do have negative consequences for us, in the long term. They also may be what Henry David Thoreau was concerned of: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Yes, one of the side-effects of a life full of addictions that are not chemical in nature, could well be a life that is not "fully lived".

This audiobook talks of this in much greater detail. There are references to this topic from Deepak Chopra, Jim Rohn, Elon Musk, and from the movie "Parenthood", starring Steve Martin.