Pain and Addiction

This post comes at a strange transitional time in my life, and I've had in mind to share it for quite some time. It's not a pleasant subject and it's quite personal, yet I don't think I've ever shared something here that wasn't deeply personal and close to my heart. Sharing this with you won't be any different. 

In recent years, I've had some very thought provoking, harsh and difficult interactions with addicts and recovering addicts, and it forced me to take a serious look into addiction and my connection to it. As I write this, I'm reminded of something a recovering addict told me a few years ago. We are all  addicts. We are all susceptible to addiction of one kind or another, it doesn't have to be to a substance or something tangible. It is like almost any habit, a means to an end, a feeling created, an escape, a masking of something much deeper than what we allow ourselves to realize. 


"We are all addicts." 

A random internet search on addiction and its meaning, reveals so many different addictions and their manifestation: drugs, alcohol, gaming, sex, porn, internet, food, sugar, pills, the list goes on. Some are more prevalent than others; some are accepted  and some are seen as a joke. Yet all addictions are part of our daily existence. This need to find an escape,  tune out, tap into assisted feelings of euphoria and bliss, remove the noise of every day life or simply numb ourselves, it's something deeply rooted into the human psyche. 

I recently met a gentleman who I came to very much care for. A talented, smart, funny, and ---in my eyes-- amazing human being. A man whose addictions were much too powerful and destructive for me to handle. As hard as I tried to convince myself that I would be able to stay, endure, help, heal and listen, I was powerless, and meaningless next to those addictions and obsessions. In turn his addictions made me take a serious look at my own habits and harmful patters, my fixation to certain personalities and certain types of behavior, where they were stemming from and how they came up to the surface. After seeing yet again what addictions can do to the people we care about and also to ourselves, I realized I was also an addict, and in order to get clean I needed to face my own addictions and destructive patterns head on. 

"I have an unhealthy attachment to pain and suffering and broken people... the Mother Teresa Syndrome in full effect."

The realization came when I saw clearly that I have an unhealthy attachment to pain and suffering and broken people, --users and abusers--. Those who you want and feel compelled to save from themselves, yet somehow you get caught up in and pulled into their pain and suffering without realizing it. I keep searching and finding those individuals, who for one reason or another I feel the need to help, nurture, nurse and mother. And like any fixation it has become a way of life, the Mother Teresa Syndrome in full effect. 

Hello my name is Eleana and I'm addicted to pain and suffering.


We all reach a point in our lives when we realize that the way we've chosen to see life, isn't working for us, its hurting us and the people around us. Yet we are drawn again and again to that way of life. Despite efforts to "get clean", we are attracted like moths to a flame, closer and closer the source of our addiction. I have been this way for as long as I can remember. 

I chose this path a long time ago. I wanted to be a savior, a caretaker a nurse, anything to prove I can help others, and be useful. This has happened so many times I wondered where it came from. Why am I drawn to people who are seemingly not whole, content or self sufficient? Is this a need I have to fulfill? The answer would only be clear to me if I took the time to look deeply into my subconscious.

"We are either drawn to or repelled by our negative experiences, and sometimes, no matter how hard we try to avoid them, they come back again to haunt us."

In the yoga tradition, sensory stimuli and events that leave impressions or scars on our subconscious are called Samskaras. Some memories or sense patterns are positive and some are negative. Once the event creates an impression it immediately goes into our subconscious as an experience never to be forgotten even if it never occurs again. The negative Samskaras are like a bad experience that always triggers a bad reaction or feeling, sometimes allowing for damaging patterns to persist. Its like a smell, a taste, an event, that brings back a memory. That memory is like a scar etched in our minds, brought up again and again by the same trigger. 

As humans we are either drawn to or repelled by our negative experiences, and sometimes no matter how hard we try to avoid them, they come back again to haunt us, prolonging our suffering. The attachment to these patterns and their effect, is one that must be broken in order to find happiness and liberation from suffering. 

As a yoga student and instructor, I'm very interested on how these patters, and memories, affect our bodies as well as our minds. With that in mind, I recently attended a lecture on anatomy and yoga, with a wonderful teacher who I greatly admire. His lecture analyzed how repetitive damaging movements can eventually lead to irreversible physical injury. It's no different than a damaging habit or addiction. 

"Breaking these patterns and habits takes twice the effort as continuing on with them."

Over a prolonged period of time, habits and addictions no matter how seemingly harmless, at some point will hurt or injure, causing pain and suffering in a never ending cycle. However, breaking these patterns and habits takes twice the effort as continuing on with them. Making the time to observe them, and taking steps to prevent them from happening, and maintaining that effort is sometimes a lifelong journey. It's a process of rewiring the brain to work differently; it's as complicated as learning how to walk again after a car accident. Like any addiction that has become a way of life, we have to change our  whole outlook, in order to rid ourselves of it, replacing a negative habit with an equally positive one in order to re establish balance. 

"However traumatic the wounds of the past, we can only heal them by replacing them with a healthy experience in the present."

The negative samskaras are deep sensory impressions, sometimes ones we've been acquiring since birth, and they can only be transformed into positive experiences when we face them and allow them to be replaced by positive impressions. However traumatic the wounds of the past, we can only heal them by replacing them with a healthy experience in the present, the way scar tissue can heal a physical wound, changed, but ultimately stronger. 

Many of these addictions or habits that we rely on, are there to dismiss the deeper negative samskaras and mind impressions, providing a path of avoidance and ultimately escape. I realized through my own path of habitual escapism, that addiction and habits have the sole purpose of masking our relationship with our samskaras, those that are too painful and too harsh to face, and will ultimately always come up to haunt us. 

We resort to masking, covering up and tuning out the memories by tuning out ourselves. So in facing my negative samskaras, I had to recognize and admit my own methods of tuning out at times when the memories were too harsh to face. This became even more clear to me as I observed this otherwise wonderful, exceptional man drink himself to a stupor time after time, and I wondered what deeply rooted samskaras were causing him to suffer so greatly. Death, neglect, abuse, disappointment all wrapped into one, buried deep into the conscious and subconscious mind. 

"We are only as good as our resolve to make positive and meaningful connections with ourselves and those around us."

Living in New York is at times a relentless and cruel existence, it brings out the best and worst in people. But one thing it absolutely does is expose you to your lesser self, your demons and your shortcomings. My deepest fears, my most deeply hidden samskaras came up to the surface again and again during my first year here, and they still do. 

New York also became my toughest teacher. She doesn't hold your hand or keep you in a comfort zone, she pushes you to the edge, exposed and unprotected out there with all your faults, failures and insecurities and forces you to face them head on.  After many failures and successes we only have ourselves to look at, or else we will be lost in an endless cycle of exaltation and destruction. 

All these thoughts and personal experiences bring forth a realization that: we are only as good as our resolve to make positive and meaningful connections with ourselves and those around us. We are only as good as our commitment to evolve, and to care for and support one another. That being said my biggest hope, after all this time, is that the person who inspired this blog post, and who I do still very much care about, will reach this same realization, and will start to make positive changes in his life too.

I shall close this post and leave you with a quote for the Baghavad Gita.

"Even if the most sinful worships Me with undivided heart, he too must be deemed righteous, for he has rightly resolved."