What can Someone to do Come out of Addiction?

IExcerpt from a video of Maitreya DadashreejiI

Question:

Today there are many young people addicted to things: alcohol, drugs and also screen addiction. My question is: do these addictions come from samskaras (experience/imprints of past)? If they do, will the spiritual practices help get rid of them? My basic question is, can someone overcome addiction?

Dadashreeji:

This is a good question. As you mentioned about drug addiction and screen addiction: there are industries and businesses which feed and encourage these addictions worldwide. It is systematic.

This is not just the country’s (India) problem but all of humanity’s problem. This is especially true for young people. It is the truth that the young generation is stuck.

We have been in denial for a long time. The percentage is growing with time. Young people on TV, in sports, education and entertainment fields have a higher rate of drug addiction. There is addiction in cities as well as the suburbs. Also, rural areas around cities have drug addiction.

We need to accept this problem, that the younger generation is really entangled in addiction. When we think within the country, we know we need to resolve this issue/problem. We need to take this as a Sankalp (intention) to solve it. So, we have as well taken this Sankalp (intention) and similarly many other centers are working for many years.  While doing this - the person who is addicted needs to have the emotion/feeling that he has to get over the addiction.

That is the first step. After doing this first step you can follow the 2nd and 3rd step. The institution and the families need to work towards getting those who are addicted to the step where he acknowledges the addiction problem and want to be free from it. As per our thinking,  everyone in this country needs to work towards this problem on a priority basis. All the institutions/centers have to work to fix this issue especially among the young. So, the next step to fix the problem is the treatment part. As part of the treatment you can do counseling, you talk about it. Next part to this is medical treatment which can work as well. 

Third step is Spiritual practices. Different meditation practices can also help recover from addiction. The fourth step is the Spiritual process which when done can also set one free from addiction. You can do all these steps as a whole. So, basically someone counsels the person, gives medication , provides spiritual practices like mediation practices and does Spiritual process. The Spiritual process that we talk about is to remove the source/root of the addition, it works on the source and tries to correct it. When you try to remove the root/source it eradicates cravings/wishes of doing drug, substance abuse forever. They will see others doing drugs but they will not get impacted or return to the habit. 

So, it is possible that the addiction is linked with samskaras (experiences/impressions of the past). The environment around you influences you. A good environment impacts you and so does a bad one. We need to help the youth in their progress and guide them. This way it can be completely cured, corrected. We can fix this. From our side we definitely try and will keep on trying. Consider all this as addiction, not specific like drug or screen addiction but consider it as an overall habit. A bad habit. We need to remove this bad habit from inside from its root. When removed from the root, this will get rid of the addiction problem. And, it will be resolved forever.  

Full video highlight available here🔗

https://youtu.be/XDi3U4PWT3M?si=K4n5WtCzY6NtVeNF