or stay up late playing online games, they need a little bit more the next
time.
The reason why people need more drugs or more shopping or more
affairs is that the chemical rush that’s created from those activities activates
the receptor sites on the outside of their cells, which “turns on” the cells.
But if receptor sites are continually stimulated, they get desensitized and
shut off. So they need a stronger signal, a bit more stimulation, to turn them
on the next time—it takes a bigger chemical high to produce the same
effects.
So now you’ve got to bet $25,000 instead of $10,000 because otherwise,
there’s no thrill. Once a $5,000 shopping spree does nothing for you, you’ve
got to max out two credit cards so you can feel that same rush again. All of
this is to make the feeling of who you really are go away. Everything you
do to get the same high, you have to keep doing more of, with increasing
intensity. More drugs, more alcohol, more sex, more gambling, more
shopping, more TV. You get the idea.
Over time, we become addicted to something in order to ease the pain or
anxiety or depression we live by on a daily basis. Is this wrong? Not really.
Most people do these things because they just don’t know how to change
from the inside. They are only following the innate drive to get relief from
their feelings, and unconsciously they think their salvation comes from the
outside world. It has never been explained to them that using the outer
world to change the inner world makes things worse ... it only widens the
gap.
And let’s say that our ambition in life is to become successful and to
accumulate more things. When we do, we reinforce who we are, without
ever addressing how we really feel. I call this being possessed by our
possessions. We become possessed by material objects, and those things
reinforce the ego, which needs the environment to remind itself of who it is.
If we wait for anything outside us to make us happy, then we are not
following the quantum law. We are relying on the outer to change the inner.
If we are thinking that once we have the wealth to buy more things, then we
will be overjoyed, we’ve got it backward. We have to become happy before
our abundance shows up.
And what happens if addicts can’t get more? They feel even angrier,
more frustrated, more bitter, more empty. They may try other methods—add
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