Addiction, a common humanity, is the mental attachment to myths; premature morbidity and death is a consequence.
Myth: “I hate vegetables” or I love junk food”
Translation: “what my mind loves, hates, craves and avoids are more important than what my body needs” consequence: Metabolic syndromes, cancer, etc.
Myth: “my doctor can help me with medications”.
Translation: “Medications can help my mind ignore the warning signs from the body and continue making poor choices”
Myth: “I can’t live without tobacco, cannabis, benzos or opioids”
Translation: “my mind can exist after I have destroyed my body.” or as per HAL 9000 in Space Odyssey “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”
Myth: “if I look a certain other way, own a certain other thing, be at a certain other place, have a certain other friend, certain other family, certain other job and certain other government, I’d be happy”
Translation: I was born with some fundamental defects in some fundamentally defective world and can’t ever be happy”.
T. S. Eliot Quotes. “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
What other potentially harmful advises are we disseminating as physicians?