3 0 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 2 of humanity. For this reason, it has been rightly observed that “addiction is the sacred disease of our time” (May 1991, viii). Contemporary psychology is, in many ways, an attempt to fill the spiritual absence – loss of the sense of the sacred – both in society and in the human microcosm. But without acknowledging and including the sacred, this discipline cannot provide holistic modes of treatment and healing. This loss of the sacred has left an epistemological and ontological void with severe consequences for our human collectivity that contemporary psychology cannot remedy, as it itself is a derivative of modernity’s desacralized worldview. We must not overlook the fact that psychology also contributed to the loss of faith we find in the present day and to what we might call the trauma of secularism. In sketching the secular trajectory that began with the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and which led to the Enlightenment project, it becomes discernable how the steady decline of religion and spirituality brought about a psychological outlook devoid of Spirit. A proper science of the soul has been replaced with a caricature of how psychology was traditionally envisioned. This paper surveys the origins of addiction in order to improve our understanding of this ubiquitous phenomenon. In doing so, it aims to promote a quest for healing based on holistic methods that are grounded in the traditional wisdom found among humanity’s spiritual traditions. The myriad addictions of the present day, when understood according to the framework of metaphysics, are a symptom of the pathology of fallen humanity within samsāra, which seeks to find wholeness in that which is unable to give it. The religions have understood and foretold that it is the increasing dissociation of the human psyche from the Spirit – which denies a connection acknowledged by the traditional cosmologies – that makes such attempts futile. It is through the religions and spiritual traditions that we can identify a metaphysical basis for a multidimensional understanding of addiction as well as develop methods for whole-person treatments and healing. An integrated understanding of the human person reveals that the exclusion of metaphysics from psychology is at the very root of its current crisis. This predicament stems from psychology’s inability to see that its overreliance on modern science reduces its sphere of authority merely to the empirical order – to what can be known through the five senses and the faculty of human reason. In contrast, the perennial psychology is able to discern the tripartite constitution of human beings and that of the cosmos – of which we are but a mirror – consisting of Spirit, soul, and body; or the spiritual, psychic, and corporeal states. This paper examines the problem of addiction from the perspective of the world’s religions and their mystical paths. It is through an application – to the study of psychology – of the universal wisdom found in these sacred traditions that we may resurrect a science of the soul that affords a more profound understanding of the human condition. This approach is also known as the perennial psychology. At the outset, it is important to begin any consideration of addiction by understanding that the phenomenon of addiction can be likened to an exaggerated condition that is common to all people. In a sense, we are all struggling with one form of addiction or another. Although not everyone will be diagnosed with a substance use disorder, there are certain dysfunctional dependencies that we can all identify within ourselves. They do not have to turn our lives upside down for them to be addictions; the important thing is to see the underlying process that drives them and how it informs our thoughts and behaviors. Addictions were normalized by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who developed the psychoanalytic talking cure and laid the foundations for the discipline modern psychology: “There is a general tendency of our mental apparatus… it seems to find expression in the tenacity with which we hold on to the sources of pleasure at our disposal, and in the difficulty with which we renounce them.” (Freud 1953, 16). The irony is that no substance or outward activity can satisfy our inner feelings of emptiness or craving for meaning. In fact, to the contrary, as Aristotle (384–322) wrote: “It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.” (Aristotle 1885, 46). In our fallen samsāric state, the following prognosis of the human condition is fitting: “To be alive is to be addicted” (May 1991, 11). And it is fairly easy to find examples of this just about anywhere we look.
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