Intro and The Nature of Addiction

Addiction has two elements that must be understood to grasp the true nature of it. The first element is tolerance . A person is drawn to an addictive behavior or substance because of the way it affects his or her emotions. It enhances some feelings and numbs out others. Emotional pain is reduced momentarily…and the hope is that it will not come back. Of course, it does. Tolerance means that over time more and more of the behavior or substance required to produce the desired effect. More intense use of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, gambling is required to numb out feelings, or for some stimulants like cocaine is needed to get the heightened sense of excitement and competence. Eventually the intensity of the behavior or substance needed to produce the high become dangerous in and of itself. Not only does one become an impaired driver in the case of chemical addictions, but an overdose can occur or the liver can fail.

Withdrawal
The second element that is important to understand is withdrawal. Withdrawal means that an individual has a very painful physical and/or emotional reaction when the substance or behavior is stopped. Withdrawal happens in two phases: acute withdrawal and post-acute withdrawal. Acute withdrawal occurs within hours and days of the cessation of use. Drug/Alcohol withdrawal can be accompanied by hallucinations and delirium tremens. After a person has become adjusted to a certain level of the drug/experience removal of it affects the emotional/biochemical balance that has been established. The person then has to readjust to living without the previous level of stimulation, etc. Post acute withdrawal can last two years or more. It also has emotional and physiological aspects that are very difficult to endure.

The Daoist Literature talks alot about closing of the senses such as (eyes, ears, mouth, sinuses; and to draw yourself inwardly. Always the need of stimulating or seeking is a battle in a modern culture. below I copied a article for you by Gilles Marin who wrote a niece piece about craving and addcitions- some relates to food, doesn’t really matter, its the message thats nice in it,try connecting with stillness practices such as siting & standing Meditations, it should help ground these emotions,…Snowlion

LOVE OR LUST; APPETITE OR CRAVING?
By Gilles Marin

Appetite is known in all traditions to be the sign of good health and appreciation of life. Unfortunately, a lot of people are afraid of their appetite because they mistake a desire for certain foods for craving. Also, in a civilization of plenty and temptations where diets rule, appetite has become in many a household synonym of sin. The desire for food, a desire rising up from the deep, has also been associated with the desire of the flesh, the desire for sex and the sin of lust. In my opinion, there is a need in our minds to differentiate between appetite and cravings, which have the same relation to each other as love and lust. Our inability to differentiate between them leads us to the unfortunate mistake of taking one for the other.

Love = Appetite = Good health
Lust = Cravings = Poison

Love involves, among a lot of other things, a healthy desire for sex in a fulfilling and satisfying relationship with bonding at the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. Yielding to love results in immediate improvement of health. Then, sex becomes healing. It is in fact the most potent and efficient health enhancer in the world. Cultivating our potential for love involves the ability to satisfy ourselves as well as others and radiates the healing energy developed within us toward others Appetite means good health. It means that our body lets us know what we need, in what proportions and when. Appetite changes according to seasons, weather, geographical location, mood, physical and mental activity, food availability and even gender, blood type, body type, ethnicity, and so on. It is the result of an extremely sensitive and sophisticated inner network of communication that can be cultivated to a high degree of refinement. Appetite tells us what kind of food we need to nourish ourselves, and when we get it, we feel satisfied. Yielding to our appetite is also our gateway to love. How we eat is generally a reflection of our sexuality.

A craving is a sure sign of imbalance in our health and points precisely to our poisons. When our health is out of balance, our whole life has a tendency to lean in that imbalanced direction. A craving points to what we shouldn’t have, because if we have it, we can’t stop desiring more of it. We are never satisfied, and we are able to stop only when we get sick. We never get satisfaction from yielding to cravings, and that is one way of distinguishing craving from appetite. Cravings can, and often do, lead to intoxication and addiction. Addiction is an attempt of the body to prevent oneself from going through the suffering of detoxifying.

This does not necessarily mean that the objects of our cravings are all toxic for everyone and that everyone should stay clear of them. What is poison for someone can be the right food for someone else according to the situation and the person. In any case, yielding to food cravings leads to metabolic imbalance due to not getting the kind of energy we need. In addition, a huge loss of energy will be experienced from the overload of work left to the internal organs as a result of poor processing, overload, detoxifying and the flooding of stress hormones resulting from dissatisfaction. Paradoxically, when we indulge in our cravings we might feel that we do it for compensation or reward, but yielding to cravings and eating too much is in fact a form of self-abuse that sends the inner message that we don’t deserve to live. Yielding to cravings also is a gateway to lust and the resulting ill health.

