Addiction & Emotion Volume 1 & 2
Addiction & Emotion Volume 1:
When Escaping Feelings Becomes A Way Of Life
This volume is educational and thought-provoking and is intended for professionals, practitioners, and industry experts interested in the philosophical foundation for Volume 2. The second volume is a self-discovery manual for anyone interested in better understanding addiction and the possibilities of transformational recovery. To receive a free excerpt of Addiction & Emotion Volume 1, just fill out the form below and our partners at TruthMap will email you.
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Addiction is a complex, widespread, and persistent problem and there’s a lot to say about it. It has produced an enormous amount of human suffering. And what’s particularly irksome is that this appears to be largely unnecessary and preventable. We should be able to stop it, or so we tend to think. If you say addiction lies in the physical world, then Dr. Michael Lukens says recovery lies (predominantly) in the metaphysical world, in the person’s own meaningful world, where the mind lives.
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We’re never going to win the war on addiction by understanding the physical properties of the substances or the chemical soup inside the brain alone. In addition to defining addiction as a health and behavioral problem, Dr. Lukens also considers addiction to be a philosophical issue, suggesting we should examine what it means to value our ability to escape.
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The two primary sources of human emotional suffering are Grief/Loss and Self-Esteem Damage. These ideas are developed in Dr. Lukens’s illustration of the “Fuckit Bucket” — The pain of the world (Grief/Loss) brings up Anger and Sadness, whereas the struggle with self (Self-Esteem) brings up Shame and Guilt. When escaping your feelings becomes a way of life, it’s because you are committed to turning off these important notifications (what he calls ‘feeling states’) that signal potentially painful information.
Addiction & Emotion Volume 2:
Outgrowing Escapism, The Real Possibility of Transformational Recovery
This volume is intended to be used as a self-discovery manual and is practically applicable across a spectrum of escapist forms and tendencies. You don’t have to be an “addict” to find value in Dr. Lukens’s insights. People who are interested in the philosophy of how emotions and addiction correlate are encouraged to read the first volume, as well. To receive a free excerpt of Addiction & Emotion Volume 2, just fill out the form below and our partners at TruthMap will email you.
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The escapist paradox: how do you escape escapism? The answer is, you don’t. Or to be more precise, it’s rare that someone manages to do it. The instinct to escape is pervasive and natural in the animal kingdom. This law of nature applies to all human beings, not just addicts. We are all escaping far more than we realize. Some people are so committed to escaping pain, that they’re willing to forgo any attempts to make a real life worth living. That’s when it seems to “make sense” to “do” the addiction - when morale is so low that “who cares?” becomes the general sentiment toward life and living.
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Escape takes many forms, but the level of severity is arbitrary if the intention to escape is totally blocking your interest in finding your own profound meaning in life. Instead of finding what’s profound, addicts will double down on their acting out, trying to “milk” the profane as a substitute. The addicted person really needs to stop needing to escape.
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In this book, Dr. Michael Lukens advocates for escapists of all shapes and sizes to find a way to say YES to the painful parts of their own reality, which is what makes transformational recovery possible. A full and permanent recovery happens organically for recovering addicts, as the side effect of deliberately or unintentionally surmounting the need to escape pain. This happens when they find a way to deal forthrightly with their emotional truths and doing the work to heal their wounds.