Imagine this happens to you: You come home accompanied by a friend. You are surprised that some of your family members and other friends are already there waiting for you. One of them asks you to sit down with them in the circle they have made. Each of them takes a turn reading something they wrote. You are instructed that you are not allowed to respond until all of them have read what they have written. Each of their prepared statements expresses care and concern about your behavior. They are suggesting that you have an addiction. A lot of tears are shed, and the emotion in the room is thick.
This feels like an ambush and a betrayal to you. How could they do this? you ask yourself. You’re thinking, They’re judging me and attacking me. This is unfair. I can stop whenever I want. I just like doing it. It’s not a problem. I have great willpower. I can control myself. I can do whatever I want, it’s my life. I know lots of people who do it more than me. They just don’t understand . . . They seem dead serious, though, threatening to stop helping you or even associating with you if you don’t stop. How do you respond? What’s the best way to handle this? If you get mad or defensive, then you may lose them. Maybe it’s better to just play along, you think.
Addiction Defined
Addiction can be considered from many different perspectives. The 12-Step community views it from a disease perspective. Gabor Maté, physician and addiction expert, has raised awareness of the value of viewing addiction as a trauma response. Psychologist Bruce Alexander has described addiction as the result of a chronic lack of connection in life. In his book The Biology of Belief, cell biologist and best-selling author Bruce Lipton describes how beliefs can be passed down through the generations, hence it seems possible that some of the beliefs that make people more vulnerable to trying or relying on addictive activities or substances could be the result of a predisposition that stems from the beliefs of previous generations. Other experts focus on the obsessive and compulsive aspects of addiction, while still others emphasize that addiction operates like a chronic conditiongs, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
A Taoist approach suggests it can be useful to view addiction as a response to adopting an overly yang lifestyle, which emphasizes and values extreme and aggressive tendencies, without enough of a yin approach to life to balance it out with gentleness, compassion, and letting go of what is not within our control. Examples of yang tendencies might be moving too quickly, relentlessly driving toward a desired goal without much consideration given to the process that it might take to reach it, and expending energy to reach the goal without taking adequate time to rest.
Without referring to it in terms of yang or yin, the 12-Step community has long recognized that tendency and the need for a lifestyle change. They often use the term “Easy Does It” in their meetings. This is an important direction not just for people who have addictions; it also points to the change that is possible and indeed needed at the level of family, culture, and society if we wish to address the subtle and unconscious motivations behind addictive behavior. Effective prevention strategies need to address this, and not just give out information about the dangers of addiction.
“Easy Does It” Mirrors The Taoist Yin Approach
Taoist concepts point out the paradoxical nature of change, and how adopting an overly yang lifestyle can lead to problems that lead to addictions. Being successful in life is often associated with being a go-getter, someone who “takes the bull by the horns” and makes things happen. Putting effort into life is necessary to get results, of course, but too much aggression can lead to frustration and resentment — disturbed emotional states that are some of the building blocks for what can lead a person to turn to an addictive substance or activity in order to cope.
The survival mechanisms that allow us to deny overwhelming circumstances so we can cope, forget our pain, and simply adapt may also be the mechanisms that can lead to addictive behavior. Addiction seems to exploit these human tendencies, leading us to gravitate to something unhealthy without realizing it.
As Gabor Maté and others have pointed out, trauma and the pileup of many unresolved feelings can also, consciously or unconsciously, push a person to find a powerful way to medicate those feelings. Being active in an addiction means that the normal way of processing emotions is not being allowed to function, so experiences that you would normally process and let go of become more difficult to resolve. As a result, the stuffed emotions pile up. And as more and more emotions get repressed, the need to self-medicate grows.
When people have experiences that shake their faith in themselves or whatever belief systems they have adopted, they become more vulnerable to addiction. If a sense of inner peace is not cultivated, then it will be only a matter of time before the person starts searching for substitutes for that peace.
