called me a while ago to ask me to come and give a talk while he's on retreat. He asked me in particular to talk about addiction. He said there's some interest in this Sangha in considering the whole issue of addiction and addictive behavior in the Buddhist context. So Whether you like it or not, that's what I agreed to talk about. First let me say that I grew up in an alcoholic family with an alcoholic mother who didn't start to be alcoholic overtly until she was a rather old woman. And I also, my first husband is an alcoholic. So that's my, one of my pieces in the subject.

[01:04]

And because of my own history, I became at a certain point as an outgrowth really of my interest in family systems. began looking at dysfunctional and in particular addictive family systems because of that. That was of course an important aspect of my own inquiry about my own conditioning. And curiously enough a number of people who I have practiced with over the years have been people who either have had some addiction of one sort or another and or come from addictive families. So at a certain point, I decided to educate myself as much as possible, both in terms of my own work and practice, but also for the benefit of the people that I practice with.

[02:06]

And out of an interest in the number of people who come to Buddhist practice out of their own struggle with addictive patterns. And I think that there's a very high degree of resonance, actually, between the work that is done, as we know it, as 12-step work in Alcoholics Anonymous and Buddhism. There's some tensions also, but I think there also is a lot of resonance. So the way I understand and talk about addiction is in terms of addictive patterns. Because what I have observed over the years is that very, very often someone who is initially going into sobriety out of an addiction to alcohol will change the substance of addiction

[03:09]

and not recognize that the same pattern is operating in their lives even though they may not be using alcohol. And that from a Buddhist perspective, what is crucial is the cultivation of consciousness or awareness about what we do, what our patterns and habits are, what our conditioning is. And so our ability to begin to recognize compulsive, obsessive, addictive patterns is crucial because then we begin to see how you may stop using alcohol as a way of numbing, checking out, dampening, turning away that cluster. But you may stop using alcohol, but then you might turn to sex, or coffee, or sugar, or chocolate, or work.

[04:14]

I think the list can be pretty long. What's crucial is not the substance as much as the motivation. is what I am doing in service of turning away from or dampening or managing emotional reactions of a whole range of feelings that I am uncomfortable with and don't know how to be with. So what we have is this tension in Buddhist terms between going to sleep and waking up. That we want to wake up around the going to sleep process. So we're double binding ourselves. And in fact I think it's very useful to recognize if any of us is working with addictive patterns that we have what is sometimes called benign double binding.

[05:21]

That is we double bind ourselves in service of waking up of health, of well-being, of the easing and transforming of what leads to suffering. So the challenge, of course, is to figure out how to do that. How to begin to cultivate some willingness to be awake or more conscious around behavior that is everything about going unconscious. And I think in both the 12-step tradition and in Buddhism, there's a very strong recognition of the enormous benefit of having a company of like-minded people. So a very important step in recovery work with regard to addictive behavior has to do with going to meetings with other people who are doing the same kind of work.

[06:26]

It doesn't work for everybody. 12-step meetings don't work for everybody, but they work for a huge number of people, which doesn't mean, at least initially, that people necessarily like going to meetings. And I think that in the early stages of recovery, people often have the experience of, I don't want to be here, but I know I feel better if I come, et cetera. And there comes this slow experience of how much support and strength we have by being in a regular gathering of people who are doing the same kind of work that I'm doing. Interestingly, I think for those of us who practice meditation, we have a very similar experience. That is the enormous strength and support for cultivating and sustaining a regular meditation practice that comes from gathering and practicing whatever practices we do together.

[07:35]

Oops, I lost my microphone here. So one of the first questions that I want to bring up for your consideration is this one of asking ourselves, is there any substance or behavior that I use as a way of checking out or numbing? And of course, what's interesting is there are those substances and behaviors that are socially acceptable. And then there are those behaviors that are not so socially acceptable. And I think one of the reasons that addictive use of alcohol is so problematic is because there's such a widespread sponsoring of using alcohol in this society.

[08:36]

recently become quite interested in what happens when I go out to dinner with friends and someone at the table may order a drink of some kind, alcoholic drink, some wine or whatever, particularly if it's something like a drink that's served. The active sponsoring of Drink More from the waiter or waitress. Clearly, there's some coaching in the back room before the restaurant opens about how often you ask your client or patron, may I freshen your drink or may I bring you another beer or whatever. I travel a fair bit and I really notice it on airplanes. Every once in a while I'm fortunate enough to get upgraded into business class.

[09:49]

And I'm stunned at the amount of alcohol it's consumed even on short flights. And the ease with which alcohol is offered And in fact, how necessary if one is, doesn't want to drink or is not, is someone who does not respond wholesomely, if there is such a thing, to alcohol, that it takes a certain resolve in this society. And you have to be very clear about your intention. I don't think, I think it's much easier to feel socially acceptable if you're addicting substances, coffee or sugar. I've become recently interested in the sugar business because right now I have a four and a half year old Tibetan boy living with me and my family and he's already hooked.

