Originally Posted by
Fluffer 
What's with answering a question with riddles? I feel like I'm talking to Yoda. I guess I'm not getting my Zen awareness certificate.
What makes you ask?
I can't tell if you're frustrated or simply curious.
The title of my OP only occurred to me when I wrote it. It only has meaning to the extent that it has meaning for you, if at all.
Only in retrospect, I suppose that one of the things that inspired it is the never-ending debate around what treatment for addictions consists of, or should consist of. My own tendency is that the whole person needs to be addressed in all his or her being, and not be "treated."
Existentialism, for me, is not simply a philosophy or a fundamental element of how I practice psychotherapy -- the search for meaning -- but an orientation that informs what I do and how I live my life, and which also reveals what I am becoming. Beyond treatable medical conditions or diseases, living life is not a disease and therefore does not require "treatment." Recovering from addictions for me is nothing if not building a better life with all the challenges and obstacles, the heartbreak pain and suffering, the success and failure that come and go as a result of existence itself.
If Utopia includes eradicating suffering, then sacrificing our humanity is too heavy a price to pay. ("Utopia" referring to the two original Greek words for 'Utopia', one of which means "the good place," the other, "the place that cannot be.")
Just sayin'.