Lust is sexual craving. It is born out of the inability to satisfy our sexuality. We try over and over again, often with different partners, with the sad result that every unsuccessful attempt builds a potential of failure that inevitably will end up in depression. A lack of knowing better in matters of sexual satisfaction, an overload of pent-up energy, and being manic-depressive, are usually the different factors that lead to lust. Yielding to sexual cravings leads rapidly to a huge loss of vital energy and is very destructive to oneself and others.

Unfortunately, in our much-distressed industrialized world we easily lose faith in ourselves and look for guidance and approval through systems of aesthetics geared toward mass consumption of products heavily advertised. The quality of these products is such that they wouldn’t stand a chance without the hypnotic power of commercials. I personally associate pornography, the over-exposure of sexually explicit material designed to induce craving for sex, with over-exposure to food products designed to induce food cravings. Both originate from greed and seeking short-term rewards, and both only provoke disgust in the healthy person.

THE INNER GUIDANCE OF THE APPETITE
Healthy people are in touch with their appetites and are able to satisfy them. Once we have a healthy appetite we can eat anything we want, any time we want it and there is nothing wrong with committing a little excess from time to time. As the Taoist saying goes: “For health and happiness everything in life is to be enjoyed. To keep enjoying it, take everything in moderation, including moderation!” Dr. Chang, on of my most influential teachers, used to say that it is healthier to get very drunk once a month than to drink a glass of wine or beer every day, since our body does not have time in twenty-four hours to detoxify completely from alcohol. Drinking only once a month, even if we get drunk, will allow the body enough time to detoxify completely.

Then our appetite is well tuned it will allow us to enjoy these special occasions of indulgence. These occasions will be enjoyed all the more as they will arise only occasionally. But first we have to be healthy; then our appetite will guide us surely and will make sure that we never commit too much excess in moderation!

It is always difficult to know what is right and what is wrong for us when we are not in the habit of listening to our own appetite or when we live a lifestyle which leaves little room for shopping for the food we need and cooking it. We then find ourselves trying unsuccessfully to satisfy our appetite with whatever we can find and end up eating too little of what we really need and too much of the wrong things and getting poisoned. Since most of these products and foods are consumed in an imbalanced way, they end up becoming toxic to our system, even though sometimes very little in the ingredients is poisonous. Any food has some nutritional value, but any food becomes toxic if consumed improperly. Even pure water, when drunk excessively, can harm you.

When we force ourselves to ignore the dictates of our own appetite, it’s going to be stressful, and the stress will prevent proper digestion of these foods no matter how healthy and organic they might be. If taken in excess they will create stagnation, corrupt, and turn into poison like anything else. I don’t personally think that there is anything wrong with eating some processed food, or even junk food once in a while. Food is food. As long as we keep healthy by eating fresh, whole and possibly organic foods regularly, then we can indulge once in a while in something that could be toxic if we had it every day. When given a chance, a healthy digestive system is able to choose what it needs and efficiently eliminate everything else. A healthy body will always need a wide variety of foods to choose from to remain healthy. It might then choose very little, but very precisely and wisely, this is what a good appetite is all about.

When we don’t know what to eat any longer it is often because we have been trying different diets for a long time, trying to make sense of completely contradictory advice and guidance. Our thoughts are very much detached from our feelings. As a matter of fact we use our thinking to control our feelings. So, the more we think, the less we feel. The more we try to make sense of all these dietary advises, the less we are able to hear our own appetite. All this effort to make sense of diets doesn’t do anything but estrange ourselves from our real needs by trying to follow the needs of someone else. The net result is a battered and invalidated appetite.

HORMONAL RESPONSE THAT AFFECTS APPETITE
Information in our body is the domain of both Nervous and Endocrine Systems. There is a multi-level of interconnectedness within ourselves that works through nerve impulses and chemical communication with hormones that allows our body to work in complete consistency with itself from gross anatomy all the way to the molecular level. Our metabolic rate is dependent on the production of these hormones. Every endocrine gland produces hormones in what is called an axis. An axis is a set of two hormones produced by the same gland that neutralize and complete each other the same way that our Autonomic Nervous System is divided into sympathetic or stress response and parasympathetic or recovery response.

Our stronger hormonal response in terms of energy production comes out of our pancreas. Our pancreas is in charge of providing fuel in the form of blood sugar to all our cells. It produces an axis of hormones called insulin and glucagon. It sends insulin in our blood stream to allow sugar molecules to break down to a small enough size to leak through blood vessel and feed our body. When this happens the blood sugar level drops to a level that triggers our Nervous System to tell our pancreas to deliver glucagon, the other hormone that inhibits the effect of insulin and makes the blood sugar raise back to a higher level by opening the sugar reserves in our liver and body fat.

