Corking the Bottle

ADD is a result of trauma. That's the premise of Dr. Gabor Mate. (Add a ' over the e; I don't know how on my keyboard. It's pronounced Mattay) Today I want to shepherd y'all to his Youtube piece on addiction. It's insightful and interesting. On the downside, it lasts an hour. I listened while I worked out on my exercise bike. Maybe you can simply prop up your footrest and listen. Taking your PC outdoors on a warm spring day seems appealing. However you choose you will find it worthwhile. He covers a variety of topics related to the psychology of addiction and the impacts of trauma on our lives. That's the reason for the lead sentence above. Take a listen at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07nOScAHnXI . A wish he expressed was to have everyone who ever uses the word "addict" to instead say, "a human being who suffered so much pain that they didn't know how to escape from it except through this particular behavior. That would change...

According to Dr. Gabor  Maté   in his book,  In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts , "The addict dreads and abhors  the present moment. They bend feverishly only toward the next time, the moment when the brain, infused with the drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated...." ( https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/ )  I can identify with that. I won't say I abhorred the present moment, but I sure wasn't living in it. My enemy was "now;" my hope was to somehow return to the past and start over. But that was impossible, so I tried to make my hurt go away by drinking. Clearly that just made me more miserable. The downward spiral continued until I was able to find the real me again. I'm grateful to God that the real me is much better than the old me or the drunk me. I am learning about myself and others in my new world of sobriety.