Pathology Doesn’t Determine Behavior – Chronic Emptiness Does

'And yet we judge the drug addict because we actually see that they are just like us and we don’t like that.'
So we say, 'You are different from us, you are worse than we are'
—Gabor Maté

The cost is never too high to get another fix of our life saving supply. Addicts know that they’re putting their life on the line every time they say yes to their substance of choice. In the poorly wired circuits of our brain, the temporary relief is worth it all. Death has nothing on us – how could a pain free existence be more frightening than this life full of pain we’ve been dealt? Addiction may be running and ruining our lives – but the real offender isn’t the substance or the activity we seek solace in. The real offender can come in different shapes and sizes, but he always has the same common denominator – Pain.

His name is childhood trauma, sexual assault, neglect, abandonment, abuse, emotional deprivation. Ironically, the blame always gets placed on the addict. Never on the environment that has everything to do with the likelihood of one becoming an addict. It’s so much easier to blame the one that manifests the visible symptoms of a problem, than the one who put into place every condition for that problem to arise. The cruel parents, the rapist, the abuser, society – you name it – they’re getting a free pass while they’re the ones who inflicted irreparable damage. No matter which way you slice it, life is no Nintendo game (thanks Eminem) – and your brain won’t get another shot at playing differently your childhood game. Re regulating an emotionally dysregulated brain is the work of a lifetime – and often times it takes away your life in the process of saving itself.

We fill our belly till it explodes to make up for a lifetime of never having tasted the most nutritious food there is – Love. We’ll work ourselves to our deathbed because maybe that will compensate for a lifetime of feeling inadequate and useless. We fill our lungs with poison to escape from the poisonous feels of society. Videogames is our way of experiencing the closest we’ll ever get to feel what it feels like to play – the one thing that got taken from us during our childhood. . Sex is the only way through which we feel some form of connection, better to feel that we matter – even if it’s in a purely mechanical way, than feel like we don’t matter at all.

We seek to feel,

We seek to not feel,

We seek to forget,

We seek to escape,

but most of all,

We seek to fill a void that can’t ever be filled.