0:14 You sit before me not because you are
0:17 broken but because you are asking to
0:20 understand why the same fire keeps
0:24 returning to consume you. And so I must
0:28 begin by saying what few dare to.
0:31 Addiction is not your enemy. It is your
0:33 messenger. It is not here to ruin your
0:36 life, though it may do so if ignored. It
0:38 has come to deliver something from the
0:40 depths of your unconscious that your
0:42 conscious mind has not yet dared to
0:44 face. You see, the psyche is not a
0:46 machine that malfunctions. It is a
0:48 living system. And when it suffers, it
0:51 does not do so at random. The addict,
0:53 whether addicted to alcohol, heroin,
0:57 sex, perfection, or even power, is not
1:00 simply indulging in a destructive habit.
1:03 He is attempting, often blindly, to
1:06 solve a problem of the soul. Let us
1:09 speak clearly. Addiction is not
1:12 weakness. It is a misdirected search for
1:15 wholeness, for something sacred,
1:19 something eternal, something lost. I
1:20 have observed this in countless
1:23 patients. They come to me in torment,
1:25 consumed by compulsions they neither
1:28 understand nor can control. And society
1:32 tells them to just stop. What absurdity.
1:35 They might as well be told to just fly.
1:37 The compulsion is not a choice. It is a
1:39 symptom of a deeper imbalance, a split
1:42 within the self. What lies beneath
1:45 addiction is the shadow. That part of
1:47 you which has been exiled, that part
1:50 which is unacceptable to the ego, which
1:52 you have learned to suppress in order to
1:56 survive. But the shadow does not die. It
1:59 waits. And it speaks in dreams and
2:01 behaviors and suffering. When you drink
2:05 or inject or obsess, you are not simply
2:08 running from pain. You are being pulled.
2:11 Pulled by something ancient, something
2:13 unresolved. Some part of you has been
2:16 starved and it is now devouring whatever
2:19 it can find. But the truth is this. You
2:20 are not addicted to the substance. You
2:22 are addicted to the feeling it gives
2:25 you. Or rather to the part of yourself
2:27 it helps you silence. The alcoholic does
2:30 not crave the drink. He craves the
2:32 forgetting the silence of guilt, the
2:34 stilling of the inner critic, the
2:36 release from the unbearable weight of
2:39 being oneself. Do you see? The behavior
2:41 is only the surface. Beneath it lies a
2:44 sacred question. What in you is crying
2:47 to be seen? I have said before and I
2:50 will say again, every addiction is an
2:53 unconscious attempt at initiation. The
2:55 addict is trying to undergo
2:57 transformation but without guidance,
3:00 without ritual, and without meaning. And
3:04 so the journey becomes destructive. They
3:06 drink not simply to escape but to
3:09 transcend, to touch the eternal, however
3:12 falsely, to dissolve the ego's suffering
3:15 in some imagined oblivion. This is why I
3:18 once told a colleague, you are trying to
3:20 cure the spiritual thirst of man with
3:23 methods that remove his only access to
3:26 the divine. You laugh, but listen. The
3:29 Latin word for alcohol is spiritus. The
3:32 same word for spirit. The same word used
3:34 in sacred rituals as in bottles of
3:38 poison. There is no accident in this.
3:40 The alcoholic is reaching for spirit for
3:42 the divine without knowing it. That is
3:44 why you cannot truly heal addiction by
3:47 removing the substance alone. You must
3:48 replace the counterfeit ritual with a
3:51 true one. You must offer the soul
3:52 something real, something meaningful,
3:55 something holy. I do not speak of church
3:59 doctrine. I speak of the individuation
4:02 process, the deep inner journey by which
4:05 a person becomes whole. You must descend
4:07 into your own darkness, meet your own
4:10 demons, and retrieve what has been lost.
4:12 Addiction is a failure of integration.
4:14 It is a symptom of the psyches cry for
4:18 unity. The ego and the unconscious are
4:20 at war. The conscious mind tries to
4:22 maintain control, to suppress, to
4:24 rationalize. But the unconscious will
4:26 not be denied. It will erupt in dreams,
4:29 in symptoms, in behaviors, and sometimes
4:31 in addiction. The addict is often one
4:34 with a powerful unconscious someone with
4:37 enormous energy buried within. But that
4:39 energy has not been welcomed. It has not
4:42 been accepted. It has been shamed,
4:45 feared, and rejected. And so it turns
4:47 against them. You cannot fight the
4:49 shadow with suppression. You must
4:52 dialogue with it. You must invite it in.
