Addiction

I used to wonder why people who smoke / drink cannot quit despite knowing it is harmful for their health. Well the answer beneath is “addiction”, however one sugar-coats it saying it as “style”, “cool”, “trendy”. In fact I had been even preached of the “goodness” and “benefits” of smoking and drinking alcohol. Thankfully I didn’t give in :-) Well I think addiction is an unconscious choice made with the illusion of compulsion. Most times they are accompanied by so called reasonable justifications.

Addiction need not be just about smoking and drinking. Though these are mostly seen as taboo (in some societies, it is considered being elite), there are lot others accepted by the society. My mother is addicted to coffee, my dad to tea. When I go to someone’s house they ask “Coffee or tea”. When I say "No thanks", with raised eyebrows “Boost/Horlicks?” Next comes "Atleast soft drinks?" When I say no for all, I get very amused with different kinds of expressions. Expressions like of disbelief, or being offended that their request was not obliged. Ok inorder to “blend in” I say maybe a juice like lemon. They get stunned as if I asked for a peg of vodka. They don’t have it. From my childhood, I had seen my mother making juice concentrates and stocking them especially for guests. If nothing is there, there is lemon at least. But nowadays in most homes, they don’t have any. So I ask for “water”. Thankfully, I am glad that technology has not “advanced” to the extent of getting soft drinks in the water pipe at homes. I remember the slang that my mother used to say “colour soda” instead of soft drink. It is more apt than this as it is not soft on your health. Thankfully I am not at Germany where they drink aerated water by default. I still remember the host of L’Auberge confirming everyday “No coffee? No tea? No milk also?”. Better still, he was shocked to see that I picked the cheese for the bread. Well all that was left was only some meat and jams. I don’t eat meat. Also, jams were ordinary like the one available in India. I wanted to taste their cheese and it actually tasted different from what is available here. When I said no to milk and yoghurt, he also took away the butter and cheese thinking no milk products at all. He understands English to some extent, while my Deutsche was in proximity to null. So he never understood my diet pattern. I anyway drunk the sour orange juice instead of tap water. At SAP, they had an option of normal water. I infact tried the aerated water. One sip and then I remembered the resolve I used to take everytime I drink a kashayam. I needed that same resolve to finish this one :-) I didn’t want to waste.

Addiction to the taste of onion, garlic, green chilli is so much prevalent in the Indian cooking. Before I go on, a self-declaration just for you to understand me better or to get better confused whichever the case may be. I used to love milk that I drank thrice a day and felt a special hunger for milk especially in the evening after school. Whatever I eat will not subdue it. Only milk will. I love the taste of Kumbakonam filter coffee (Not the bitter ones such as black, cappuccino, espresso, etc) and strong hot tea at Ooty. Onion bajji was my favourite in bajjis and ooty garlic kozhambu was my mother’s special for me. So nothing is a taboo for me.

My other half (I don’t want to call him better/worse :-)) is an addict to technology. He will eat, breathe, sleep with the laptop. I have to yell at him to get his attention for a few seconds before he buries himself back to the screenpot he is listening. My mother used to think I was an addict to TV. Only when I stayed more than 2 years without TV at Bangalore, did I myself realize, yes, I can live without TV. But some are addicted to TV serials like your x,y,z whom you can name. I realize I can get addicted to any of the above or something else, if I just let myself. It is just a matter of getting used to and then the mind won’t leave the comfort zone.

I grinned at my friend who said she follows all the iyengar guidelines after marriage without effort or complaints, remembering the incident when I went to her room when she was a bachelorette, she asked me “How can I make sambar without onion?” with a frown. (I stayed with her for a day and I was very strict about my diet during that time period to experiment my resolve). What has changed her? Is it her mother-in-law? A definite no. It is her choice to check out what her in-law said and her willingness to be flexible. It is her choice to step out of that particular addiction to onion in sambar.

Lessons I had learnt about addiction. Any amount of reasoning wont stand a chance competing with the few spots in the tongue (taste bud). Well technically it is not the taste bud, it is the recordings in the mind of the taste and the associated feeling for the taste which the mind does not want to alter. So what can change addiction? There are two possible ways that I had known.

Route 1: Another choice that precedes this choice in priority. I follow this trick with my husband. Whenever he is engrossed in his laptop and I would like him to do one of the boring stuff (boring according to his recordings), I say can we watch a movie/go to a restaurant? (Read it as different options of precedence in his mind recordings than reading something technical) He immediately jumps out and says yes, yes. Then I put in the if condition, (Necessarily if then does not come in the order as in CS), but before that you got to dry the clothes or get these vegetables or one of the item in the boring list. Immediately he will shrink like the child that says no to the keerai to be eaten before getting its favourite. Now I got his attention, I will give the whole lecture of him not being responsible and he does not need a family and could have married the laptop instead of me. Well, I could as well record this and replay it to him everytime. The catch is the brain stops listening and reacting the moment it is repetitive. So inorder to get attention to the conversation, I had to add a pinch (sometimes more) of salt, chilly, pepper, oregano and seal it finally with sugar. So now again the choice works. Instead of hearing to the nonsense lecture and this long fight, he would choose the boring stuff to complete and then we seal it with sugar (yes the movie/whatever). The final seal of sugar is a must for marriages to last.

