Guest Contributor – Stuart Adam
We are here to have experiences our soul signs up for so that we can learn, grow, and remember our truth. Becoming addicted and then transcending addiction was one of the most powerful and enlightening challenges of my life.
I bought into the story of a “drug-addled downtown NYC artist” as a fun and interesting lifestyle. I liked the archetype—I was always looking for purity, and I found it in the Beat poets like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson. I was looking for my mind to be expanded. What I thought was freedom turned out to be a full-on prison cell. Ultimately, I found that self-destruction can ignite a path to awakening.
The path is about moving from complete separation from the One Infinite Creator to finding your way back home. It’s also about finding peace within and learning to be comfortable without the drama of constant ups and downs. In addition, it’s about recognizing the opportunity in adversity and seizing it in every moment. This journey brings great gifts—vision, discipline, strength, character, awareness, courage, dignity, and a heart awakening—as you learn to integrate your shadow through the process of becoming sober and liberated. The path from dark to light is an epic journey of initiation, a journey of duality and oneness.
There are levels and depths to the journey of overcoming addiction. Some people are content just getting off the hard stuff, like drugs and alcohol. In these cases, what usually happens is the addiction pattern ends up shifting to coffee, tobacco, micro-dosing, sugar, doom-scrolling, or even fanatical health practices. Addiction jumps. I call this the “addiction gremlin”—it’s always there, wanting more and more of this or that. In the end, one is still looking for something outside oneself to fill the inner cup, embodying the ultimate lack mentality. When you’re living in a lack mentality, you’re completely disconnected from knowing that you are infinite abundance. For true transcendence of addiction, the deeper practice is to find the ocean of God Consciousness within to fill the cup, fully liberating yourself from the addiction gremlin.
This ocean of the Creator within can be found by fully feeling the uncomfortable emotions that need to be felt, without seeking an escape or distraction. There is wisdom in the discomfort; let it guide you. By having the courage to sit with your feelings, you become more whole and sovereign, no longer needing to escape yourself. This is the path to knowing you are infinite abundance.
If you’re an addict, you’ve had the experience of being one. Without judging the addiction, you can now choose to have a new experience of liberation. It’s a powerful choice, full of blessings, illumination, and growth. Most likely, it’s an experience your soul would love to have.
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