The Never ‘Enough-ness’ of Addiction

By: Dr. Denise Renye

For people who haven’t had the lived experience of addiction themselves or don’t have addictive tendencies, it may be difficult to understand how addiction directly feels and plays out. Dr. Gabor Maté gives us a horridly beautiful picture of it in his book In the Realm of the Hungry Ghost. While Maté may have popularized hungry ghosts for modern audiences, the concept is ancient in origin. In fact, there are Hungry Ghost Festivals in certain parts of Asia to assist with ancestral healing. These have been ongoing since the 7th century.

Hungry ghosts are demon-like creatures described in Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Sikh, and Jain texts as the remnants of the dead who are afflicted with insatiable desire, hunger, or thirst. They experience the affliction as a result of bad deeds or evil intent carried out in their lifetimes. Hungry ghosts are found in every part of the Far East from the Philippines to Japan and China, Thailand, Laos, Burma, India, and Pakistan.

The commonality of hungry ghosts in all depictions is this: They are creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs, and large, bloated, yet empty, bellies. They serve as a useful metaphor for addiction because the key feature of these hungry ghosts is the empty belly. The ghost is perpetually hungry but never satisfied, never full, hence the empty stomach.

As an addiction metaphor, the hungry ghost demonstrates what it feels like internally for a person with an addiction or addictive tendencies. Unlike physical hunger, which can be satiated by food, addiction is more of a spiritual hunger that a person tries to quench with something external. They may try a substance, a relationship, or a behavior (sex, shopping, etc.) to fulfill the aching emptiness inside.      

There is an illusion that potentially the next time the person indulges in whatever their drug of choice is, then they’ll be satisfied. That’s why a person with an addiction or addictive tendencies constantly chases their next fix. There’s a fantasy regarding what will fulfill the perhaps unacknowledged or unrecognized spiritual hunger. However, as much as the person tries various substances and pursuits, they are never satisfied, it’s never enough, and they become very much like a hungry ghost because what they seek cannot be fulfilled by something external.

The trouble is, the substance or behavior did work for a while. It did give the person a high but the second rush was not the same as the first and the third rush was not the same as the second and so on. Slowly, the effectiveness wears off. A person requires more and more of the substance or behavior to feel the way they did before and the come down becomes more and more severe. This is illustrated in the short film “Nuggets” which you can view here.

In the film, a kiwi bird finds a golden nugget that instigates a high and because it feels good, the bird sucks up every golden nugget it can find. However, the high is less intense and lasts for a shorter period of time until the nuggets stop working altogether. What’s happening here is a groove or neural pathway begins to deepen in the mind. It’s hard to remember what life was like before the addiction and hard to believe life can go on without it.

Unlike the depressing ending of the “Nuggets” film, many people with addiction and addictive tendencies do stop using. Their lives become fuller, richer, and more peaceful as a result of therapy, medication, a support group, or something else that points them toward that spiritual hungry. With a multidisciplinary and multifaceted approach to addiction, you can thrive after addiction. When the spiritual hunger is addressed, the need to indulge in the substance or behavior diminishes. That’s why some alcoholics are able to attend functions with alcohol or even meet up with friends at a bar. Once they quench the inner “never enough-ness,” the substance or behavior loses its appeal.

It is a journey to address addiction and come to believe that you can live a life that is different from what you know now. It is not easy, but moving through addiction and into recovery can be rewarding. Living a life that you didn’t think was possible – one with happiness, joy, and success – can be deeply satisfying.

Journal Prompts

·      How do I know it’s an internal hunger as opposed to a physical one?

·      What am I hungry for emotionally?

·      What am I hungry for spiritually?

Recommended Reading

Dr. Gabor Maté. In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

Anita Johnson. Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling

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Reference

Unknown. “Hungry Ghosts: Their History and Origin.” Kashgar.com. https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/tribal-culture/hungry-ghosts-their-history-and-origin. Accessed September 15, 2022.