• How we see the world determines the world that we live in. The Buddha was a great psychologist in that he recognized that our perceptions shaped the world that we live in.
• What he didn’t say, and that’s where modern psychology comes in, is that before, with our mind, we create our world, the world creates our minds.
• Buddha's mother died before he was a week old. So, he’s lost his most important relationship and his life began with suffering.
• He spent all of his life trying to find the nature of suffering and how to transcend suffering and how to get beyond it.

Addiction manifests in any behavior that a person enjoys, finds relief in, and therefore, craves in the short term but suffers negative consequences in the long term, and doesn’t give up despite the negative consequences.

Addiction is about behavior not about the substances. 

It could be related to:

• cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, 
• fentanyl, marijuana, nicotine, alcohol
• sex, gambling, internet, relationships, shopping, eating, extreme sports, working out, pornography...

Addiction is not:

• genetic disorder
• primary brain disorder
• is not a choice

Instead of asking why the addiction, why the pain.

Adverse childhood experience:

• physical or sexual or emotional abuse, a divorce, a parent being jailed, violence in the family, a parent being evicted, a parent being mentally ill, a parent dying.

For each of these adverse childhood experiences, the risk of:

• addiction goes up exponentially
• autoimmune disease goes up
• depression, ADHD and relationship problems, goes up

A trauma isn't:

• A divorce when you were small, and your parents fighting
• Your mother’s depression
• Your father’s alcoholism 
• Your parents’ argumentation 
• Physical or sexual abuse or something else

The trauma is what happens inside of you as result of these traumatic events.

You get disconnected from your emotions, and you get disconnected from your body, and you have difficulty being in the present moment. 

You develop a negative view of your world and a negative view of yourself and a defensive view of other people. 

The trauma of omission where the parents, not that they didn’t love you, not that they didn’t do their best, but they were too stressed, traumatized, distracted themselves.