4:54 And you must learn what it needs, what
4:58 it fears, what it knows. Uh there is a
5:01 myth that healing is about becoming
5:04 better. Number healing is about becoming
5:07 whole. That is a very different thing.
5:11 Wholeness includes what was broken, what
5:14 was hidden, what was denied. And so I
5:16 tell you, when a man tells me he cannot
5:19 stop drinking, I do not ask, "Why are
5:23 you so weak?" I ask, "What power is this
5:25 drink giving you?" What part of you is
5:29 so deeply unmet that only oblivion feels
5:31 safe? This is the truth few wish to
5:35 face. Addiction is not random. It is not
5:38 meaningless. It is not merely chemical.
5:41 It is a map. The symptom shows you the
5:44 place of the wound. The wound shows you
5:46 the place of the story and the story
5:50 shows you the soul's unfinished task.
5:52 You see, uh the unconscious is not
5:55 merely personal. It is archetypal. It is
5:58 vast. Within you are myths older than
6:00 language patterns of exile, return,
6:03 fall, and resurrection. The addict is
6:04 living out a mystical narrative without
6:06 knowing it. They are lost in the
6:09 underworld seeking light and they cannot
6:11 escape until they know the name of the
6:13 god who has taken them there. In ancient
6:15 times a person who behaved like the
6:17 addict would be brought to the priest,
6:19 the shaman, the ritual. Today they are
6:23 brought to jail or worse left alone with
6:26 their shame. This is a tragedy because
6:29 addiction is a spiritual crisis. It is
6:32 the soul's way of saying I need help and
6:34 the ego's way of saying I don't want to
6:37 feel this pain. But someone must listen.
6:40 Someone must answer. There is no healing
6:42 without truth. And the truth, dear
6:44 friends, is this. You will never
6:46 overcome your addiction until you face
6:49 what it protects you from. You must go
6:52 into that pain. You must grieve what was
6:54 lost. You must stand before your own
6:56 abyss, not to fall in, but to understand
6:59 what calls from its depths. The paradox
7:02 is this. What you fear in yourself is
7:04 often the source of your freedom. The
7:05 part you have rejected the wound you
7:07 carry may be the very place where your
7:10 soul will blossom if given the chance.
7:12 You cannot silence the unconscious. You
7:14 can only listen to it and allow its
7:17 messages to be heard. Addiction is one
7:21 such message and once heard, it changes.
7:24 But not before. You must understand that
7:25 the psyche is always trying to heal
7:28 itself. Even when it appears
7:30 destructive, even when it seems to move
7:32 toward ruin, there is in it a striving
7:35 toward wholeness. But the root it
7:39 chooses when denied awareness becomes
7:44 dark, distorted, and dangerous.
7:46 Addiction is the shadows ritual, a
7:49 corrupted right of passage enacted in
7:51 isolation, without witness, without
7:54 consciousness, and without meaning. You
7:56 see, in ancient cultures, young men and
7:58 women were led through initiation.
8:01 They faced death, symbols of darkness,
8:03 trials that shattered the ego. They were
8:06 broken open not to be destroyed, but to
8:08 be reassembled into someone larger than
8:11 the sum of their wounds. But today the
8:13 modern person has no such guidance. He
8:16 faces the suffering of life and he finds
8:20 no symbol, no story, no structure. So
8:21 the psyche constructs its own
8:25 initiation. But it does so blindly. The
8:27 addict then becomes a self initiate
8:30 without a guide. And that is the most
8:32 dangerous path of all. So what is to be
8:35 done? You must become your own guide or
8:37 find one who knows the way. You must
8:40 walk down into your dreams. Yes, your
8:42 dreams, for they are the royal road to
8:46 the unconscious. The dreams do not lie.
