Addiction, cravings and MD: what they are and where they come from

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Put simply, MD is a problem of expression. Psychological addiction is a problem of expression. What is not expressed as raw feelings becomes distorted and expressed as cravings. Addiction is a compensation born out of powerlessness to directly express what one wants or feels. If there is a particular desire in the unconscious layers of the mind that screams to be released but that somehow does not make it to the surface where it can be consciously articulated, it turns into a craving. What we see as insatiable hunger for fantasy on the surface is just trails of smoke of a raging, intelligible fire burning somewhere below. If you want to communicate something important but have no mouth to speak or express it otherwise in a direct, conscious way, this burning need to communicate will refract once its hits the surface of conscious awareness and turn into a craving. The moment you learn to express it consciously, the craving disappears.

Cravings on the surface appear to be automatic, purely instinctual, yet when you dig in a bit deeper, they are driven by an actual logic and are more than just a chemically messed up mechanical response in the brain. They arise when you cannot communicate a particular emotion through your ego. Your unexpressed anger or desire to speak up or express something you consider important is what creates the urge to engage in addictive behavior. Instead of expressing feelings as they really are, this energy is misdirected, misinterpreted and becomes a craving.

It is not normal for human mind to live in an emotional isolation, without being able to receive positive input from real life as if we had a veil over the eyes preventing us to register whatever comes from the outer world. When the brain is caught in isolation, in a state where it cannot communicate with external reality, it will create its own. We know from neuroscience that when brain receives no sensory stimuli from real world, it automatically starts conjuring up internal visual images and hallucinations to compensate for that silence and this is a natural, automatic response everyone experiences when deprived of external sensory input. Brain needs constant input, inner or outer. If you isolate a person in one of those anechoic chambers that block all outside noise and create an absolute silence, the person eventually starts hearing sounds of their own body otherwise not hearable because brain, unless you are doing advanced meditation, cannot stay in perfect silence. When the outer world is silenced, the inner world goes wild.

Isn’t the similar mechanism at work when dealing with lack of emotional stimulation? If you dig deeper in the neuroscience of extreme physical and social isolation, it is not uncommon to find reports of mentally healthy people who sense a comforting imaginary presence, almost like an inner companion when put in extreme isolation. An actual hallucinogenic, soothing presence to compensate for the unbearable silence of the world. This is not a psychosis, this is merely the brain keeping the mind sane. When the outer world is silenced, the inner world goes wild.

Severe MD is triggered when one becomes emotionally isolated and estranged from parts of oneself, automatically leading the person to become estranged from everything normally perceived through that blocked part of the self, including reality. There are things happening in real life but they don’t reach us. Fantasy appears as a response to that emotional isolation, to give one emotional feedback from the inside that outer world fails to provide from the outside. It is the same feedback loop at work: when the outer world is silenced, the inner world goes wild. Have you ever thought how ridiculously cut off and alienated from real world one has to feel to subconsciously start inventing imaginary relationships when real people are all around? There is obviously no sensory deprivation going on here that would explain the prevalence of inner world over external one, which can make us conclude that intense MD can really only be a consequence of an emotional isolation.

I strongly believe that both MD as an addiction and losing responsiveness to reality are merely symptoms of the emotional isolation. But what brought on the isolation in the first place?

Carl Jung wrote: “Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.” And indeed, if one cannot communicate the pivotal values of his inner self necessary for healthy emotional functioning, if one can’t have them flow into the outer world, the inner world turns into a prison from which you are allowed to leave but your emotions are not. The external world in turn appears hollow and hostile. You can visit it, but stripped of emotions you left in the inner world. Then you make a common mistake: you mistake reality for hollow when it is you who is an empty shell with feelings detached and left forgotten in some other place.

If this is indeed the case, recovery should be focused on breaking down that emotional isolation by identifying and then relearning how to directly express those vague feelings you express indirectly through fantasy. It is hunger for these feelings that fuels fantasies and prompts the addictive cravings. It is obsession with these feelings that prevents you to focus on reality. This is why one unconsciously calls forth MD in the first place – to provide a temporary and indirect touch with detached feelings that one is having difficulty expressing consciously.

