Opinion | Matthew Perry and the Loneliness of Addiction

addiction emerges out of a lack of inner experience of intimacy with oneself, with God, with life, and with the moment.

Addiction is a spiritual disease, a disease of the soul, an illness resulting from longing, frustrated desire, and deep dissatisfaction—which is ironically the necessary beginning of any spiritual path.

Years ago, in what now seems like another life, a friend said to me, “Your entire existence can be reduced to a three-part cycle. One: Get fucked up. Two: Fuck up. Three: Damage control.” We hadn’t known each other very long, probably two months at most, and yet he had already witnessed enough of my regular blackout drinking, just one of the more o

“For all their tears and heartache and desperately good intentions, most families of addicts are defeated in the end,” writes Beverly Conyers. “Addicts persist in their self-destructive, addictive behavior until something within themselves—something quite apart from anyone else’s efforts—changes so radically that the desire for the high is dulled a

Lessons of the Balance The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain. Recovery begins with abstinence. Abstinence resets the brain’s reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopam