Passion vs. addiction

“Passion creates; addiction consumes—first the self and then the others within its orbit.”

“Any passion can become an addiction; but then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the individual or their behaviour? It’s possible to rule a passion, but an obsessive passion that a person is unable to rule is an addiction. And the addiction is the repeated behaviour that a person keeps engaging in, even though he knows it harms himself or others. How it looks externally is irrelevant. The key issue is a person’s internal relationship to the passion and its related behaviours”

Excerpt From: Gabor Maté, M.D. “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.” 

What are your passions? 

Self portrait by Vivian Maier, a photographer whose passion for her art verged on addiction. But then again she suffered numerous emotional traumas which made her vulnerable to mental illness - hence obsession/addiction to her art. Fascinating woman and fantastic work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier

Addiction to Money

Usually in these pages I don't talk about addiction to money. My experience with addiction has been mostly with abuse of substances one ingests. 

There is another subset in the field around process or behavioral addictions. We are talking about compulsive behaviors such as sex addiction, gambling addiction and addiction to making money. 

Years ago I simply called it greed, but after reading this thought-provoking piece in the Times I see how it is an addiction.

The author connects the out-of-control need to earn an absurd amount of money on Wall Street to his an earlier history of alcohol and drugs abuse. With the help of his counselor, he came to see that it wasn't so much about the money (millions of it) but what it represented — the desire for power — subconscious need to feed an emotional hunger that originated from his childhood and maybe even inherited from his father. 

I've been meaning to read and write about Gabor Mate, an addictions doctor, who believes that at the root of all addiction is hunger — emotional or spiritual hunger (so did Jung, by the way). 

So what is it  we hunger for? And how do we go about filling the void? 
Which maladaptive behaviors are compulsively and guiltily engaging it?
Which substances are we ingesting to self-medicate? 

What's more distressing is that our market system is being driven by a bunch of sociopathic money addicts whose compulsive need for power causes people to suffer, not just in this country, but also around the world.

http://nyti.ms/1cGibh1