Carl Jung's Counterintuitive Solution for Addiction
How to break free from addiction for good...
For my new subscribers, I am reposting an older post on Carl Jung’s paradoxical solution to addiction.
The AA Big Book tells of an American businessman who, after trying to give up drinking for years, went to Europe to get consultations from a famous psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung.
He finished his treatment with unusual confidence. His physical and mental condition were unusually good. Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable. Nevertheless, he was drunk in a short time.
(AA Big Book, page 26)
Going back to his doctor, he asked why he couldn’t recover. He begged to tell him the whole truth, and he got it.
In the doctor’s judgment, he WAS UTTERLY HOPELESS.
Dr. Jung advised that he should “place himself under lock and key or hire a bodyguard if he expected to live long.”
The doctor said: “You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you.’’ Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.
The end is the beginning
This man is free now, alive and well. He doesn’t need to lock himself or have a bodyguard. He can go anywhere he wants to as long as he is willing to maintain one simple attitude: “I am powerless.”
When he heard that he was hopeless he had a profound spiritual transformation which, according to the founders of AA, is THE ONLY SOLUTION TO ANY ADDICTION.
What happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden
A long time ago, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent told Adam and Eve: “Take it and eat it. You will be like gods.”
At that moment, we became control freaks. We reach out and grab that fruit again and again because we believe that this time it will give us what we want. It never does. But we still believe that it will.
What will break this cycle of insanity?
The clang of the gates of hell. This is the “metanoia” we are looking for. Sooner or later, lightning strikes me on Damascus Road, and I wake up, saying: “I can’t do it anymore.” This is a new beginning. The resurrection.
Centuries later, a humble man told his followers in the upper room: “Take it and eat it so you won’t be gods anymore.” And then he went to the Garden and relinquished all power.
The only way out of addiction that works
How to break free from addiction for good? The only way to break any addiction is to relinquish power. As long as I believe that I am in control, it’s a hopeless business.
There is a solution…We saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it… We have found much of heaven, and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.
AA’s Big Book, page 25.
What is the true beginning? It’s the clang of the gates of hell. The “I can’t do it anymore.” I am powerless. This is the only way because it’s the end of me.
The gates into the fourth dimension open every time I hear the clang of the gates of hell. If I listen and take the leap of faith, I am rocketed into a life that I never dreamed of.
Great momentum in this contemplation.
While reading, my soul was blessed by this Lightening Flash Glimpse into the Eternal Treasury of Wisdom! ***Following the serpents’s prompt, Eve TOOK the apple and ate of it, and their eyes were opened to their nakedness (as well as the stark and harsh realities of the world separate from the Divine Presence).
Christ invites us to TAKE of the Bread and Wine, and to be one with Him. “Today you shall be with me in paradise.”
As you wrote - we grasp again and again for the apple of delights, only to grow old and empty and ashamed of our brokenness. There is no Light, no Life, no Peace until our soul finds His presence and rejoins the fold.
Thank You Eugene! This is HUGE. All spirituality begins with dying to ourself, in all spiritual traditions, even dying daily. I loved that you brought in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of eternal life with the bread and the wine. That Jesus willingly died as Christ, as God is an eternal reset. Stage 4 Lung Cancer did this for me, facing death every day, my ego broke and is on lifesupport, held by a thread of light, such is grace. Thank You!!!