Introduction
At the heart of every craving lies a question: what are we really searching for? Is it the chemical release of dopamine, the fleeting warmth of love, the numbing haze of marijuana, or the spark of pornography? Each of these offers a momentary high, a temporary shift in our inner weather. But beneath the surface lies something deeper: a spiritual void, a forgetting of who we are.
The journey of healing is not about condemning our escapes. It is about recognizing why we reach for them, and gently learning to return home to ourselves.
The Science: The Body’s Chemistry of Relief
Our bodies are wired for survival, and survival depends on pleasure and relief. Neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin reward us when we eat, bond, or accomplish something. These “feel-good” chemicals are not bad, they are essential.
Yet as Dr. Gabor Maté observes, “The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain?” When life delivers trauma, grief, or emptiness, the same chemical circuits that were designed for balance can be hijacked. What begins as healthy regulation becomes a cycle of compulsive relief-seeking.
In depression, for example, the brain’s dopamine pathways are often underactive. Pornography, masturbation, or substance use can temporarily flood the system with stimulation, offering a counterfeit cure. The high feels like hope, but it fades, leaving us emptier than before.
Psychology: Escapism as Shadow
Carl Jung once wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” When we avoid our pain through chemicals, distractions, or compulsions, we are not addressing the wound, we are covering it with noise.
This avoidance creates a shadow self, the parts of us we’d rather not face. Escapism is the ego’s clever attempt to dodge the shadow. But every escape leaves us further from wholeness. The more we chase the chemical high, the more distant we feel from the soul’s quiet center.
Spiritual Insight: Remembering Who We Are
Across wisdom traditions, the teaching is the same: our suffering comes not from pain itself, but from forgetting our essence.
- The Buddha taught that clinging is the root of suffering. Every grasp for escape keeps the wound open.
- The Bhagavad Gita reminds us that detachment is not withdrawal, but freedom from being enslaved by desires.
- Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), a reminder that fulfillment is not found in external highs, but in remembering our inner ground.
Escapism is forgetting. Healing is remembering.
Pain vs. Escapism: A Story of Healing
The journey of Antara Pathways’ founder offers a living example of this distinction. For nearly a decade, marijuana was part of his recovery following cancer, a laterally rotated femur that pinched his sciatic nerve, and spinal injuries including a herniated disc and a broken L5.
He did not turn to marijuana for escapism, but for pain management, using it as a tool to endure while his body healed through surgery, rehabilitation, and yoga. Over time, as his femur was reset into its socket and his back strengthened enough to support his frame, he was able to gradually wean himself off the plant.
His story highlights a crucial truth: the difference is not in the substance, but in the purpose. Used consciously, tools can support healing. Used unconsciously, they can become vehicles for escape. Physical pain can be treated, strengthened, and transformed; emotional emptiness, however, cannot be numbed away. It must be faced, held, and integrated.
The Turning Point: From Escape to Inner Work
Escapism feels like relief, but it is only delay. True healing requires what the mystics call inner work:
- Sitting with discomfort instead of fleeing it.
- Listening to the shadow rather than silencing it.
- Returning, again and again, to the present moment where the soul waits.
As Rumi wrote:
“Don’t get lost in your pain. Know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
When we stop chasing the high, we begin to feel the depths. And in those depths, we rediscover the self that was never broken, only forgotten.
Conclusion: Letting Go to Return
This is not about shame or guilt. It is about honesty. Every one of us has reached for escapes. Every one of us knows the sweetness and the sting of temporary relief.
But at Antara Pathways, we invite a different way: to let go of the chase and return to the stillness of being. When we face the void instead of fleeing it, we discover it is not empty after all, it is full of presence, love, and Source.
Escapism delays. Presence heals. And in healing, we remember who we truly are.
