I agree. It is also important to avoid the pseudoscience in the scientific establishment though; for example, the entire psychiatric manual has been thoroughly discredited in the 70s, but that is not communicated openly.
I would also strongly recommend against using religious counselling of any kind. It may work, but a rational world view is an extremely high price to pay.
Not at all. You can take Ritalin and Adderall, but that will give you the personality of an accountant and take away your creative problem solving skills.
As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain. I'll share mine, what I did to get deaden it, and how I finally healed it. I'm 31 now, have a wife, exciting job, close friends, and most of all, I'm happy.
My pain comes form severe bullying; I got beaten up literally every day as a child for three years. After that, I finally got transferred to another school, but the damage was done.
I used video games, porn and promiscuity to deaden the pain. That distracted me from starting a career, and I ended up living on the street for six months.
I tried pretty much everything to heal myself.
* What did not work *
- Religion; God did absolutely nothing to my pain away. Religious counselors were
very judgmental and made me feel worse, and their advice just caused new problems.
- Cults; They had interesting teachings that were partially very entertaining,
but Ashtar Sharan had nothing but a Galactic shrug to offer my very real suffering
(I would have been prepared to actually believe in Ashty had he actually helped me,
but it was clear that he did not)
- Meditation; It helped, but only temporarily. When I missed my meditation session the
pain came right back, and I grew distant from the world.
- Yoga; Like meditation, it did help, but it took such great lifestyle changes I just
didn't feel like me any more. I'm a child of the West, and Yoga is radically different.
- Sex; obviously, sleeping around is a great distraction and can be genuinely fun, but
when it's addictive it hurts in the end and you draw other people into your drama.
- Counseling; Wallowing in my pain with a guy who think everything is a fascinating
freak show made things much worse.
* What worked partially
- Cannabis; Smoking weed actually worked better than meditation to give me temporary relief.
It also made me confused when used heavily.
- New Age; There is a lot of partial truth floating around, if you avoid the obvious marketing
ploys. "Think And Grow Rich" is pretty good, and so is "The Science of getting Rich". Basically,
the idea is to sit down and think about stuff you want in detail. It has a similar calming effect
to meditation, and can lead to actual creative problem solving. It did not, however, significantly
heal my hardest pain points. But the idea of "you can reach your goals" kept my trying.
- Pressure point tapping; EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is pretty good, it can stimulate
and permanently remove some trauma. It has its limits though, and I felt like an neurotic idiot tapping
my wrists all the time.
* What really worked
- Philosophy; Getting a genuine core philosophy and actively deciding my values gave me a lot of strength.
- Openness; being extremely honest about my shortcomings with deserving people lead to a form of intimacy
that makes the trauma not seem so bad any more.
- "Taking the pain"; This is not the same as sucking it up. It is feeling like crap, and accepting that I
am feeling like crap right now, without suppressing it. Practicing this takes the "fear of the fear" away.
This is probably the real benefit of meditation when done properly, but I didn't need to sit on a cushion to do that.
- Self-acceptance; This one is the kicker. I no longer slapped my wrist for slacking on the job, or being
not as nice as I could be. Paradoxically, this lead to me not slacking on the job, and being nicer. It also
helped find my niche, where my shortcomings don't matter.
- Dimethyltryptamine (DMT); An illegal psychedelic drug, it has been used as indigenous medicine for centuries.
This is the only way I have been able to permanently release my worst and oldest pain points. I stopped smoking
spontaneously after a couple of trips, and have noticed a sharp raise in my productivity and overall wellbeing.
Obviously, this is just my story, but I hope that some points might help you, or someone else.
If the pattern matches a chronic condition, that is your cause.