It's A Coin Toss

Grievance kills. Your grievance may be perfectly justified. That doesn't change the fact that it could, and is very likely to, sink you like the stone you're tied to. 

One school of thought is that most, if not all addiction, can be traced to trauma. It could be a childhood trauma, or as in PTSD suffered by war veterans, a traumatic experience in adulthood. But it's not the trauma that leads to addiction - we all suffer traumas in our lives of various types and sizes, some more devastating than others - it's the heavy burden of grievance, resentment, blame and anger that we carry in response to trauma. The thinking goes that addiction, to drugs, or gambling, or alcohol, or cigarettes, or even sex, provides a (somewhat) reliable emotional prop or escape (a physically destructive one) offering the addict a temporary respite from the heavy burden of harboring grievance, resentment and blame. According to this way of thinking, to treat addiction you must provide the addict the intellectual means to recognize and identify the burden that they carry, namely the grievance, resentment and blame, which typically morphs into shame and self-hatred, and provide them with emotional tools they can use to unburden themselves. That's the challenge of every therapist, and it's a tricky one, because people are different (there are likely genetic factors to addiction as well), and there are many types of grievance. But the essence is that addiction feeds on grievance, blame and resentment. Even if the grievance is justified, it cannot be changed. The people who caused the grievance can not be controlled. But if you are unburdened of blame and resentment, if you can learn to relinquish your sense of moral self-justification, the energy source for the addiction is choked off, and it can be overcome. 

What does this mean when we live in a culture that amplifies grievance and blame, and celebrates victimhood? For every one of us who is digitally mainlined a steady drug of grievance and victimhood through our phones, it's time to acknowledge that we are all addicts. And as long as we are addicted to grievance, resentment, blame and anger, we will seek to feed our addiction with more from media 'pushers' who masquerade as commentators and politicians: Liars, grifters and stokers of grievance who mimic cult leaders and false prophets with their outlandish fact-free statements designed to anger, outrage or instill fear, instead of promote policies that address our best interests. We will remain on the self-destructive path all addicts travel until they hit rock bottom, and either survive or die, it's a coin toss, kind of like every election.