For many of us who have spent years in recovery groups we acknowledge that our inability to heal does not stop our unresolved feelings from needing to express themselves.

For many of us who have spent years in recovery groups we acknowledge that our inability to heal does not stop our unresolved feelings from needing to express themselves. Lacking healing as an option, these feelings instead express themselves as symptoms in our life, of which addiction is just one subset. The purpose of addiction is to divert and assuage painful, upwelling feelings into a seemingly comfortable alternative without allowing them to become conscious. In the short-run this feels much more placid than healing, but in the long-run it only prolongs underground psychic misery and adds new consequences to our already troubled lives.