The drug addict has a wounded brain. There has been some or partial damage and injury to the brain, henceforth brain damage occurs. There are also neglect and abandonment issues, rejection of the individual as a child took place, as well as the rejection of the humanity of spirit, soul and self.
The addict lives on the fringes of society and may resort to reckless and criminal behaviour, such as stealing, and self-harm in particular which results in personal injury (see brain damage). Human beings crave a conscious connection, a connection to the divine, the spiritual, the universal and human connection. The drug addict has a spoiled identity. They find a feeling of safety, acceptance, love in the fractured sense of self and identity in drug abuse and illegal substance abuse. The addict faces in the aftermath of his sobriety, wellness and recovery, he faces the onslaught of stigma in the environment (in much the same way the depression sufferer does and those suffering from mental sickness, the society they find themselves in, when faced with other citizens.
The drug addict also faces isolation, mental illness, psychological distress, alienation, rejection from the outside community, rejection from family, his peer group and the label of “Outsider”. It becomes deeply ingrained in his subconscious. He projects the outsider persona in the reality he finds himself in. He is ejected from his peer group, kept at a distance in isolation. This isolation in turn leads to an abnormal sense of self, skewed/crooked/negative overthinking and aggressive, reckless, oftentimes dangerously violent and criminal behaviour. The drug addict cannot help themselves.
Their behaviour is mitigated by bad habits inculcated and exacerbated by not receiving adequate care, concern, parental love and supervision, and emotional stability. The drug addict, the person, cannot themselves be blamed for their bad behaviour or damaged brain. Life has been unfair for the disenfranchised and marginalised drug addict.
What does the spiritual awakening offer the drug addict? The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was all about the spiritual awakening whereas Adler, the Austrian psychiatrist was much more goal-orientated. The fault in the drug addict’s conscious mind lies in childhood, conditioning, genetics, genetic predisposition and the deep-seated trauma and adverse childhood experience that confronted the drug addict when they were a young child. In the subconscious it lies in habit and that same habit forcefully and determinedly impinging upon a poor decision made by the individual. Suocide ideation in the drug addict is not just an idea, it’s not just a thought. Suicide ideation stems from a deep-seated, a rooted fear, an anguish about the past, past mistakes, choices, decion-making that cannot be erased. There is a new field called epigenetics.
Epigenetics, in simple terms, is the study of how your body can change, how your genes work without changing the DNA sequence itself, like adding different labels or tags to your genes. It’s all about how your environment and behaviors can influence whether or not a gene is turned on or off, impacting how your body reads your genetic code.
Concerning the sexual misbehavior (see promiscuous behaviour, promiscuity amongst the teenager) it can be carried into adulthood and wreaks havoc amongst couples and the institution of marriage and intimate relationships. Sex education, does it lead to the understanding of intimacy, God-orientated, home and family-orientated relationships? We are failing our children, the generation that belongs to a technological, scientific and digital era. There is a solution to gender based violence and the high incidence of crime and rape in South Africa and that may be a solution that will fall on deaf ears.
Why are we living in South Africa in an increasingly violent and corrupt society where the majority are unemployed even though they received a sound tertiary education and they went on to post graduate study?
We must look at this phenomenon from a psychological point of view and the role apartheid and the promulgation of the Group Areas Act. We must look at the negative aspects of our history to look at the future and build and develop and improve aspects of the individual in the post-apartheid era that we now live in.
The majority of South Africans are unaware of our painful history. This history is now to be found in a museum. Every generation faces this. There is a direct link between the promulgation of the Group Areas Act and the scourge and infestation of gangsterism, gang warfare and gun violence in the Northern Areas of Gqeberha.
The Coloured individual (see of mixed race) has a fractured sense of self and identity due to colonial psychosis. It is only the intellectually-minded who become anti-colonial in their thinking. The child raised by functional parents who raise their children from a values-driven, norms-based perspective who offer unconditional care, concern, parental love and supervision won’t have the personal inclination to turn to illegal substances to fill a void.
