Addiction

"We don't want to eat hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to be hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. We want to know wonder and delight and passion, and if instead we've given up on ourselves, if we've vacated our longings, if we've left possibility behind, we will feel an emptiness we can't name. We will feel as if something is missing because something is missing - the connection to the source of all sweetness, all love, all power, all peace, all joy, all stillness. Since we had it once - we were born with it - it can't help but haunt us. It's as if our cells remember that home is a jeweled palace but we've been living as beggars for so long that we are no longer certain if the palace was a dream. And if it was a dream, then at least we can eat the memory of it."Geneen Roth. Women Food and God.

She is writing about food addiction, of course, but this is a beautiful description of what all addicts experience, I believe. The chemical, behavior or whatever else the person is addicted to either creates a simulation of what we need to fill the emptiness or at least numbs us to our longing. My dear sponsor, Joanie, used to say, "they don't call it 'spirits' for nothing." So the answer is to return to ourselves and whatever power we call God - not an easy journey - but in my opinion, there's nothing else that really matters in life.