Your worst enemy cannot hurt you as much as your own thoughts, when you haven’t mastered them,” said the Buddha. “But once mastered, no one can help … - Gabor Maté

We may not be responsible for another’s addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff.

all addictions — whether to drugs or to non-drug behaviors — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical level the purpose of all addictions is to create an altered physiological state in the brain. This can be achieved in many ways, drug taking being the most direct. So an addiction is never purely “psychological”; all addictions have a biological dimension.

Boredom, rooted in a fundamental discomfort with the self, is one of the least tolerable mental states.