What is an addiction?

To my observation, addictions form when a primal need is paired with a behavior that undermines left-brain dominance,  especially in the absence of a strong right ear and when social and environmental influences encourage the addictive behavior.

Children and teenagers have not lived long enough to develop strong left-brain dominance, however healthy their ears may be. The child’s success in school may not be an indicator of strong left-brain dominance because exceptional access to right-brain memory, which characterizes the “genius,” often is more valued by educators, although it usually indicates a weak right ear. Prodigious memory may be regarded, and rewarded, as a quality superior to highly developed rationality and a strong value system. Yet, the genius may be more susceptible to addiction than those with less easy access to their right-brain memories.

Societies manage addictive tendencies in various ways, defining expectations to curb or channel some needs and tolerating or accepting others. The essential needs are for food, water, warmth, rest, safety, sexual intimacy, companionship, self-esteem, and self-actualization (following Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy). The first six physical needs are “primal” because they are shared with all animals. The social needs become interwoven with the primal needs in most cultures so that seeing them as separate can be challenging. The primal needs are such strong motivators that very strong left-brain dominance is needed to control them.

If a potentially addictive beverage is paired with the need for water and ordinary thirst, the ear’s strength is undermined, creating lower left-brain dominance and greater right-brain consciousness. Weakening of the stapedius muscle simply puts some people to sleep, which is how that state of consciousness is achieved when the stapedius muscle tires from a day’s exercise. People with ear muscles that are already weak and who always experience more right-brained consciousness than healthy people are less aware of losing their more fragile hold on left-brain dominance. Emotions associated with feelings of pleasure become more intense, initially. If those activities are tolerated or approved in the culture or subculture, which inserts the social needs for companionship and self-esteem into the mix, the capacity of the vulnerable person for caring about how responsible others (parents, teachers, coaches, or clergy, for example) may feel about this personality change disappears. By “vulnerable” I mean dyslexic, bipolar, depressed, socially disadvantaged by impoverishment or illness or some other disabling condition. As right-brain consciousness increases, rationality decreases. The physiological capacity for making moral judgements is undermined. Old memories dominate at the same time as the ability to form memories in the present diminishes in a blur of pleasurable emotion. The person’s maturation level dwindles and sense of responsibility fades. If the person has social motivations for becoming less responsible and more childish, this state of consciousness becomes habitual, then, an addiction.

Addictions to food, alcoholic drinks, drugs ingested or smoked, sun bathing, sleep, and sex are well-known, if not well understood in terms of losses of left-brain dominance. Addictions to activities that mean “safety” may include running, body-building, martial arts, arming, shelter-constructing, alarm systems, escapist reading/TV/film/gaming, marriages, diets, social media, and so on. An army of dispensers, gurus, faddists, enthusiasts, and rationalisers that includes doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, other medically trained people, politicians, and non-medically trained people of fame and fortune have vast numbers of vulnerable people in their sights. When that vulnerability–“an addictive personality”–is not understood, their agendas are difficult to oppose or to contest. When you do understand the relationship between what goes into the ears, especially the right ear when it is weak, and how the brain thinks and behaves, you have solid neurological grounds for evaluating those peddlers, their programs, and their goods.  

Focused Listening did not heal Daniel’s addictions. The restoration of his left-brain dominance made it possible for him to learn how to overcome them. Among the things he has learned are how damaging and how dangerous his addictions were. He has seen friends and acquaintances die from their addictions. He gradually has defeated one addiction after another. The most recently acquired addictions were the first to go. The earliest addictions, to cannabis and cigarettes, are weaker, but remain.