Originally Posted by
Gottalife 
Is it the substance that is the problem or is the substance merely a symptom? What are we looking for? Something to make us feel better? Something to fill the spiritual vacuum, the hole in the soul?
I ask because not all addictions involve toxic substances.
There is food, gambling, shopping/spending, love, sex, emotions and many more addictive/compulsive behaviours that create the same sorts of tragedies as the chemical addictions.
What is the cause? So often these days we try to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
I'm not qualified to answer that - but for me, I believe there isn't a clean line between cause and symptom. I believe that addiction is a complex, interwoven set of things emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, that evolved over time.
I think that as a small child - I was not yet troubled by addiction. But that as I grew, sugar began to present my brain with its physical effect. We can demonstrate and validate this effect because; science. And so at an early age, I experienced the rush, the escape, the thrill, the pleasantness of the dopamine rush that sugar brought me.
Also at a relatively early age - I began to experience trauma. My family situation led to emotional upset, to psychological trauma, to an inability to understand those feelings and things that happened to me. But what I COULD understand, even back then, was that there were effects of a substance that could help me feel good, regardless. I think that is where the pattern began - and from there it evolved.
Sugar, then caffeine, then alcohol, then marijuana, then alcohol and marijuana and opium and LSD and cocaine and extasy..... and various combinations of all of the above - became a patterned means of responding to things in my life's environment that I had not developed healthier ways of responding to.
Now, I am a work-in-progress. I am re-inventing and re-learning and re-developing ways to respond to life that are healthier. As I do so, I recognize the subtler ways that these patterns arose in my life and - even in sobriety - the subtler ways they still are with me today.
The 'cause' may be an emotionally-trying day, frustration at work, a sense of being overwhelmed by commitments. The 'response' may be an impromptu candy binge and too much coffee..... or it may be a recognition that these things are pressuring me, and a choice to go to an AA meeting, go for a run, meditate, log off the computer.
I don't think - for me - it's as simple as there's a root cause and there's a symptom. I don't think that I can simply 'be in balance' and then be able to drink or do drugs casually or even - perhaps - drink coffee without the potential for caffeine abuse. It may be that the course of decades of these patterns has created biological changes in me (there is mounting evidence that long term addiction actually changes our very DNA and can be passed on to future generations), which may mean that even 'innocent' addictions like sugar can have troubling consequences for me.