Social media addiction

Addiction can come in many forms. Alcohol, cannabis, eating, throwing up, shopping, gambling, sex, codependency, video games and social media. Some people like to do AA, co-dependency and Al-Anon. Some people do all the different anonymouses. Until we're enlightened we're crazy, and it makes sense that addiction is an aspect of crazy. Communities of sobriety can be supportive. 

Addiction creeps up on you. There's a reason Buddhism isn't called peak experiences, because while those come for some, the dopamine rush can't be all you're chasing. The practice is called the discipline. Putting in the work, doing the hard things. You can kiss the joys as they go by, but ethics and perspective are important.

I've always been afraid of addiction. Every family has it in the extended family (if there are more than just a few people). To whatever extent that people in my family have struggled with addiction, in a way doesn't matter to my journey, but I suppose once you enter recovery, you see it everywhere, in many different shapes and forms.

Developing a recovery plan also involves developing the higher power. There are some who don't like the higher language, so maybe just the things that are important, guiding principles, and being mindful, being present. I sometimes see myself as someone in space, without anything to grasp onto, "Holding to nothing whatever," (source). But there are values, virtues, ways of being that I find useful, beautiful even. Relationships are everything. 

You can cut out substance abuse, get your ethics in line, finances in line, and there's still social media. I'm a bit obsessed with my soccer team, NYCFC. And not having a romantic relationship, I think my soccer team was my girlfriend for a while. Checking online for discussion was like checking in with my girlfriend. It looks like Alexander Callens might be going to Girona now. My local soccer team has had huge roster upheavals, and it's quite challenging to me. 

Anyway, there's always a point when you turn a corner. Not that addiction goes away or there isn't a lot of work, but it's almost the point where you see the issue and can begin to address it. Maybe you'll address it the rest of your life. Maybe it's a false summit. You have to define it as a problem to begin to address it. It's a sad thing when a diversion becomes problematic, and you see through the romanticizing, see more clearly. There's something all purpose about mindfulness, being present, attention, that helps me get there.

last edited 1/19/23

Addiction and Buddhism links

I celebrate 90 days clean and sober. Looking for websites for a blog post helps me out to find out what resources there are out there on the web. Of course there is not an app for resisting urges, gaining insight into triggers, and communing with sober friends, but our mind seeks out what the mind wants and our life is a self fulfilling prophecy so spend time directing your mind to what you want. And if it's sobriety, here are some helpful links for the Buddhist:

Buddhist Recovery Network

12 Step Buddhist: They even have a free course you can take on it.

Refuge Recovery: This is my next book, Noah Levine.

Kevin Griffin: I've read his book twice.

The eight steps of recovery from TBC has a facebook page: I'm reading that book right now. They also have a page on the TBC website.

A Book list

AA Big Book

Free will and addiction

(Source)

In the disease model of addiction, it is nice in that it counters some of the heaping moral blame. Blame the victim is fairly standard in the good old USA, another self defeating philosophy amongst many. You can find a few articles on line about the disease model of addiction and free will.

The good old USA, we have a kind of wacky political bifurcation, either you follow that party line or this party line, and neither the twain shall meet. Either you believe in personal responsibility and ignore other social factors, or you look at other social factors, and you don't harp on personal choice. I feel like you can do both, and we don't need to entrench into partisan sniping.

The physiological element to addiction makes it very rewarding, and to quit is hard, mere exertion of will doesn't really make it so.

In Buddhism, we work to transcend our conditioning and not be reactive, to be creative. There's probably a percentage of free will, creativity, and we're looking to increase the percentage.

There's a lot emphasis on improving condition, creating the conditions that will lead to enlightenment. Improving conditions is an important way of working towards moving toward enlightenment.

Once someone is addicted, and you have the cycle where more and more is required to get the high as you habituate to the drug. Moral judgements don't stop people from using, it contributes to feeling bad about yourself and that leads to more use. Recovery has to be a choice, moving out of attraction and not just avoidance.

There's also a generic element in our genome. Before for water treatment, putting wine into your water killed bacteria and having the gene helped you to survive.

Addiction is very complicated. Free will and blame are in an interesting dance with the issues of addiction.

My first philosophy class was about free will. The Christians who want it because they need it to solve the problem of evil were heavily invested in it. How can an all knowing and all powerful god make something bad happen. The answer is free will. But if you don't have that commitment, the need to have it is less. On the other side, the materialists, who think only the stuff of physics exists, they have a need to defer to physicist, which is a much more muddy picture at this point, but could be an anti-free will position, determinism.

I like the idea of free will, even if it's not true, at least psychologically. Focusing people on their choices can help one to actually reflect on them, and in error analysis. If determinism is true, then I can't help but like the idea of free will.

The magical thinking involved in substance abuse is amazing. Working with substance abuse is interesting in that often times mental health professionals want to ceed that territory to substance abuse counselors. There are some that cross over, and the MICA tradition addresses both issues.

BTW, my sons interrupted me a million times while I was writing this post, so I apologize for any incoherence. 

video games

In our dada world, of intellectual overload, video games provide refuge for the cave man, or the problem solver, or the visually leaning mind.  Video games simplify the world, and like the Futurama episode where life is like a video game, the terms are much less ambiguous.  Even though we've had existentialism for over a century, we're still just as clueless on how to make meaning--soon cookie cutter religions that dispense other's revelations grow dull as they are not authentically ours.  Video games (or drugs or sex or materialism or career or subjugation to others needs) fill the void.  And yet they can't fill the void for long if you tune into yourself, and feel more void at your void erasing attempts.  So many heroes and heroines in literature look for solutions in the wrong place, desperately, frantically.  There are so many wrong paths.

I've enjoyed Sim City, and Civilization and visual games like tetras or bejeweled.  I had a PS for a while and did a snowboarding game.  I've been disgusted by Vice City type games, where the player is a criminal who has to accomplish criminal missions.  I have a friend who was in the Marines who can play combat games all day, even though he's a successful professional in perhaps the top profession.

At the moment I'm addicted to Edgeworld and MyTown2.  It seems I like building worlds and conquering worlds.  I'm Robert Moses and Genghis Khan.  In a way, I feel puny in this vast universe.  (That makes me think of the Monty Python skit.)

Video games are another kind of thinking, that I enjoy.  It's not intellectual wool gathering.  In a way it's a do nothing activity.  Sure, it expends energy and time, and what are the results.  "I'm up to level 42."  Is that good?  And yet there's a sense of accomplishment, pride in effort. In the grey world of existential wilderness, do I move up levels, do I win the day, do I defeat my opponents?  It's this simplification, this black and whiting of life that helps ease the existential tension.

I think the good news of Buddhism is that, yes there is a void, but we can come to understand it, and through altruism and personal effort, master it in a very satisfying way.  We can develop the grace to tolerate ambivalence, ambiguity, confusion and dispair, without hankering for limited solutions.

The Galaxy Song Lyrics:

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.