8:48 They show you in symbol what the
8:51 conscious mind refuses to see. And when
8:53 addiction arises in the dream, perhaps
8:55 as a devouring animal, a bottomless
8:58 well, a stranger offering poison. This
9:00 is not madness. This is the soul
9:02 speaking in the only language it has
9:04 left. A man once came to me who could
9:07 not stop gambling. He had lost his
9:10 family, his home, nearly his life. But
9:12 in his dreams, he saw himself again and
9:14 again at a table, cards in hand, money
9:17 disappearing, always alone. And behind
9:19 him, always behind him, stood his
9:23 father, silent, watching. We worked not
9:26 on his behavior, but on his dream. And
9:29 what he discovered was this. He was not
9:32 gambling for wealth. He was gambling for
9:36 approval, for love, for a voice from the
9:39 past that never came. And the casino had
9:41 become his temple, his altar, a place
9:44 where he hoped unconsciously to finally
9:48 be chosen. Do you understand? Addiction
9:50 is symbolic. It is not about the thing
9:52 itself. It is about what the thing
9:55 means. Until you understand the symbol,
9:58 you cannot dissolve the behavior. You
10:00 may remove it temporarily, but another
10:03 will rise in its place because the
10:05 psyche will not rest until its wound is
10:08 witnessed. I must say it again, the
10:12 wound must be witnessed, not judged, not
10:16 shamed, not analyzed into oblivion, but
10:19 seen. When you bring light into a room
10:22 that has long been dark, the shadows do
10:24 not vanish all at once. They recoil.
10:27 They resist. But eventually with enough
10:30 patience they are integrated and so too
10:32 with the shadow within. You do not
10:35 conquer your addiction by force. You
10:37 integrate the part of yourself that was
10:40 using it to survive. Yes, survive.
10:44 Because the ego is a clever architect.
10:45 When the soul cannot bear the weight of
10:48 what it has endured, it builds defenses.
10:50 And sometimes those defenses are
10:54 behavioral, compulsive, uh addictive.
10:56 But always always they are designed to
10:58 protect something innocent inside of
11:02 you. Let me ask you plainly who in you
11:05 is using the addiction to survive. Is it
11:08 the child? The orphaned emotion? The
11:11 rage no one let you speak? The grief no
11:13 one helped you carry? Who is crying
11:15 beneath the behavior? When you can
11:18 answer that question, you begin the true
11:22 journey. Now you may ask, what happens
11:25 if I stop? If I remove the substance,
11:29 the behavior, what fills the void? And
11:31 this, my friends, is the most terrifying
11:35 part. The void, the silence, the place
11:38 where the pain rushes back. But I tell
11:41 you, do not be afraid of the void. It is
11:44 not the enemy. It is the womb. The same
11:46 place where all transformation begins.
11:49 The void is where the ego dissolves.
11:51 where the old identity, the one built
11:53 around pain, avoidance, numbing, falls
11:57 away. And in that silence, the self
12:00 begins to emerge. Now, do not mistake
12:03 the ego for the self. They are not the
12:06 same. The ego is who you think you are.
12:08 The self is who you are, whole,
12:11 timeless, vast. The ego fears change.
12:14 The self demands it. The ego clings to
12:17 the addiction. The self uses even the
12:20 addiction as a doorway to awakening. I
12:22 have seen this many times. A patient
12:26 comes weary, lost, ashamed, and yet
12:29 within them burns a quiet ember. A
12:31 whisper from the self, saying, "There is
12:34 more for you than this." That is what
12:36 brings them to me. Not their suffering,
12:40 but their hope. Hope is not naive. It is
12:42 archetypal. It is part of the soul's
12:45 wisdom. The knowing that no matter how
12:47 dark the night, there is a dawn hidden
12:49 within it. But the dawn cannot come
12:51 unless you face the night. Not bypass
12:53 it, not medicated. Not outthink it. Face
12:57 it. This is what the addict must do. Not
13:00 merely abstain, but descend. Not
13:03 suppress, but inquire. Not run, but
13:05 listen. Listen to what? To the voice
13:08 within. The one that has been silenced
13:11 by shame. The one that remembers who you
13:13 were before the wound. The one that
13:15 still believes you are worthy of
13:17 healing. You may think this is too
13:20 poetic, but let me tell you the psyche
13:24 speaks in poetry. It speaks in symbol,
13:27 myth, dream, metaphor. That is its
13:30 language. And if you do not learn it,
13:32 you will never understand what your
13:34 suffering is trying to say. So let me
13:37 speak plainly as if you were sitting in
13:40 my consulting room. If you're addicted,
13:43 I do not ask you what you're doing. I
13:46 ask you, what pain are you avoiding?
13:48 What truth are you afraid to know? What
13:51 child within you still cries? What part
13:54 of you believes it is unworthy of love?
13:57 These are not casual questions. They are
14:00 sacred. They are the keys to the inner
14:01 chamber, the place where your soul waits
14:04 for you to return. And when you do
14:05 return, when you meet yourself with
14:08 honesty, with grief, with forgiveness,
14:10 the addiction begins to loosen. Not
14:12 because you fought it, but because you
14:15 listen to what it was trying to protect.