[11:02]

He was born in India and by the time he came to live with us at the beginning of this year, he already had a pretty strong sugar tooth or sweet tooth. And because of the differences in him that I observed when he eats sugar and when he doesn't, I started noticing sugar usage with some of my friends who eat a lot of sugar. One friend who just a couple of weeks ago was diagnosed as a diabetic who told me, oh, I have at 10 o'clock every night, I have a dish of ice cream and have for years. And she began to describe to me all the different times when she has a dish of ice cream or a piece of chocolate or And it was always at those times of the day when she would be feeling a little blue, a little apprehensive, a little reluctant to go to bed.

[12:16]

So even if we don't have some substance that we have an unwholesome relationship with, at least we think we don't, to begin to be curious about, is there some activity or substance that I turn toward when I want to check out? Television, I think, is a means of tuning out. Murder mysteries. I love murder mysteries. My husband has a particular fondness for books that have swastikas on them. Because he says that you always know clearly who the good guys are and the bad guys are. But it's clear to me he will sometimes read two or three in a row and it'll almost always be when there's something up that he'd rather not have up.

[13:23]

And he himself is rather clear about those kinds of books being a way to just drop out for a while. So there are these gradations of this patterning that has to do with not being present with what is so. And what I would like to bring up for our consideration together is that There's a kind of slippery slope with this gradation of checking out patterns. And we can find ourselves checking out more rather than less if we don't keep paying attention to what we're actually doing. Now, I'm not necessarily advocating some kind of policeman mind because I don't think in the end it's the mind that's the most effective.

[14:27]

I think that we have to be able to cultivate attention to what we do that is both firm and very kindly. that combination seems to increase our capacity for noticing what we are, of course, hoping not to notice. There's a woman in San Francisco who works with people who identify themselves as alcoholics in recovery, especially with respect to food and what they eat. almost inevitably after you've been using alcohol for some extended period of time and you stop drinking, you have quite a strong impulse to eat sugar. And what this woman does, I think it's so interesting, she doesn't ask people to stop eating sugar. She asks that you keep a log of what you eat and then to note your physical body sensations and your feelings

[15:39]

20 minutes after you've eaten something. So what you do is a kind of regime of observing and noting and identifying between what you eat and how your body and especially your physical body and emotional body respond or react to whatever it is you've taken in. And I know a number of people who've done this process and have changed what they eat simply on the basis of what they begin to see about, oh, this leads to this. When I eat chocolate after four in the afternoon, I seem to have nightmares. That's what I've noticed. I don't know if that's true for other people, but It's very consistent for me.

[16:41]

To the degree that I'm not thrilled with the quality of rest I have when I have a nightmare, I'm less interested in having something with chocolate in it at dinner time. And it's not a struggle. So this is, of course, one of the payoffs for this practice of attending, paying attention, showing up for noticing what you do. The noticing has to be without judgment and without reactivity. If you're going to keep noticing, especially in this territory of noticing what is in service of not being awake, the sleepiness. Now, what's interesting is to consider the possibility that I can have my substance of checking out my meditation practice or my spiritual practice one way or another.

[17:56]

That we can in fact use what we are used to thinking of as wholesome as a way of checking out or hiding. But of course, that is possible. We humans, I started to say we Americans, we humans can be very inventive if we are really suffering and we would rather not show up for our own suffering. So, always what we can come back to is looking at what is my motivation. What do I observe about my behavior and what is my motivation? And the process of doing that is helped enormously by having good company. In 12-step work, there's a very strong emphasis on having a sponsor, having someone who has more experience in working with the program of recovery who can meet with you so you have a kind of feedback system, but also so you have support and company.

[19:21]

And somewhat less delusion when you have to present what you're doing. to yourself in front of a witness, which is a very important aspect of the process of having a sponsor. And the same thing, of course, is true in meditation practice. It makes a huge difference to have a spiritual friend, someone who has training and experience and can be a guide and source of support. And again, someone to whom or with whom you can present what you're doing in your own practice. Not so much to the teacher or spiritual friend, actually, as to yourself with a witness. That process becomes very different than what we do, you know, in our privacy of our room with our journal where nobody's looking. Where we can fool ourselves. So one of the things that I appreciate deeply about the whole tradition that comes from the teachings of the Buddha is that there's this very clear through line about wake up about the cultivation of awareness being as conscious as one can be.

[20:53]

The language in the early sutras having to do with what we usually think of as intoxicants is very clear that what the Buddha is pointing to is pay attention to substances that dull the mind. That is the dulling of the mind is identified very clearly as what we want to be concerned with. What leaves my state of mind dull or asleep, lulled? And of course, when you begin to pay more attention to what affects your state of mind in this way, you realize that it's not just drugs and alcohol or caffeine or sugar or sex or money or work or nicotine or, you know, there are more things on the list. Sure. But as you cultivate a more refined awareness, you begin to notice the details of what you eat in the evening.

