Addictive Demands

by Gregory Allen Butler

I don’t know of anybody who is entirely free of addictions. Sure, not everyone drinks or smokes or does drugs. Those are just the obvious ones. You might want to call them addictive demands.

Let me describe what I mean by an addictive demand. They are anything that your happiness or poise depends upon. For example, some people get emotionally upset if their sports team loses. Their day gets ruined. That is an addictive demand. People who get distraught if it rains have an emotional addictive demand. An addictive demand creates pain and suffering when it comes into conflict with what is.

Right now I am dealing with an addictive demand that my cat doesn’t get on the dining room table. It seems like he has turned it into a game to see if he can get me upset. If it’s a game, he’s winning. For me to keep my poise, I need to uplevel it.

To uplevel an addiction is to make it a preference. To prefer that my team wins the basketball game means that I would be happy if they did, but I won’t get bent out of shape if they lose. After all, no team has winning streaks that last forever. To prefer that my cat not get on the table means that even he does I’m still going to have a great day. After all, he’s a cat.

Addictive demands are eliminated through awareness. Once in a while my wife Maggie will say something like, "It sounds like you have an addictive demand going on." And if I can see it, I’ll admit it and try to uplevel it. That is a great way to smooth the waters if you are agitated. But it only works if you are committed to being free from addictions.

I first came across this principle in Ken Keyes, Jr.’s book A Conscious Person’s Guide to Relationships. A great deal of the books focus is on how people become addicted and how they can uplevel it.

He quotes the Third Patriarch of Zen, "To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind." How true that is.

Why should I become upset when someone isn’t behaving like I want them to?

Here is how Ken Keyes expressed it:

…an addiction is an emotion-backed demand, model or expectation. For example, if I get angry when you keep me waiting, I am in touch with an addiction. My feelings of anger, fear, frustration or any separating emotions are the tip-off as to whether or not I am addicted. I can tell whether I have an addiction by my gut-level feelings—not by looking at what people are saying or doing.

Does that ring any bells? I have an addiction that people arrive on time, especially people who are chronically late. If someone is due at 5 pm and 5:15 rolls around, I am upset. But what good does that do? Addictive demands such as these are great indicators of resistance to what is, or the present moment. It puts a stranglehold on the expression of the heart. The mind has taken over. You lose contact with your source of being.

Addictive demands are evidence of not being accepting of the present moment. Some people really take this to the extreme. If something happens that they don’t like, their resistance takes them to the point of being angry with God. Some curse the universe. Some demonstrate the degree that they are upset and commit suicide. All of this would be unnecessary if they were able to uplevel the demand to a preference. This is consciousness raising work.

If you have a partner who is committed to consciousness work and who also would like to live without addictive demands, then you have a golden opportunity. Give each other permission to call each other on it. Soon you’ll discover what is truly important in your life. You’ll find that you heart doesn’t ever have to shut down, that you can love people unconditionally.

When you have love in your life to the degree that you love everybody you meet, your addictive demands will start to disappear because you will have a much more fulfilling life.