# Addiction > Addiction is framed as an attempt to fill an inner emptiness following from projecting power onto external objects rather than as clinical diagnosis or treatment. - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/addiction # Addiction *An unbranded bottle-like vessel casts a distorted shadow beside a seated figure* In this exchange, Bashar frames compulsive addiction as an attempt to fill an inner emptiness that follows from believing power is located in things outside oneself. The substance or behavior is therefore treated as a symbol onto which power has been projected, rather than as the power itself. > — Autumn (qa-3), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) ## Projected power and perceived lack Bashar connects the urge for "more, more, more" to a learned sense that one does not already have what is needed. In his account, taking that projected power back means recognizing that the projection was made with one's own power in the first place; it is a change in self-definition, not an increase in external supply. > — Autumn (qa-3), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) He explicitly distinguishes responsibility from blame: the invitation is to recognize choice and therefore freedom, not to condemn oneself for the pattern. That distinction matters inside his framework because calling the pattern uncontrollable would again place its agency outside the person. > — Autumn (text), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) ## Awareness, definitions, and the preferred self *A revealed knot lies beside a hand gently loosening a separate slack cord* Bashar uses a deliberately narrow definition of a habit: something done without knowing it is being done. Once it is noticed, he says, the remaining difficulty is the definition or assumption that stopping must be difficult, rather than an inherent force in the circumstance. > — Autumn (qa-4), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) For the questioner who still wants a technique, the proposed move is imaginative rather than procedural: form a sensory picture of the self one would prefer to be, give that self the situation, and mirror what that self does. This is presented as a way to enact a changed definition of self, not as a clinical protocol. > — Autumn (qa-5), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) ## Practical implications Within this teaching, a learner can examine where they have assigned power to an external object or behavior, name the definition that makes the pattern seem necessary or difficult to stop, and describe the preferred self more positively than merely as the absence of a struggle. > — Autumn (qa-3), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) > — Autumn (qa-4), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) > — Autumn (qa-5), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/autumn) This is a source-grounded account of Bashar's perspective, not medical or behavioral-health advice, diagnosis, or a substitute for qualified care. ## Representative passages The idea in general for any sort of compulsive addiction, first of all, is the belief that has been ingrained in most of you since birth, that the power is not within you, but is in the things around you.— Bashar, If you know you have a habit, you don't have it anymore by definition. Because a habit is something you do that you don't know you're doing.— Bashar, If you have any situation in your life and you are not sure how to handle it, create the you you prefer to be. Invest it with life. Use all your senses.— Bashar, ## Related - [Habits & Addiction](https://sassani.app/topic/habits-and-addiction) - [Self-Empowerment](https://sassani.app/topic/self-empowerment) - [Definitions & Beliefs](https://sassani.app/topic/definitions-and-beliefs) - [Healing](https://sassani.app/topic/healing) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/addiction. The HTML page is the source of truth.