In simple terms, addiction is the result of trying to move toward pleasure and away from pain. Other than that, there is nothing simple about addiction. Eight ayahuasca retreat people with substance abuse problems ranging from alcoholism, opiate addiction and methamphetamine use were interviewed for this story. At their request, identities have been concealed.
The Addicts’ Theory
“Meth or speed-type drugs are for people with ayahuasca retreats father issues,” one former user explained. “”The drugs make you perform better, feel stronger and create a false persona and possibly be the person your dad wanted you to be.”
“Opiates or downers,” he continued, “are used when you have issues with your mother because those chemicals mimic the feelings you want from your mom, like warmth, comfort and peace.” Alcohol, one woman explained, “is when there is a spiritual disconnection from you and the rest of the world.” “You don’t feel like you fit in, or belong, without drinking first,” she said.
A Psychiatric View
Alcoholism, according to Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung is ‘the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.” He noted that “alcohol in Latin is spiritus” and claimed the same word is used for “the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison.” The way out is also the way in: “Spiritus contra Spiritum” which can also be read as ‘fight fire with fire.’
One Doctor’s Opinion
In 1934, Dr. William Silkworth, who specialized in the treatment of alcoholics, attended to a patient who was an alcoholic of the type “I had come to regard as hopeless,” he said. “Unless this person (the hopeless alcoholic) can experience an entire ‘psychic change’ there is very little hope of his recovery.”
“Once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed,” he continued, “suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol.” The only effort necessary being that one is required to follow a few simple rules.
One Man’s Solution
The patient that Dr. Silkworth regarded as hopeless turned out to be Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. During his final stay in the hospital, Bill W. had a religious conversion which abruptly and permanently relieved him of a chronic drinking problem which took him to the brink of despair. That experience was the genesis for the AA program which is a series of 12 steps that participants engage in to attempt to create this “total psychic change.”