Addiction Is Like A Clogged Carburetor
Examining addiction from an energetic perspective, it becomes clear that the undigested emotions resulting from an addictive lifestyle will, like a clogged carburetor, block the energy flow in the channels and create an urgent need for the person to find something that can relieve them from their pain, even if only temporarily. The internal weight of those clogged emotions and the energy it takes to numb those painful emotions as much as possible drains a lot of energy.
Addiction translates into the addict looking and becoming older than their relative age would indicate, as their responses to life situations become more reactive and negative.
Addictive substances and activities may provide temporary relief, but they eventually plug up the internal channels even more, with toxic consequences as a result. If the internal processing system remains blocked for a long time, and the solutions to address it are primarily addictive ones, new patterns that connect the problem feelings to addictive solutions become more solid over time. Since we are built to survive and to be internally consistent, eventually the internal core programming becomes permanently changed to accept the addictive solutions as necessary and required for proper functioning.
Addiction prevention and recovery, from a Taoist perspective, involves keeping the energy channels open and clear or reopening and clearing them out again if there is a need to do so. Then, the person can feel like they have space to deal with their life circumstances without having to resort to drastic measures to cope along the way.
The Consequences Of Addiction
The effects of addiction are many and varied. The virtues, or higher qualities, of the vital yin organs (the heart, the spleen, the lungs, the kidneys, the sexual organs, and the liver), which store physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy, become obscured by the buildup of toxicity. This translates into the addict looking and becoming older than their relative age would indicate, as their responses to life situations become more reactive and negative
As the energy channels that are connected to those yin organs become increasingly blocked over time with an overload of toxic energy, the result is chronic physical pain and a lack of well-being on all levels. The body’s systems cry out for relief from the physical and emotional pain, and demand that the substances or activities to which the person is addicted be provided. As a result, despite knowing better, people end up going back to their addictions in an attempt to give themselves relief from their symptoms.
When someone is actively engaged in feeding their addiction, they are not thinking as clearly and rationally as they would under normal circumstances. Their higher cognitive functions in the cerebral cortex are essentially hijacked and taken for a joyride. Addictions are progressive. They get worse the more the person feeds them, and it becomes harder and harder to stop. The yin organs then produce a variety of negative emotional states that lead to a personality of addiction that is named “Slick” in 12-Step meetings. This refers to the predictable combination of undesirable tendencies in addicts such as lying, manipulating, self-centeredness, and being impatient and demanding.
Which Approach To Treating Addiction Is The Correct One?
All of them are correct to a certain extent, and none of them completely capture the mysterious nature of the problem enough to completely cure it. They all have value in terms of guiding treatment, and there are a few things they all agree on. They all recognize that addiction is not a problem of losers or a weak character. It is also generally accepted that addiction is not something that a person wants. All approaches agree that there is no way to know if someone will cross the line into addiction. It is also universally accepted that recovery from addiction is difficult and complicated.
Taoism does not to attempt to draw lines of distinction to include some approaches and definitions and exclude others. Instead, we must take what is valuable from each perspective, and integrate the different approaches so that a personalized and flexible routine of healthy activities can be created that is short, simple and portable, but comprehensive enough to keep you on track.
The Tao of Addiction and Recovery by Mantak Chia and Doug Hilton, published by Inner Traditions International and Bear & Company, © 2025. All rights reserved. http://www.Innertraditions.com. Reprinted with permission of publisher.
Mantak Chia founded the Healing Tao System in North America in 1979 and developed it worldwide as European Tao Yoga and Universal Healing Tao. The author of more than 60 books, he has taught and certified tens of thousands of students and instructors and tours the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia annually, giving workshops and lectures. http://www.mantakchia.com/
Doug Hilton has been a counselor for over thirty years with extensive experience in trauma, addictions, and couples and family issues. A certified Universal Healing Tao instructor, he has been integrating Chi Kung into his counseling practice for more than 20 years. https://fullcirclehealing.ca/
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