Goa’s affliction with Process Addictions - Soter

[The edited version of this article is published in oHeraldo dated 7th February, 2015]

Truth is always frightening, more so for a society afflicted by the disease of addiction. Abuses and rejection on any counter view point and refusal to consider the possibility of oneself being a part of the problem are pointers of an addictive system. If healing or course correction is to ever happen, then realization of the problem and admitting the truth becomes inevitable. The resistance to Pope Francis in his attempts to clean up the Vatican Curiae needs to also be understood in the context of addiction. If one is humble enough to admit, the 15 ailments of the Vatican Curiae as pointed out by the Pope do have semblance with the ailments plaguing Goan society. For someone who has a fair understanding about drug and alcohol addictions (Substance Addiction), the 15 ailments are symptoms of what is clinically called ‘Process Addictions’(PAs).

Substance Addictions are perhaps easier to talk about publicly but addressing PAs could be a complex and complicated matter. Addiction is a cunning and baffling disease. Some clinical psychologists, attribute PAs to the addictive system promoted by a distorted American dream. This is now increasingly being imitated as the great Indian dream of ‘Sab ke saath, sab ka vikas’. All of us can be attached to objects but the problem arises when these attachments become unhealthy and serve destructive functions. The clinical psychologist Anne W. Schaef says, ‘the function of addiction is to keep us out of touch with what is really going on.’ Tackling drug and alcohol addicts and their families may be far easier but intervening in a society that has been trapped by process addiction could be even more difficult and frustrating than landing on the planet Pluto. If denial of a drug addict to admit his addiction is so great, then one can well imagine the denial of PAs when compulsions and obsessions with gambling, power, money, sex, religion, music, entertainment, fooding, shopping, worry and the rest are not recognized as damaging to society.

If carefully observed, most of our social and political problems seem to stem from this disease of PAs. The ‘Tu Tu Main Main’ and never ending refrain of ‘Yeh dil maange more’ behavior type of us citizens could well describe this unhealthy system. Some psychologists declassify this addictive system into ‘addiction of inclusion’ and ‘addiction of exclusion’. We in society are caught either way, some because they are included in the game and others because they are excluded from participation. Just as addicts and their families always hope that tomorrow will be better, similarly PAs leave society constantly dreaming about ‘Acche Din’. There is this never ending chase to feel good. In the process, we are deadened and numb to our feelings of pain, anger, loneliness and so on. The vicious cycle of earning and spending to feel good goes on endlessly. We first chased dreams that 15 industrial estates across Goa would generate employment but we are still dreaming about jobs from Mopa airport and IT parks.  From Liberation, to Non-merger, to Statehood, and now to Special Status, our politicians and commerce chambers continue pulling our strings. Irrespective of all the cursing and swearing against politicians we keep electing scoundrels without realizing how our addicted minds work at every election. This is no different from families of drug addicts who constantly complain against the addict but yet refuse to let go of him. This is why we ‘jump from the frying pan into the fire’ and believe it to be ‘Change’, ‘Parivartan’ or ‘Acche Din’.