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EXCERPTS FROM:
HOW TO WORK WITH ADDICTIONS

BY Pema Chodron


The teachings tell us that there is suffering.

There is dissatisfaction and frustration. Often nothing seems to go right. There really is a wound. But it is not necessary to scratch it. Working with addictions is about not just impulsively grabbing for something to stop the itching, not just grabbing for something to fill up the space, not giving in to this impulse to feel okay and just to get comfortable as soon as possible.

When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal. But when we instead experience the raw quality of the itch or pain of the wound and do not scratch it, we actually allow the wound to heal. So not giving in to our addictions is about healing at a very basic level.




The heavily addicted moment is the perfect time to do this since the intense energy of severe addictions can equally become the equally intense energy of wakefulness.

When you first begin working with this, particularly with severe addictions, you may find that you can delay acting for a while, but eventually you give in to your addiction. But that delay is also extremely valuable, as it becomes the seed for longer refraining and begins to develop our trust that it is possible. We start with delaying our addictive impulse for just a few seconds but eventually we have a longer and longer delay between the wish to scratch the wound and actually scratching the wound until finally we do not have to scratch at all. During that delay we begin to befriend the energies.

For heavy addictions it is often useful to have as the initial goal something that is achievable. Our initial goal might be to delay fulfilling the addiction for a short period of time and then gradually lengthen the delay. This delay becomes the wedge we can use to bring down the whole addiction.

Working with delay of running off out destructive pattern increases our trust and helps to develop the healthful pattern. Again, we start where we are and work slowly and patiently, without aggression for ourselves.


So specifically the process is: When you are frantically eating, smoking, grabbing for a valium or whatever it is and it occurs to you to try this, first you pause. The traditional teaching when we are all caught up is to bring to mind something which stops us, such as the face of our teacher or of someone who really loves us. But it could be anything that works for us.

For example:

1. Uneasy feelings come up and we say to ourselves something like: "I am not afraid of what is coming up. I have worked with feelings like this before. I can feel them. They are workable. They will teach me something. I know from experience I can trust this process." This is the first stage: maitri.
2. Then we let go of our words about it, for example, "just this one won't hurt me," "I have to have this now because... "and just be open to the space. It is as if the words were playing in a tiny little corner of the space or it's as if you are in an airplane looking down on them.
3. Then we communicate with the feelings that are left which are now wordless and move outward, as if the feelings weren't specifically ours but were shared with the whole human race. They are changed to a warmth for the whole human race. They are changed to a warmth and tenderness for the whole human condition. You are really feeling with all of humanity and your heart could melt from the intensity of the pain or longing.

What begins to happen as a result of practicing this way is a growing trust we can be brave enough to open and to stop scratching that wound. We trust that we can do it and we also see that sometimes we can't do it for very long, but we nevertheless begin to have a trust that it is possible. We begin to trust that we can connect with what is underneath the facade of protective devices, that we do not have to be afraid of that rawness, of that pain, of that wound.

And then we also begin to find that what we connect with underneath that facade or protective device is actually healing to to us, it is actually nourishing to us, it is not basically frightening. It is not a sense of annihilation, it is a sense of warmth and expansion and a sense of enormous freedom and spaciousness. It is a sense of coming home.

And most important there is a sense of enormous simplicity. Just simplicity. We make life complicated when it is actually simple. Based on our experience of working with this, we develop a real sense that we can evolve from being all caught up scratching our wounds, to a sense of the boundless nature, which is completely freeing and open and focused outward.


In the course of working with this, our perception of ourselves changes.

One person describes the change: he said that he used to think of himself as a confused person doing confused things, but now he regarded himself as a good person doing confused things. To him that was a big difference because underlying this was a change of allegiance and expectation from confusion to wisdom. The view is that the wisdom guide is inherent in each of us and that we can connect with that at any time and be completely free.