The blight of addiction

Mar 15, 2015 Editorial

A major culprit for crime and corruption is addiction to drugs and alcohol. Addiction starts with the repeated experience of the same sense object and this creates a sense of craving for it. Leaving the habit becomes painful, but having it does not give you any bliss, or ecstasy. Nobody is born with a craving, but you have started a habit within you that has created the craving.
Drinking coffee every day is not carrying you to heaven, but leaving it gives you a headache. Similarly, all those who are into alcohol and drugs, look at their faces, they are not in an ecstatic state of consciousness filled with joy. In fact it is the other way around; there is no joy on an alcoholic’s face.
That joy and innocence with which one is born has been robbed, washed out. So alcoholism, or any type of drug addiction, is the result of repeated experience, or association of a particular sense with the object of sense. I see people who smoke marijuana — look at their faces— there is no joy, no vibrancy, no radiance and they have no aura.
If you go to a Kumbh Mela, you will find a lot of sadhus who smoke hookah, charas, opium, but this is far from anything you would call spiritual. They are completely oblivious of everything else in the world. This is not the sign of enlightenment.
There is a saying in Sanskrit, ‘An intelligent person spends his time in knowledge, music, literature, science, and in bringing people together. But the foolish always enjoy spending their time indulging in vyasanam, addictions, altercations and fights.
All these recreational drugs just destroy your body. It will temporarily give you a high that just takes you off from the mundane to a seemingly subtle feeling.
There are three ways to overcome addictions: Love, fear and greed. If you have alcohol and cigarette addiction, and I tell you that you will get one million dollars if you don’t smoke for one month, you will stop. Won’t you? Greed can check your bad habit. Or if you promise someone you love, even then you will get over addictions. Third is fear. If I say, you will die in a month if you do this, you will not do it. Fear can stop an addiction. I prefer love over the other two. All those who are using drugs, tell them to do pranayama, meditation and Sudarshan Kriya, and the addictions will drop easily.
A villager complained that he was having a headache, and so he asked his friend, ‘What should I do?’ His friend told him, ‘Just drink some alcohol.’ He was surprised. He said, ‘If I drink alcohol, my headache will go?’ His friend said, ‘Why will it not go? My land went, my job went, and my wife’s jewellry have also gone. Everything has gone with alcohol; a headache is no big deal!’
So when people are under the influence of intoxicants, they don’t know what they are doing. As mothers and sisters and men of wisdom, you should all stop our younger generation from getting addicted to any of these intoxicants that are harmful for health and wealth. Together, all of us can make a change and we can build a better, safer and beautiful society.
Malaysia has a way of dealing with those who seem bent on foisting narcotic drugs on the society. It executes the drug carrier. The international community which is waging a war on drugs, or so it says, is often inclined to beg for the life of the captured drug mule. Guyana has its drug addicts and its drug mules and its drug dealers. As fate would have it the dealers focus on markets overseas, the mules on the few dollars that are on offer and the few addicts have long been lost to the society.

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The blight of addiction

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