As for the Autonomic Nervous System responses of sympathetic and parasympathetic, the hormonal responses are either acidic and associated with the stress response or alkaline and associated with the recovery response. Insulin, being acidic, is associated with the stress response and sympathetic activities such as being busy and active. Glucagon being more alkaline, is associated with the parasympathetic response and parasympathetic activities such as resting, recovering and enjoying oneself.

The pancreatic response is known to be highly dependent on our genes, and therefore can have a wide variation according to the person involved. To me, heredity, being information encoded in our genes, also encompasses systems of habits, tradition, education and a whole behavioral and emotional package of attitudes we get as a standard birthday gift from belonging to an ethnicity, socio-economic background, politico-ecologic group, a gender, social class etc… In short our pancreatic output is a reflection of how comfortable we were made to feel about ourselves and our situation in life. If we were made to feel good about ourselves with a strong sense of identity, self-esteem and support, we feel strong and can relax into a more parasympathetic response than if we were made to feel guilty just for being born or need to constantly prove that we deserve to live and to be loved by being hyper-productive. In the first case pancreatic function will be well adjusted no matter what we eat and how we eat it. In the second case stress response will trend to predominate with a tendency toward hypoglycemia or diabetes.

DIETARY HYGIENE
To keep ourselves strong once we are detoxified it is important to recognize our poisons. No one can have a healthy appetite, and therefore know what is good for her/himself, if toxified. We have to be well into our healing process, to be in touch with what we are trying to hide from ourselves by toxifying, in order to have freedom of choice in matters of nutrition. The only way is to first recognize our cravings as such: to become self-aware. If we want to change and progress we need to know what it is we need to change and for what purpose.

Our digestive system is already designed to let us know what is best for us. All we have to do is to listen to it. The best way to realize that is to follow what I have come to call “dietary hygiene.” Hygiene is based on good habits. Similarly we have to follow a way of eating naturally that serves our appetite. I have found three basic principles that when followed have led many of my clients, and also myself, into remarkable and speedy transformations and recovery many imbalances in a matter of just a few days. These principles involve how to eat rather than what to eat, and when followed, promote and strengthen a healthy appetite, or knowing what is best for us to eat.

FIRST PRINCIPLE: Regularity and Consistency
The first principle of dietary hygiene is to respect our body’s need for regularity and consistency in our dietary habits. Regularity is a basic body need: regularity of exercise and rest, work and leisure, sleep and wakefulness, digestion and assimilation, absorption and elimination, and so on. The body needs to know when it is going to be fed, not only to prepare for digestion and assimilation, but also to feel safe and comfortable. Knowing when the next meal is and what it might consist of brings a sense of peace and comfort to our inner mind. If we don’t eat at regular times, we are sending the inner message that food is not available on a regular basis. There is nothing more stressful for our body than to be hungry. This message will trigger the stress response, flooding our system with stress hormones and stimulating the body to save energy for the future instead of having it available now, causing us to get fat and tired.

The net result of having meals on a regular schedule every day will be to differentiate between appetite and cravings. All it takes is three days: If for three days in a row we can have our meals at the same time and take the time for them, sitting down and chewing our food, the fourth day we will be hungry only at meal time and we will feel an appetite for very specific foods. The big problem is habit and lifestyle: working with scheduling, then with food preparation. No one can change in a snap. For this reason having regular meals for three days in a row might take weeks and months! It will become possible only when felt as a need as opposed to a chore. But it doesn’t matter how long it takes. Let’s take our time but get started now! The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get there.

SECOND PRINCIPLE: Mindfulness to Promote Discernment
The second principle of dietary hygiene is mindfulness: avoiding being distracted from our meals. This means enjoying them and letting discernment rise in ourselves, paying attention to the combination of tastes and how food feels in our bodies, giving constant attention to our sense of satisfaction and absolute comfort. Mindfulness involves making sure that nothing will disturb the enjoyment of our meal: no upsetting news, no anger or anxiety. If we do feel upset, it is important to use our mind to change the subject, to give ourselves a break while eating. We have to be our own internal waitperson. Even if our food is prepared and served by someone else, no one can digest it for us. We have to cultivate in ourselves the skills of the most attentive and compassionate inner waiter.

In France, as in Japan, where by tradition, everyone is very conscious of the quality of a meal and its impact on health, it is absolutely bad taste to talk about work during meals, especially business lunches. Business is for after meals, while having coffee or tea. Many unsuspecting Americans have lost business deals in these countries because of “bad table manners.”

If we are busy and distracted while eating, we are sending the inner message that we don’t really care, that what we are busy with is more important than our own health and well being. Imagine how we feel internally to be less important than some insipid TV melodrama, the news, the president’s sex life or a business deal. If we are healthy nothing will prevent us from tasting the food and being aware if there is anything wrong with it and how much we feel like eating of it. Healthy people don’t let themselves be distracted from attention to meals. A sign of poor health is a lack of interest and attention to oneself. I am not saying that we should be obsessed with ourselves but that we deserve more attention and care than we usually give ourselves.

