addiction is neither a choice nor primarily a disease. It originates in a human being’s desperate attempt to solve a problem: the problem of emotional pain, of overwhelming stress, of lost connection, of loss of control, of a deep discomfort with the self. In short, it is a forlorn attempt to solve the problem of human pain. All drugs—and all behaviours of addiction, substance-dependent or not, whether to gambling, sex, the internet or cocaine—either soothe pain directly or distract from it. Hence my mantra: The first question is not “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?”
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