Your Addiction Is Your Genius

Anything elevated to the level of art becomes a means to transport oneself— a force that penetrates reality and grants access to the state we are all seeking.

Here’s the reality: you are addicted. You are unraveling. You are trapped in a cycle you cannot break—obsession, the needle, the bottle, the endless consumption. You cannot stop. But the problem isn’t that you want too much, but that you do no want enough.

The way through addiction isn’t to resist it but to elevate it. Take the very thing that holds you captive and make it a craft. Become conscious inside the act itself. The tension of addiction arises from being pulled in opposing directions—the craving and the refusal to succumb. But addiction, at its core, is the same drive as ingenuity or genius; it has simply bonded to alcohol, to drugs, to food.

Breaking that bond does not come from fighting it. You break it by going in the direction it is already pulling you. What keeps you stuck is gripping—gripping onto the idea that it should be different than it is. The moment you stop resisting and instead declare, *I came only for this*, something shifts. This addiction, this experience—it is here, and so are you. Now, how can you work with it? How can you abet it?

As you allow yourself to enter fully, the grip loosens. And when the grip loosens, you are transported. This is the same place sought in the most extreme interventions, the place that Iboga—the harrowing African medicine—takes heroin addicts. That place is not just found in ceremony; it is always available.

So how do you break free? You go with it. You stop gripping. And when you do, the grip releases. Suddenly, your mind is free. From that space, you can rewrite your story. You can say: *I love this drive within me, but I no longer need what it has been bonded to.*

At some point, you will see that addiction served its purpose—it connected you with the force of wanting itself. And once you recognize that force, you can choose where to direct it. The alternative is not sainthood. You do not need to be Mother Teresa. You simply need to bond it to something greater—yoga, meditation, an art, a discipline that is worthy of your obsession. Find something with enough gravity to hold you, something compelling enough to command your attention, something that, like addiction, will take you all the way in.