Three Root Causes of Addiction

In The Realm of the Hungry Ghost, Dr. Gabor Mate, brilliantly and compassionately describes the plight of Vancouver’s hardcore drug addicts.

Drug addicts are society’s outcasts.  With their difficult behaviors, and their tendency to lie or steal things to keep their addiction going, it’s tough to love and feel compassion for an addict.

But Dr. Mate eloquently reminds us, that far more of us are addicts than we realize.  We might not want to identify with a drug addict, but if we reflect on our own habits, we might realize how hard it is to fight addictions.  We can be addicted to a huge variety of things, including work, success, shopping, sex, screen time, coffee or a favorite food.   An addiction is anything we have a compulsion to do, that we don’t feel like we have the ability to stop.   How many of us are truly in control of our behaviors all the time?

Regardless of whether the addiction is considered acceptable or unacceptable by society, it often interferes with our relationships.  Our significant other’s needs are often dismissed when we are in the middle of an addiction frenzy.

Why do so many of us struggle with addictions?

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How to Overcome Loneliness

Many of us have experienced loneliness at some point in our lives.  Regardless of whether we are with people or not, it can manifest as this aching sense of not feeling heard or understood.

Loneliness increases our risk for depression, anxiety, and addictions as well as chronic diseases.  It is a huge problem with the elderly, and people suffering from disabilities.  And in the middle of a pandemic, the pervasive of loneliness is a huge social concern!

Levels of connection

While we all have different needs with regards to the number of people we interact with, Dr. Vivek Murthy, MD., author of Together:  the healing power of human connection in a sometimes lonely world says we need 3 levels of connection:

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Team People vs. Team Corona: Who’s Side Are You On?

I like to think of our ability to fight the Coronavirus as if we are were an army of people against the army of viruses. 

When a virus infects an individual, it invades cells to find ways to replicate. If the individual has an army (his immune system) with everything it needs, the person has a much better chance of fighting the growing army of viruses in his body before the viruses are able to have much control.

Viruses also replicate by spreading through the population. A virus looks for opportunities to survive and replicate, and every person it encounters becomes an opportunity for conquest.

The more we feed the virus with its favorite food source:

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A Tale of Issues in our Tissues

A client came to me because he wanted to address his difficulty in speaking his mind with his loved ones, when they were angry with him.  He was also experiencing a lot of dizziness.

I told him that I was being guided to address the dizziness first.  I discovered what the Chinese call a “liver blood deficiency”, and I released the imbalances that were driving that.

Then, like with most other physical conditions, I found out that I had to help him address a metaphysical question.

What is a metaphysical question?

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How We Rise Above Abuse

How it starts

I just finished listening to a memoir about a young girl, Tara, who grew up in a large religious family, and wasn’t given a formal education at school or at home.  She had a brother who was 5 yrs older, and took her under his wing.  He was kind and nurturing at first, but once he gained her trust, the abuse began.  It was subtle at first, and it continued and worsened until she complied with his every demand.  Their relationship alternated between moments of tenderness, abuse, and sometimes terror.   As a reader and outside observer, I could see how dangerous it was for her to be in his presence.   I wanted to scream into the book,

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