14:17 The psyche heals through contact,
14:20 conscious contact with the contents of
14:22 the unconscious. That is the way. And so
14:25 I leave you for now with this truth. You
14:27 do not have to fear your darkness. You
14:29 only have to meet it. And when you do,
14:31 when you greet your shadow as a teacher
14:34 and not a a monster, you will find that
14:36 the addiction was not a curse. It was a
14:39 calling. You have listened, perhaps with
14:42 trembling, perhaps with quiet
14:44 recognition. You have begun to
14:47 understand that the answer to addiction
14:49 is not found in resisting the compulsion
14:52 with brute force, but in entering into
14:54 the sacred dialogue with the self, the
14:57 true self, the one who has been waiting
15:00 patiently beneath the chaos of behavior
15:03 and the rituals of avoidance. Now I must
15:06 take you deeper still because once the
15:08 shadow has been faced, once the inner
15:10 child has been heard, the grief named,
15:13 the protector understood, there comes a
15:16 silence and in that silence a new figure
15:19 arises from the unconscious. It is not
15:21 your old identity. It is not the mask
15:25 you wore. It is not your trauma. It is
15:28 what I've long called the self, the
15:31 center of the total personality, both
15:34 conscious and unconscious, the divine
15:37 image within. Many have misunderstood me
15:40 here. They say, "Dr. Yung, are you
15:43 speaking of God?" Yes, but not a God in
15:45 robes and thunder. I speak of the God
15:48 image that lives within the psyche. The
15:50 self is not your ego ideal. It is not
15:53 your fantasy of perfection. It is the
15:55 wholeness of your being. Even the parts
15:57 you disown, even the pain you've tried
15:59 to bury, even the weakness you call
16:03 failure, all of it integrated alive. And
16:07 it is this self, this numinous presence
16:09 that has been trying to reach you
16:11 through the symptom of addiction. You
16:14 must understand this. The self does not
16:16 speak in the language of commands. It
16:20 speaks in in symbols. And when symbols
16:22 are denied, they become symptoms.
16:25 Addiction is a symbol of separation, a
16:28 sign that something vital has been cut
16:31 off, exiled, pushed into the darkness.
16:33 Do not waste your time merely asking,
16:36 "How can I stop? Instead, ask, what part
16:39 of my soul have I abandoned?" You see,
16:41 we speak of addicts as if they are
16:44 somehow less than. But I tell you,
16:46 addicts are often those with the
16:49 greatest sensitivity, the deepest
16:52 emotional range, the most powerful
16:55 connection to archetypal energy. That is
16:57 precisely why they suffer. Their
17:00 unconscious is vast and loud. And yet
17:02 they live in a world that offers them no
17:05 map, no ritual, no mirror. But now you
17:08 know the truth. The mirror is within.
17:11 The map is the dream. The ritual is the
17:13 act of turning inward. You must become a
17:15 participant in your own healing. You
17:18 cannot be rescued from without. You must
17:22 descend into yourself. The gods once
17:24 lived on Mount Olympus, but now they
17:25 live in the unconscious, waiting for
17:27 your recognition. Take the example of
17:30 the wounded healer, an archetype older
17:32 than civilization. This is not merely
17:35 metaphor. The wounded healer is a
17:38 pattern in the human soul. The one who
17:41 suffers becomes the one who guides. But
17:44 only if they do not run from the wound.
17:47 Only if they enter it, learn from it and
17:49 offer its lesson to others. I have said
17:53 it many times. You are not what has
17:56 happened to you. You are what you choose
17:59 to become. And that choice begins the
18:02 moment you realize the addiction was not
18:05 a detour. It was part of the road. Ah,
18:09 how the ego despises this. The ego wants
18:11 to believe it can control everything,
18:13 shape everything, triumph through effort
18:17 alone. But the self does not demand
18:20 control. It demands surrender to truth.
18:23 It does not ask for perfection. It asks
18:26 for honesty. So let me ask you as
18:29 plainly as I can, what truth do you fear
18:33 most? that you were hurt, that you are
18:35 angry, that you need love, that you are
18:37 terrified of being truly seen. Bring
18:40 that truth into the light. Look it in
18:43 the eyes. Name it. For what is named
18:45 becomes integrated, and what is
18:48 integrated loses its power to destroy.
