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Addicted?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Some of us are addicted to the samsara/devil we know …
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/aug/22/how-digital-media-turned-us-all-into-dopamine-addicts-and-what-we-can-do-to-break-the-cycle
Personally my dopamine fixes come from:
- Meditation, yoga, chanting [good lobster]
- News, newbuddhist posting, being outraged by political incompetence [just to mention a few]
My name is lobster and I am a dopamine addict. 🧎🏼💉🍫🦞
You?
6
Comments
Coffee, sex and over sharing are my addictions!
Little creature comforts such as Dharma practice...Oh and Whittaker's chocolate...
This forum, dot painting, canal boat painting and MahJong on my phone! So addicted! I barely have time for all the cannabis I'm growing...!
And then to know that they give most schizofrenics dopamine suppressors… I’m addicted to comfort.
Definitively that devil plant known as marijuana....
.....Maaaaaaaaaary Jaaaaaaaaaane.....
sings
I played the beta version of diablo 2 resurrected and had fun but it is the sort of game where you'll like "ill just play to this next spot" and then by that time there's the next carrot to keep playing to reach. I was playful though and enjoyed it. You make a lot of decisions in that game about what to do with your gear and what to sell back to the merchant etc. Many decisions and I think dopamine is involved but not in the sense of euphoria. The beta was only available this weekend.
I guess what I'm really addicted to is happiness and the pursuit of happiness ....
Ah ha @Shoshin1 is a sukkha sucker. Seems like a plan.
Now eating sugar free chocolate. I think chocolate releases serotonin and is a superfood? ❤️🩹 Drinking decaf coffee. Baby steps. 👣
I think being kind is a beneficial karmic addiction. So in a sense [warning: perception shift] some addictions are helpful?
For example hedonism (usual ego feeding) bad, sukkha deployment good addiction practice … Have I convinced myself?
I figure addiction is still just having a crooked axle but instead of a cart you are driving a muscle car at top speed.
I had believed that thinking was my first and greatest addiction.
Like all beliefs, it didn't last. So I went and found a new and improved belief...whew, I was starting to detox for a moment there...
Now, I'm going with the experience of no-thought. I was doing so good till I thought that up...
You're right @yagr ....
Thinking is addictive...once the thought seed was planted, it became almost impossible to stop it growing,
Interestingly, one (the psycho-physical phenomenon call the self) might think It is doing the thinking, however thought itself is doing the thinking and the self just goes along for the ride...
Until that is, Non-thinking arrives on the scene and what non-thinking means is the clinging sense of self no longer is attached to thought, in other words thoughts continue to flow and as we all know/have experienced, the sense of self does not always cling to each passing thought, which means we don't have to take 'any' thoughts as gospel/seriously...thoughts can just be acknowledged (awareness becoming more aware of them) because this is what they want 'acknowledgement', after which awareness drops them like a hot potato and they will go on their merry way...dissolve back into the energy pool from which they came...
Well this is what "I" think happens....So
Or for that matter.... what "I" think.....
I don't drink, well hardly ever. Neither of my parents drank. So it is no hardship. No virtue.
There is no shame in predictive/addictive behaviour, unless that is your looping. We can break many of our leanings.
So we are all programmed to repeat patterns. Dharma practice breaks bonds …
Whoa... I seem to recall some sort of lecture from somebody around here about cannabis some time ago... Change the only constant, indeed!
I suspect she may be kidding...
I'm leaning that way myself but she has gotten into Wim Hof lately so...
My best friend turned 50 last week and a couple of us went over to see him. His parents were there and we reminisced about the past where they would get riled up if we were high and now they drink it for tea.
I smoked a lot of weed myself in my young days but it started to exacerbate my anxiety so I gave it away...
Who to ?
>
...kind of feels related to...
If I eat when I am hungry - this is wisdom.
If I eat when I think I am hungry - this is folly.
Why do I believe my thoughts?
An interesting way for a meditator to reverse engineer an addiction is..
The next time you are touched by anything you consider to be an addiction, give all your sense gates a quick scan to see which sense gate is now dominating and which ones are being obscured. Now give as much attention to those sense gates that were being obscured as the dominating sense gate was receiving.
When doing this, addictions lose much of their power to unbalance us.
It can give an interesting answer on what an addiction might actually be.
Good question.
Why do we believe our emotions, gut feelings, fears, certainties, intuition or those of others?
I think we need to trust those with a track record of wisdom, impartiality, kindness to the widest range of the needy (me being very needy) etc.
It is why I do not listen to politicians (professional liars), salesmen, sham religious hi-jackers etc. but value the enlightened, experts and genuine servants of humanity …
I haz plan!
My thoughts, when faced with a dilemma, are two-fold:
"What's the WORST that can happen?"
and often, the question "what if" is rhetorical. Answer the 'what if'.
Because that's the worst that can happen.
It seems to me that our thoughts reward us for believing in them. You get a little buzz, a little dopamine high from certain thoughts, and also other sensations, such as surprise or pleasure.
Because they are charming ....and we more often than not succumb to their charming nature...They can be very convincing/persuasive in getting the sense of self to believe that what they are saying is true...
The mind often becomes charmed by its own thoughts...so......
This sense of self can be quite gullible at times....
Which reminds me of this saying....
"Tell it to the marines ....because the sailors won't believe you"
It’s definitely possible to become addicted to spiritual experiences. Adyashanti wrote about it in his Satsang diary Emptiness Dancing, where he said that pretty much all spiritual seekers who had regular experiences constructed some form of framework where they would try to stay ‘in the high’, whereas in fact this pattern of having an experience and coming down was a limiting factor on their freedom.
Shortcuts, others doing the work for me, fixing others, recognition, marijuana, deep focus, realization, and understanding my charming thoughts as they reward me for playing along.
More recently, consuming Buddhist teachings like a candy and likely discarding much of the message like the wrapper.
How does one practice living in harmony with addiction when the addiction includes the knowledge and practice itself?
Best not to conflate harmony & addiction.
Harmony is accepting where you are.
It offers freedom.
Addiction is having something dictate how you are lacking. It is imprisonment.
Harmony points the way towards suffering's cessation,
where
addictions obscure the way from such possibilities.
The 4NT & the 8FP say it better.
Hmm good advice. Harmony is found in a relaxed state, addiction is a compulsive grasping.