It’s common for addicts to realize that it’s addiction all the way down. While some of us have had more “extreme” addictions, all of us have been captured by a recurring false possibility that a certain solution will ease our pain, only to make our problems and pain worse.

It’s baffling how susceptible we are to this progressive, possibility-narrowing loop. To be addicted is to be human.

I wouldn’t wish the madness of deep addiction on my worst enemies, and yet I’m grateful to have passed through it. That particular hell made explicit something essential—something at the root of so much human suffering. I see addiction clearly now as merciless training, teacher, and gift.

Recovery is lifelong not just because one swears off X, Y, or Z, but because the possibility-expanding loop that is the opposite of addiction literally never ends.

In fact, the process of ever-expanding possibility and growing range of sources through which fulfillment flows—leading toward the inevitable always-on, affirmative YES to the full spectrum of life in every moment—is, in my view, synonymous (or at least rhyming) with the spiritual path described by every great wisdom tradition in history.

If you have a friend or loved one suffering from addiction, know this: they are yearning. Not just for relief, but for this path. They’ve misplaced that yearning into the false possibility of drugs, alcohol, or whatever else—and still, in doing so, have deepened that yearning.

While their suffering is tragic, it may also be the exact crack in the edifice—an opening just wide enough, and deep enough, for the alternative possibility to enter and call them into a journey, one that couldn’t have been discovered any other way, and that extends far beyond “recovery.”