Comedian Jessa Reed hilariously describes her progression into extreme meth addiction, and how she got out of it.
Confessions of a Juul Junkie by Ahmed Kabil
Gabor Maté, MD, a Canadian physician specializing in addiction, uses the metaphor of the hungry ghost to describe the experience of addiction. In Buddhist cosmology, the realm of hungry ghosts is one of six realms, or ways of being. Hungry ghosts are "creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs, and large, bloated, empty bellies." They are perennially in thrall to an itch they can't ever quite scratch. As Maté puts it:
"This is the domain of addiction, where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects, or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need. We don't know what we need, and so long as we stay in the hungry ghost mode, we'll never know. We haunt our lives without being fully present."
