Addictive disorder results from the process wherein a personality with stunted development (existential exclusion) of the Emotional Self, rather than seeking emotional healing and growth as the solution to the emotional difficulties, turns instead, in a behavioral response based on an existential contamination, to the Animal Self, with its associated reward centers within the brain, to produce an artificial sense of well-being, rather than facing, experiencing, coping with, and resolving feelings it fears or regards as unacceptable.
This process grows, malignantly, outward into the other areas of the person's life. Eventually all or most of the five selves become involved and dysfunctional. As awareness becomes more tightly focused upon the addiction, exclusions of the Physical, Intellectual, and/or Spiritual Selves may develop. Later, the desperate and futile attempts by the individual to reason his/ her way to a solution, using rationality that has been poisoned by chemical conditioning, expands the contamination to the Intellectual Self. For some, resorting to religious fantasies -- hoping to "pray" oneself out of trouble -- makes the problem total and complete by involving the Spiritual Self, including the futile reliance upon a character that has most likely become warped by living in opposition to values and ethics.
The reward centers described above are biochemical pathways at the base of the brain that, when triggered, cause a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, producing feelings of pleasure of varying intensity up to and including extreme transcendent ecstasy, depending on the type of agent and the degree of stimulation. They have developed over millions of years in many animals, including humans, as powerful behavioral controls to facilitate the securing of biological needs, such as food and reproduction. The result is a set of behavioral drives that cause us to put a high priority upon taking care of our animal needs. Since, when a person chooses a contaminated response, the underlying stress is never resolved, the excessive and inappropriate stimulation of the reward cascade with sex, chemicals, food, or destructive excitement, such as gambling, leads to a reliance upon, and obsession with the pleasure-producing agent and deeply-reinforced patterns of compulsive dysfunctional behavior.
It should also be apparent that this process disrupts the natural drive priorities for behavior, often producing the non-survival oriented behavior that seems so bizarre to observers and so frustrating to those wishing to help. Because these behaviors are unnatural and/or inappropriate, opposing as they do the individual's natural life tendencies, they may not be congruent with the person's self-concept, value structure, or principles, causing further emotional distress. Because the person's drive priorities have become confused and disorganized, the person may lose the ability to act in his/her own best interest and behavior may become quite self-destructive. Because the person has, unwittingly, been employing one of the most powerful behavioral conditioning tools known, these harmful behaviors can, over time, become reflexive, almost automatic, and extremely resistant to change.
Simultaneously, as mentioned above, certain degenerative changes begin to occur within the Spiritual Self as an erosion of the character from habitual behavior contrary to values and ethics. That is, that, once a principle is violated, it becomes easier to do it the next time, which facilitates subsequent violation of even deeper principles. This cancerous process is so destructive to self-image / esteem that the initial response to the resulting fear of self-dissolution or alienation is usually denial which may eventually become so impacted and ingrown that it may become substituted for reality in the person's conscious awareness.
Although this fantasy will in time disintegrate before the contradictory evidence which accumulates in quantities too immense to be ignored or rationalized away, the combination of spiritual poverty and tenacious denial often results in massive harm to self and others before this can occur. As the denial initially begins to waiver, the realization begins to dawn that concious control has been lost; that thinking and behavior have become a threat to survival, and therefore insane. This further exacerbates the building of unconscious stress which may exceed the critical point necessary for the survival instinct to begin to initiate the unconscious process whereby the mind attempts to heal itself.
The psychologist, William James, many years ago observed that much of the process of personal transformation that must take place for a successful recovery is unconscious and has been going on for some time, outside of our awareness, by the time we voluntarily seek help. This is a natural process initiated by the opposing forces of an obsessive compulsion to alter our feelings with a certain chemical and the growing realization that this substance is an insidious poison that is destroying the personality and is injurious to health to the point of becoming lethal.
Conscious efforts of will have usually become fruitless by this time, because a reasoning impasse has formed, which insidiously corrupts such efforts. This deadlock has occured over the opposing forces of the fear of self-destruction and the desire to hang on to the use of the addictive agent. It is often at this point that the person, in desperation, first seeks help voluntarily, yet may be unable to accept and assimilate it because the continued efforts of a corrupted conscious awareness are blocking the progress of the underlying natural healing process that is attempting to restructure the personality and restore the character to a pro-survival, rather than a self-destructive configuration.
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