Discernment is also needed to know when we have had enough to eat. The only way to know is to pay attention to our sense of satisfaction. If we obey our appetite and have the kind of food we need, prepared and cooked the way we want, the next step is to pay attention to when we feel satisfied and stop eating right there and then. I know we have all heard the stories about starving children in the world and that wasting food is bad. Well, there is refrigeration, and at worst there is compost. But one more bite might be enough to overload our system and cause a stress response. Blood sugar will drop because of insulin, and all of a sudden appetite turns into craving and the sense of comfort and satisfaction disappears.

Furthermore, taste is as much, if not more, important for health than the quality and quantity of food. The quality of food is important to bring the right kind of nutrition to our bodies, but taste nourishes the spirit. If the taste is not right, no matter the quality or quantity of the food at this point, the spirit will suffer, and this will be readily translated into emotional distress and trigger our stress response with its stress hormones that will prevent proper digestion and full benefit of the food.

The use of spices in food has no purpose but to enhance the nourishing value of food and make it healing. All spices have a healing quality, including salt (sea salt, of course, which is lower in sodium and richer in other minerals, including iodine, than plain table salt, which I consider poison). Most spices are either antiparasitic, disinfectant or stimulate the secretion of digestive juices and production of digestive enzymes without which the meal would be too heavy to digest. In addition, they add the last touch to individualize the taste of food for our particular inner and external conditions, such as excess or deficiency, seasons and weather. Taste is the origin of the use of medicinal herbs and healing oils. In Traditional Chinese Medicine emphasis is given in cooking according to the five tastes that correspond to the five forces of nature that constitute our existence and are responsible for giving us life and health.

THIRD PRINCIPLE: Proper Food Combination (food as our best prescription drug)
The third principle of dietary hygiene concerns food combination and applies only to people that are not yet to the point of being able to discern the right composition of their meals according to taste. Unfortunately, not knowing what is good for us is becoming a condition of epidemic proportions. Healthy people don’t need any rules but their own, and they will most likely follow the same precepts as do most healthy people around the world. Their pancreas delivers a balanced amount of both insulin and glucagon, and therefore, they can eat the way they want. If we are not in that lucky group, we probably don’t really know what we want until the last minute, and then all we want is to eat something, anything, as a result of a stress response. Most of us are hypoglycemic or diabetic, and until these conditions are resolved, we can never have a healthy appetite but instead will be controlled by these imbalances.

All interactions are part of an energetic system that either gives energy or takes it away. Some things give you a little bit of energy then drain it and more away.

In order to transform a situation where you are dependent on that little rush of energy which is then taken away later, you could try gradually reducing the negative addiction (such as smoking), and increasing the positive one (such as qigong). Eventually you will reach a balance point where one aspect shifts over to the other.

It is important to remember this is a process in a state of constant change that may take a while, and that it requires your WILL to happen.

Another thing you could do is alter the circumstances that you normally depend on to smoke; if you drink coffee or alcohol with cigarettes, then change to tea or something else. Or you could go camping for a few weeks where there are no cigarettes, or whatever, you get the idea.

Also an inner smile to your lung spirit, seeing it transform from lead into gold wouldn’t hurt 🙂

1. change your crowd
first time i quit was with complete change of society
(finished primary school, then moved to seceondary school and changed location from city for a rural small city)
-remembered few years afterwards that i did not start smoking in secondary, but primary school

2. enjoy the craving and allign with personal virtues
it is impossible to not crave
a smoker has direct access to it
ingrained in his body

thus you cannot get rid of it
of the energy
but yielding to impulse has its consequences

example
i enjoy the smoking and enjoy health
i find it perverse having to have regular bronchitis just to smoke
so i smoked for like six months just one cigarette per day, searching for the best one
result would vary, sometimes the effect were good, sometimes it was a flap
and i realized that
the truth of smoking is that the best cigarette is the one that i did not have yet
so in truth i enjoy the craving and health
so i stopped the struggle, grounded and still enjoy both
(similar goes for other substances, like chocolate or gambling).

In fusion terms regular smoker has crystalized some energy of smoking. Such an act connects such (the smoking) pearl with center. But it takes responsibility, hence earth center.

I read in a book somewhere that when the body is filled with Qi, one feels a general feeling of wellbeing and has no addiction.

I once did a 1 month non-sex, non-ejaculation, non-masturbation, + practise deep breathing everyday. After about 3 – 4 weeks, my body felt so alive and vibrant, that I felt no neediness anymore. There was a sense of peace. Most strangely, there was a feeling of joy from within, a tingling feeling. Also the feeling was so good that I felt like ‘something good is going to happen”.