Addictions are everywhere. Although our conventional understanding of the word ‘addiction’ is very strongly connected with substance abuse like using heroine, alcohol or cocaine, these are only extreme manifestations of the same patterns that we all have and fuel. Addictions come in all forms, on a strange intertwined level of body and mind. It’s, as Pema Chodron calls it, the urge to… do something, think something, say something. Although you know better, it’s that feeling of having to do it anyway, just because you need to. It can be very subtle, on the level of thoughts, even. It’s also very familiar, something we as humans are drawn to, making it very powerful.

I have been feeding an -mostly emotional- addictive pattern in my personal life these last months. This is how this addiction –and all the previous- works for me: I solidify some part of reality by making up all kinds of storylines, leaving no room for unconditional direct experience. I fuel the ideas about what I want and what I don’t want based on these storylines. I then go back over and over to the thoughts and fantasies that make up and surround these storylines. The waves of thoughts, “the urge to” go there, on both a practical as mental level, are very strong.

You can be fuelling an addictive pattern and know better and still do it. That’s what makes it addictive. Although it is very painful to experience, there is something crucial about addictions. If we manage to stay on the spot, to feel that urge to, we get an inside peek on how our mind works. It’s like when you forget what you wanted to say, right in the middle of a sentence (we all know that, right?) and staying with that uncomfortable feeling, where you normally run your mental database like crazy, looking for that file you’ve lost. It’s staying with that urge to pick up the phone/lash out/implode, or whatever your addiction urges you to do. If we stay with the heat underneath our addictions, they somehow very slowly transform.

Sometime I do and sometimes I don’t feed the addictive urge anyway, shortly after that. But I’m learning to feel the addictive urge to, better and better. For me it results in two things, besides having more insight in the way my mind works, namely humour and compassion. First of all, the more I see my addictive urge, the more I talk about it, the more dismantled it gets, and the more funny I find it. When I’m not in the heat of the addictive pattern, I see from a distance how crazy this pattern is, how futile, and how endearing it is really. Seeing the whole spectrum of denial, falling back, feeding the fire, waking up, having perspective and falling right back again has also given me so much more understanding in the way this part of being human works. This is the compassion part. I would not judge a friend so easily when she falls back again and again in the same pattern, relationship, habit, because I know what it’s like.

Eventually, I guess, being mindful of your addictions, seeing through them will wear them out. But it can take time. Especially when you are as stubborn minded as myself, it is only through directly experiencing what the addiction brings you –more clarity of more confusion- that it can be worn out. The only way out is through.