Many of us identify with our ego, the self that is attached to everything around us. The self that takes offense to others negative comments about us and identifies when we have been harmed in word or deed. The self that experiences the world on a personal level. This self-attaches to everything in relation to your ego, positive or negative. The world at this level is ego based and never neutral. Things are either good or bad.
Often people abuse drugs as an attempt to reach this higher spiritual plane and seek to have ego-less experiences, but instead, get trapped in the ego because instead of removing oneself from self, drugs increase the sense of ego experience, making it even more intensified. Drugs trap the spirit, they do not liberate. Substances like opiates, alcohol and cocaine all intensify the sense of ego.
The impulse to use drugs is often positive but misguided. As has been said, alcoholics and addicts are looking for God in all the wrong places. Treatment has an overwhelming psychological focus on the mental state of the client which traps the therapist and client in the ego and is perhaps not the best answer for the client. The therapist is trying to alleviate mental distress by helping the patient become more logical and rational in their life and to help them become more effective in their decision making. They try to create an intellectual answer for a spiritual problem. In order for real treatment to take place, everything about treatment must change.
When drug addicts experience the connection to the source, the need for drugs dissipates and will stay dormant as long as the addict stays spiritually fit. By meditation, self-examination and dedication to service of others, the addict will stay connected to his higher self and evolve. As he or she evolves and comes closer to the source, the ego becomes less important and drugs become irrelevant.
Treatment for drugs and mental health issues is evolving and at Gloria Recovery Center we heal the soul, not just the mind, using meditation, acupuncture, equine teachers, hypnosis, holistic therapy, EMDR and many other tools to cross over to a new way of healing that connects us to the source of all that is. We are starting a new change process at the level of the soul that has as its goal, transformation to a deeper level of experience, reinforcing the spiritual beings we have always been at our core.