Another example that worked was with my mother. My mother is a coffee addict and I wanted to show her that she can stay without coffee and still be alright. The reason is she says she can’t quit coffee because she will get headache and the whole day will get spoilt without that one cup. We were all getting ready to go to Kailash sojourn on July since March. I told her if you truly want to experience Kailash, then don’t have any stimulants as a preparation. I told with such intensity and timed it right that it just sunk into her. She religiously did the yoga practices and didn’t use onion, garlic in the cooking and completely didnt drink coffee during this time. She used to happily tell me, hey, I am perfectly alright. It is all the magic of Kailash. But the truth is it is all the simple priority of her choice. She revered Kailash to such extent that her mind had filed Kailash to be of higher priority and pleasantness than coffee taste. This worked wonders until the sojourn. She saw others taking it especially Maa and teachers. If they are doing it, then it is required for this climate was her argument. I silently smiled not wanting to argue. Well, I did go to Kailash and come back without having a sip of coffee/tea. (One instance of having no breakfast and had only the option of having a masala tea to have a medicine and then throwing up is not countable). And climate didnt do anything with me. It is all the excuses that the mind searches to root its addiction. And take my word, you will look like a fool trying to reason out those excuses at the end of the conversation.

Route 2: As you see route 1 is only temporary and can be manipulated only to some extent. So what is the actual way out? If your guess is resolve, well, let us ponder it. I have seen n number of people taking a resolve that they will leave non-veg food / alcohol / smoking / coffee and after sometime sheepishly smiling I left it for 1 week / 1 month / 3 months, but then, and their own philosophy. Though however well-framed as a philosophy, it can be stripped out to a mere excuse to run the game of choices. For some people, a blind belief works. But this will work only for people who like to be certified by others as “good” xxxxxx. Fill the xxxxxx as a  boy / girl / son / daughter / father / mother / daughter-in law / son-in law/Brahmin / etc, whatever the identification that is worn. This reminds me of the fact that Brahmins even the category who are totally “aacharam” actually drink coffee. They won’t touch onion, garlic, but will drink pots of coffee / tea. These are again stimulants. But can you reason out with blind belief? Ok let us come in their way. Let us take the history and find out whether coffee is in scriptures. As this research would take a lot of time a shortcut was taken. Refer the history of coffee. It was brought in by a revered Muslim from outside India. Atleast tea’s history is not properly traceable. Seems to have been for a long time. Well, they are not bothered whether they are taking stimulants or to follow exactly what is told in scriptures or what is exactly needed. What they bother of is the label of “good” xxxxxx.

But this misfires for people who wants to be unidentified with such tags, but identified with “cool”, “modern”, “trendy”. Least do they realize they are again falling into another glue of identification. I find it quite funny with the fact that people give so much importance to the adjectives rather than the noun. They want to be tagged with something different. The difference stops there. They are very much the same in wanting to be certified / called as “#$%^”. They very much are focused on the adjective than the noun. To be explicit, I mean “Self” by noun. So if belief works for this kind, belief would misfire for the some who wants to believe in disbelief.

Today OH(Other Half) was saying about “zero size” that was marketed by models like Kareena Kapoor and how the doctors are shouting their head off that this is not good for health. Well the doctors who talk about natural diet and health are as minimal as programmers who love LISP. So anyway their voices would be lost in the blast of the more-reaching media. So reasoning out reaches only a few and takes resolve to execute it. Further you see that this works only for people who are strongly “For” science and logic. This again is the way mind has mapped the pleasantness one derives by resolving to a higher priority compared to the pleasantness derived by the addicted item.

So how else? There is a beautiful lyrics

“Thittam pottu thirudura kootam thirudi konde irukuthu
Athai sattam pottu thadukura kootam thaduthu konde irukuthu
Thirudarai paarthu thirunthaa vitaaal thirutai ozhika mudiyathu (2)”

From an old tamil song “Thirudathe papa thirudathe”. The meaning is “The crowd of robbers plan to rob and are continuing to rob, the crowd of law makers make law and continue to stop them. However until the robber sees for himself/herself and stops robbing, it is not possible to stop robbery. “

Don’t take it literally. It is just a metaphor. It is all fundamentally addiction - an unconscious choice made with the illusion of compulsion. Once the choice is made consciously realizing the bondage is self-made and the focus is the noun and not the adjective, addiction disappears.