If it could be said in one sentence why MD happens, it is because you are holding yourself back. For a daydreamer whose automatic response is to repress and keep all ruminations turned inward, trying to express feelings directly, which are often bewildering even to us, can seem like a shock to our entire being, awkward and strange, initially resulting in more confusion than clarity. You force yourself to express something and then feel silly and embarrassed for days to come. It’s a messy and ridiculously baffling process. Even depressing. But it is the necessary price for restoring a healthy emotional expression.

Let go of having to be in control of your feelings, let go of thinking everything over and most importantly, let go of holding back and try to release emotions. Hunt down what your fantasies are allowing you to feel and whatever it is that you are trying to express, try to express it outwardly, even when you can’t pinpoint what exactly you even want to articulate. You probably won’t even succeed immediately but every attempt to redirect energy from inner to outer world is a beginning of something. As long as you feel that you are hiding a part of yourself, or that there is something unsaid, you are feeding MD.

Part III: Return to Reality

It’s strange and terrifying to think about return when you’ve been gone for so long. It’s strange because many of us ultimately don’t know where we should be returning to. Is it even a return? What are we leaving behind? If the dream world feels like home somewhere at the back of your mind, then is reality where you should really be?

It’s inherent for a dreamer to despise reality because it threatens the only place where you can exist and therefore your existence altogether. Saying reality can never measure up to the daydreams is understandable from your position, but it’s a very ambiguous statement, dangerously inaccurate too. You know that daydreams feel wonderful because you exist in them, you’ve seen it all, you’ve felt it, you’ve been there and you can attest to just how beautiful and emotionally fulfilling they can be, right? But when you say reality is terrible, are you actually there? No. Do you feel like you genuinely exist in it? No.

This is why you are wrong.

Reality can’t measure up to your daydreams only because you are not here. How can you say reality is ugly when your eyes are shut so you can’t even see it in full bloom? What gives you right to say it’s dull when you don’t even exist in it? Yes, reality can be just as exciting, just as thrilling and mind-blowing and emotionally fulfilling as your daydreams. Don’t use the excuse that it will never compare to the life inside your head. It’s your perception that’s flawed, not the world. Every time you stop daydreaming and try shifting your focus from fantasies to the outer world, you come to a conclusion that not only reality happens to be dull and disappointing for you but outright suffocating. This happens because your entire system is depressed. And thoughts of depressed people are always turned inwards, preventing them to be here, to live in the moment, regardless of how intensely hard they attempt to shift their focus. If you aren’t turning your attention inwards to daydream, you’re turning it inwards to ruminate about how fucked up and miserable everything is. As long as your thoughts are turned inwards, you’re not here. And as long as you’re not here, reality will continue to be terrible for you.

Do you know why you daydream? Because you desperately try to exist somewhere, anywhere, as long as you can exist. Because when you aren’t daydreaming, you are nowhere. And this nowhere you call cruel reality, which you’re catapulted into every time you abandon daydreams, isn’t reality. It’s nowhere. Don’t mistake things.

Returning to reality means returning to yourself.

It doesn’t mean giving up what’s in your daydreams and it doesn’t mean forcing yourself to focus on the outside world and pretend you are what you’re not. It means rebuilding your sense of self until it’s solid enough for you to exist inside your own body instead of existing in dream world and nowhere at once. It means rebuilding the sensors which let you experience positive emotions on your own skin in place of having to depend on and live off emotions of your characters. This new self that will be reborn and that you’ll ultimately be returning to as you return to reality is made up of the same self that expresses itself in your daydreams which means that by giving up daydreaming, you’re only giving up the habit that consumes countless hours, nothing else. As I wrote in the previous post, those feelings of life making sense, of purpose and love and passion and spontaneity of emotions experienced in daydreams, they’ll remain yours. This is the thought you have to remember during your entire recovery. You’re not giving anything up. Your most precious daydreams are you.

There is no such thing as finding a balance between fantasies and reality because if you do so, you will always be split, moving from one place to another and never dedicating yourself wholly to either side. And this is not fair. It’s not fair towards people in your real life and it’s not fair towards yourself. You have to go for all or nothing. When you do go for all or nothing, you can have both. When you genuinely let go of your attachments and daydreams in order to experience and process underlying pain that must be felt for you to stand up and rebuild yourself, they’ll come back to you.