Attunement is a subtle process. It is deeply instinctive and is easily subverted when the parent is stressed, depressed or distracted. A parent can be fully attached to the infant—fully “in love”—but not attuned.

the important thing is that whatever activity you choose, it must be something you enjoy doing.”4 The purpose of Re-focus is to teach your brain that it doesn’t have to obey the addictive call. It can exercise the “free won’t.” It can choose something else.

Addiction, in this sense, is the lazy man’s path to transcendence.

Like infants and mothers, lovers, spiritual seekers and bungee jumpers—yes, bungee jumpers—all reach euphoric states in which endorphins play a key role. One study found that endorphin levels tripled in the blood of bungee jumpers for the half-hour following the leap and were correlated with the degree of reported euphoria: the higher the endorphin

Unconditional acceptance of another person doesn’t mean staying with them under all circumstances, at no matter what cost to oneself; that duty belongs only to the parents of a young child.

As in the old folksong, “Mamma Don’t Allow,” nothing evokes resistance more effectively than someone forbidding us to do something, even when the prohibition comes from ourselves. The universal refrain is “We don’ care what mamma don’t allow, we’re gonna keep on [doing whatever] anyhow….”

There is no accusation, only the fundamental reality that suffering is multigenerational, that we pass it on unwittingly until we understand it and break the links in the chain of transmission within each family, community, society. Parent-blaming is emotionally unkind and scientifically incorrect. All parents do their best; only our best is

The child needs to be in an attachment relationship with at least one reliably available, protective, psychologically present and reasonably nonstressed adult.

Thus addiction to opiates like morphine and heroin arises in a brain system that governs the most powerful emotional dynamic in human existence: the attachment instinct. Love.