[22:10]

If you eat an evening meal, what you eat, how much you eat and when you eat affects your state of mind when you wake up the next morning, for example. and in time you can come to treasure a clear mind in a way that makes it actually surprisingly easy to take care of what feeds a clear mind. For years when we would do retreats we would have the evening meal and the Meal chant would always be abbreviated, if at all. And there was always this description that the evening meal was really a medicine meal. In the Zen tradition, the evening meal is described that way. And I always thought, come on. Why is this the medicine meal?

[23:12]

This is as much a meal as any other meal. It's also because we want to eat. It helped to have the medicine meal be the meal where you'd eat leftovers. Evening gruel could be a real test. But beginning this last summer, we started doing the practice of not having any dinner during retreats. And if somebody felt like they were just going to faint away, they could make themselves a cup of miso soup or have a glass of fruit juice or vegetable juice if they wanted to. But no solid food after the midday meal. And I thought, oh, nobody's going to come if we do this. The first time we did it, I didn't tell anybody till I got there. Helped by Achan Amaro, whose authority about these matters carried the day.

[24:18]

But I thought, after that, I wonder how this is going to go over. And what's been interesting to me is the enthusiasm that I've heard from the people who practice with me. about during retreats not having the evening meal because the effect in terms of both our evening meditation practice but in particular on our state of mind the next morning is so clear, strikingly clear. And it's interesting to see what your mind does when you say, all right, no dinner. You start dreaming about all kinds of things that you ordinarily don't dream about. And you can begin to pay attention to the eating that you do that you aren't even quite aware of. So there are a lot of ways in which Buddhist practice can help us be more conscious in those areas where we are not so conscious.

[25:23]

Again, in the Zen tradition, we have some pretty particular ways of eating. And depending on the place and the style of eating, you can either be encouraged to shovel the food in as fast as possible and have the meal be over very quickly, or you can actually do some mindfulness practices so you actually pay attention to eating a little bit more slowly, maybe even putting the spoon down in between the bites and suddenly realize, oh, I've still got food in my bowl, but actually I'm full. And you actually can stop eating when your body tells you that you're full instead of eating because there's the food on the plate. So some of our patterns and habits that we're not even aware of having can begin to be more accessible to us in the context of, particularly in the context of retreat practice.

[26:35]

Seeing addictive patterns is usually not enough. We also have to have some way of setting some very clear Somewhat public, public in the sense of having a witness intention about what we will or will not do. Saying in front of one person or a group of people, I'm someone who has addictive behavior with and then whatever the substance is. And my vow, my intention, my practice for today is that regular, daily articulation of description of what is so and expression of intention for behavior can be very, very powerful.

[27:40]

And to also be modest about what that statement is to what I can do today. not for the rest of my life but for right now. So those are a few of my comments about this resonating and overlap between addictive behavior and Dharma practice and 12-step work and Dharma practice. Let me just say a couple of words about some things I've observed. for people who are Buddhist practitioners who are doing 12-step work, a certain amount of discomfort in 12-step work because of the God language that is used in fairly traditional 12-step meetings. And I think that that becomes less of a problem

[28:46]

as you have more experience in meditation practice because you have more, a deeper sense about some sense of wisdom and compassion, some sense of being bigger than just me as an individual. And I think that for a lot of people in 12-step work, The enacting of an active spiritual dimension to recovery work with respect to addictive behavior is a real struggle unless you have the kind of clear, describable practice that is just par for the course for those of us who are meditators. I think having a clear spiritual path is an enormous support and adjunct to recovery work. There's such an enormous degree of resonating both ways.

[29:50]

So, I know at least in San Francisco and in Marin County, there are what I call Buddhist 12-step pods. groups of people doing 12-step work, but who are also Buddhists, who find doing that work with a shared Buddhist reference point quite useful. And of course, there is a strong Buddhist influence in AA. Bill Wilson, when he first started cooking up the whole Alcoholics Anonymous program with his friends and colleagues, was quite aware of the Buddhist teachings and quite consciously included the influence that he felt from those teachings in those early expressions of the program. I was quite struck.

[30:53]

Some years ago, I was taking care of the estate of a woman who had actually had some correspondence with Bill Wilson about Buddhism with respect to AA. I had always recognized that there was some resonance, but to actually see some correspondence about his early interest in Buddhism was quite confirming. So I'd like to spend a little bit of time hearing from you questions or challenges or considerations that come up for you around this issue. Yes. The word addiction is such a harsh word and a word to move away from. And if you replace it with the word obsession, it seems like more of us would be able to acknowledge so many behaviors in our lives that don't involve food or alcohol, that involve, especially in the 1990s, romance, exercise, work.

