Opinion | From addiction to positive addiction

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.” One is Evil—it is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

“The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

The term ‘Positive Addiction’ to most of us is an oxymoron, isn’t it? It appears to make up a sense of an illogic which is hard to comprehend. This is mainly because the word addiction has such hard-wired and powerful associations to what we have seen, heard, and felt. The only ‘positive’ that we can associate to addicts is their single-minded pursuit for their choice of one’s ‘fix’; and towards which they gravitate by hook or by crook with an astonishing ekagrahta or unparalleled focus.

Let us look at what these words connote—positive deals with all that is good, bright, and wholesome—an expansiveness that reaches from us towards others. It is a movement from the center; to enlarge and envelop an ever-expanding circumference of sentient beings spreading love, caring, comfort, and bodhicitta with its special qualities of friendliness, joy, compassion, and equanimity.

Addiction on the other hand forebodingly conveys a condition of low resolution, dullness, foreboding hues - an ever-contracting selfish state of being parasitically feeding into one’s own entails, moving out toward others once in a while only to satisfy one’s intense cravings to scrounge off others; to devour both others and ultimately in a heroically tragic manner, oneself! The qualities that addiction festers are quite the opposite of bodhicitta and instead of love and caring for others there is more of self-love and selfishness arising from heightened ego state. These are frequently manifested destructively either in aggressive or suppressive forms of behavior. It is but natural then that when we think of an addict or addiction alarm bells are set off and we want to step aside from an addict’s trajectory.

However, in recent years there has been a special space carved out in psychology—under the realm of positive psychology—that attempts at enshrining the positive aspects of addiction. We certainly come across lots of planted stories by big businesses that extol the virtues of workaholics and how it leads to ‘longer, healthier, and happier’ lives but those are not the factitious Machiavellian kind of research that we wish to dwell on here.

The expression ‘positive addiction’ was made popular by the psychologist William Glasser. Essentially what we need to understand is that while addiction to drugs, alcohol, food, smoking, etc. are actually instances of powerful motivation, they erode our moral strength and values, and suffocate flow and creativity. This holds us back from doing our best.

With gross addiction, which after initially catapulting us to vigorous oomphs and aahaa’s of rajasic energy phases, we find ourselves into toxic tamasic dumps, often unable to pull ourselves out of there, even to perform simple day to day chores.

Unlike gross addiction, Glasser believed there were ‘other forms’ of wholesome and enriching addictive activities that give us strength, such as jogging, meditating, writing a diary, exercising, and relaxing. These, he categorized as positive addictions. We often hear people we know complaining how uneasy they are because they did not have their morning walk or skipped their yoga class.  These people, who hanker for their daily game of tennis, or feel very uneasy unless they have their daily ‘legitimate’ walk or jog, will understand what is meant by positive addiction.

Let’s look at some of the main differentiators between positive addiction and addiction. While positive addiction is a self-actualizing phenomenon (remember Maslow?) and invokes a higher spiritual pursuit and intent, addiction is more of an animal need in us. With addiction, the user is obsessively holding on to the thought of the next fix the whole day.

With positive addiction you only think of it once or twice in a day; and after you have performed the activity (such as meditating or jogging), you forget about it until the next day. You get uneasy if you miss your activity whereas with addiction there is continuous obsessive hankering about the ‘fix’; one neither has space nor time for other interests or pursuits. The withdrawal symptoms too are acute, severe and could be fatal sometimes.

However, the most important divergence between them is that positive addiction enhances physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual quality of our life while addiction debilitates and affects our whole being negatively. Positive addiction leads to a healthier and longer life span.

This clearly explains that positive addiction stems from and strengthens our innate self-esteem; while addiction arises from giving up on our dharma or duties or responsibilities. While looking for immediate satisfaction and pleasure to offset real-time failure or disappointment in life, the addict is unable to delay gratification and slips into an abysmal quagmire of harmful addiction. Along with self-esteem two other factors that are deficient in an addict are resilience and hope.

The real tragedy of addiction is the hole that is dug into by the addict, bereft of possibilities—this snatches away the ability from the person to make choices. For the addict, the world exists in black and white. A life in which there is only addiction is a life with no other life! It results in loneliness and isolation from others. 

If you are in a good mood to celebrate, you reach out for your addiction, if you are sad, you reach out for it. If it’s a manner of having fun, or relaxing, or an intellectual-stimuli, or venting out of anger or depression—whatever it is, it prefers to be ‘self-medicated’ with the ‘substance’ of one’s external dependence.

On the other hand, positive addiction allows one a lot of space for possibility thinking and many choices of what we want to do with our lives. On Monday I can choose to read a book, on Tuesday I can paint, on Wednesday I can be playing golf, Thursday I spend a quiet evening, and on Friday I can even go to the pub and chill out with friends…and so on. Life is then vibrant with rich pastels of baroque colors and the in-between shades and hues. One can manifest oneself with an abundant repertoire of thoughts, emotion, and actions. A person with possibility thinking and with a choice of creative abundance dances fearlessly between the innocence of the Fool (zero) and richness of the Magi (infinity).

Today the tendency of gross materialism and a sensate lifestyle takes us far away from our natural curiosity to conjure and manifest unique expressions of possibilities. Isn’t it important, therefore, for each one of us to introspect how much of a choice-making ability we cultivate and how much space for practicing the art of possibility we allow and create in our lives? As the old Cherokee asks, which wolf would we choose?

The author heads Upaaya—a Contemplation and Research Collaborative at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art Design and Technology, Bangalore