Society & Culture
What if the peace you found in your addiction was actually a spiritual experience just with the wrong directions?
Clive, Matt and Dom go somewhere most recovery podcasts won't touch. From Matt's near death experience in a formless void that didn't match his religious programming, to the Catholic church abuse figures in France, to whether complete abstinence is a realistic or even healthy expectation, this is an honest, curious and at times uncomfortable conversation about religion, shame, spirituality and what we're all actually searching for underneath the addiction.
Carl Jung told one of AA's founders that alcoholism was a spiritual thirst at the wrong address. William James wrote in 1882 that substances give temporary access to states that feel genuinely transcendent. Gabor Maté's whole later work goes there too. This episode asks the same question they were all circling, what were you actually chasing?
The episode closes with an original song written from the themes of the conversation, a therapeutic piece that walks through the confusion of being human, the systems that fragment us, and what it might feel like to finally choose your own direction.
For more tools, therapeutic content and the Sonic Alchemy songwriting experience visit qrioustherapy.com
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