[32:04]

Drama. Drama. You know, consuming. And when you think chocolate, it seems like I don't know, but I can't imagine anyone thinking about that all day. My friends who describe themselves as chocoholics tell me that's what's going on, is thinking about chocolate almost all the time. Well, it's just spectator sports, football. The people I work with do a lot of Football is talked about a good portion of the day in my office. And if that's not it, then it's television or it's romantic involvement that they have. And it really does take up a whole portion of your day. And I think balance is really what I need to seek out in balance. Well, I do agree with you that the word addict or addictive is harsh.

[33:11]

But I also think that one of my problems with the 12-step program is what I call the I am habit. I am an alcoholic. Introducing oneself in a meeting. I am an alcoholic. Anytime I say I am anything, I'm solidifying my identifying process with what I'm saying. And I freeze in my mind my capacity for transformation and for change. And it just doesn't strike me as useful or accurate. Now it may be that I have up until now suffered from addictive behavior with respect to, you know, it's a long, it's a lot shorter to say, I am an alcoholic.

[34:15]

But I, I actually think what's more useful is to be very clear. What I'm talking about is I have up until now or last week or a year ago or whatever, had an addictive relationship to alcohol. What I'm trying to get at is what's important is to identify the pattern that we're talking about. The addictive use of some substance or behavior or experience as a way of checking out. Because then we're not so surprised when, oh, I give up this substance, but bloop, here comes another one here. And when, particularly when people have been using alcohol in this way of checking out, you can see the pattern persist without some recognition, oh, this behavior is fundamentally not different from this behavior.

[35:20]

Now, the consequences, depending on the substance, may be quite different. There may be much more harm to one's physical body. There may be much more harm to those around me, depending on what substance I'm using. But it's crucial that I begin at some point to see the pattern of behavior. And I agree with you that addictive pattern has strong language. And I think compulsive or obsessive is in there. But the stuff, you know, what we're talking about is hard. This is hard to look at. Yeah. And that process of turning away, which we are not even conscious of doing. And we have a certain amount of cultural conditioning about turning away. Me?

[36:22]

Feel? I'm fine. I don't know if any of you have read a book that's just out recently by a man named Pollack called Real Boys. He talks about the conditioning for men in our society away from being in touch with one's emotional life. We don't think of that as turning away but all the men in my life certainly tell me what looks ends up being a kind of turning away from a whole realm of human experience that ends up being very costly. So I think particularly from the Buddhist perspective some interest and stronger than interest real attention to what is it I do when I turn away, how do I turn away, what do I turn away from, is the first step towards cultivating the capacity to not even turn towards but just stay present, even if it's just on the edge, hanging out on the edge.

[37:33]

Yes? While you were talking, it appeared to me that a consistent failure to act It's also an addiction. A consistent failure to put things away after using is certainly an avoiding something. Yeah, I haven't thought of this story for a long time and it came up a few weeks ago. Some years ago, I had a friend who She and I have daughters two weeks apart in age. And when we first got to know each other, our children were about two. And she had just finished painting her daughter's room. A huge, big, orange, and yellow, and gold spiderweb. It was fabulous. And everything, the ceiling, the walls, the furniture, the bed, the floor, everything was this big spiderweb.

[38:46]

But she never finished painting the drawer pulls. This fabulous, you know, she'd worked for a long time doing this whole project, but the knobs on the drawers never got finished. And then I noticed, you know, the kitchen, the edge of the windowsills never got painted. One time I finally asked her and she said, oh, yeah, I guess I never quite finish anything. And for her, what she was able to describe was she felt like there was a kind of death if she finished the project was like it was over. There was a death. So that was her way of turning away from that kind of minor dying. I don't think we can bear to notice those kinds of turning away unless we, that's why I'm saying we have to do it with a soft mind.

[40:02]

Can't do it with a Hard-minded. Firm, but kind-like. Yes? Are you having a hard time hearing me? Just a little bit. The last week I was with my family and I was able to bring more awareness than I have in the past. I know I tend to turn to food. It was really interesting that I found myself, you know, A, turning to food and B, television. Those were like my two mistakes. And even though, like, I would get caught in there, I eventually was able to pull myself out. But there were times when I just, like, let myself use that distraction, even if it was destructive, just to kind of, you know, like, stuffing my face, even if I felt like my stomach was hurting. So it was really interesting. And my experience is that the more I notice, even though I keep doing, at some point, the awareness becomes stronger than the energy in the behavior.

[41:15]

And so it's the quality of strengthening the energy of awareness that becomes our aiming. And I think it's why there is this strong pull for people who are doing recovery work to a meditation practice because I think there's this very strong resonating. Okay, I think we're going to turn into pumpkins now. So, thank you all very much. Nice to see you. Take good care of yourselves.

[41:49]

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