18:51 You do not need to be perfect to be
18:54 whole. You only need to be real. This is
18:56 where many people falter. They believe
18:59 that healing means becoming pure,
19:01 becoming strong, becoming someone who
19:04 never makes mistakes again. But this is
19:06 the lie of the ego. The self is not
19:10 pure. The self is complete. And to be
19:14 complete is to be human, messy, complex,
19:18 scarred and sacred. You ask me then what
19:21 replaces the addiction? I tell you now
19:24 with gravity, meaning
19:27 replaces addiction, not duty, not
19:31 willpower, not even happiness. Meaning
19:34 what gives your suffering shape, what
19:36 makes your story a myth, not just a
19:40 tragedy, what task, what calling, what
19:43 act of service arises from your pain.
19:45 Until the psyche has meaning, it will
19:47 create compulsion. Because the soul
19:50 cannot live on emptiness and in the
19:52 absence of meaning addiction becomes a
19:54 substitute for initiation. So find what
19:57 matters and I do not mean what is
20:00 fashionable. I mean what burns in you
20:05 quietly or fiercely, a cause, a craft, a
20:08 prayer, a poem, a relationship,
20:11 something that says to your soul, "This
20:13 is why you are here." The addiction will
20:16 not disappear in an instant. The old
20:18 patterns will beckon. The pain will
20:19 whisper. But you are no longer
20:21 unconscious. You now know who is
20:24 speaking. And when the voice of
20:26 addiction calls, you will answer it not
20:30 with obedience, but with dialogue. You
20:33 will say, "I know what you want, but I
20:35 will find it another way." This is
20:39 maturity. This is power. Not to suppress
20:41 the inner world, but to live in
20:44 relationship with it. I tell you
20:47 addiction is not your final identity. It
20:51 is your chrysalis and you yes even you
20:53 are capable of transformation but you
20:56 must choose to awaken. The self has
20:58 always been calling. You have heard me
21:01 speak of shadow and self of wounds and
21:04 symbols of descent and the possibility
21:07 of return. And now we must speak of what
21:10 lies beyond the fire. Of what life might
21:12 become after the compulsion fades, after
21:14 the drink is set down, after the body no
21:16 longer trembles from withdrawal. For
21:19 that moment comes, yes, it does. But
21:22 what will you do with it? You see, many
21:24 fear that without the addiction, they
21:27 will become nothing. They ask, "Who am I
21:30 if I am not this pattern, this pain,
21:32 this endless craving?" It is a
21:36 terrifying question and it is also the
21:39 threshold of rebirth because what they
21:41 are really asking is can I live without
21:44 this identity I have wrapped myself in.
21:48 And I say to them and now to you yes you
21:50 can. But the self that emerges will not
21:52 be the same self that entered the fire.
21:54 You will not return to who you were. You
21:57 cannot. The old self was too small. It
21:59 was constructed to survive, not to
22:01 flourish. But the new self, the
22:04 integrated self has room for truth, for
22:06 beauty, for power, for vulnerability,
22:08 for contradiction. This is the meaning
22:11 of individuation. The sacred process of
22:14 becoming whole. And this wholeness is
22:18 not abstract. It is lived. It is how you
22:22 speak to yourself in the quiet moments.
22:24 How you sit with emptiness without
22:27 rushing to fill it. How you hold grief
22:30 in one hand and gratitude in the other.
22:34 How you say I don't know without shame.
22:36 And how you walk through life not as a
22:38 wound but as a witness. There will be
22:41 days when the old patterns whisper. That
22:44 is to be expected. The unconscious never
22:47 forgets. But now you are conscious. Now
22:49 you know the voice when it calls. You no
22:52 longer confuse the wound for identity.
22:54 You recognize a ghost and say, "I
22:57 remember you, but I no longer need you
22:59 to survive." This is healing, not
23:02 erasia, but relationship. You will begin
23:05 to dream differently. The symbols will
23:07 shift. Where once you saw monsters, now
23:09 you may see guides. Where once you
23:12 drowned, now you walk the shoreline.
23:14 Dreams are mirrors. And as your inner
23:17 life transforms, so too do the
23:19 reflections you receive. And then
23:22 quietly something remarkable happens.
23:24 You begin to sense calling. Not in the
23:27 grandio sense. Not necessarily to become
23:30 a prophet or a healer, although perhaps
23:32 in your own way you are both. But you
23:35 are called to embody meaning. To live in
23:37 alignment with the truths you have
23:40 uncovered. To live with uh depth, with
23:42 kindness, with courage. Do not keep your
23:45 healing to yourself. The one who has
23:48 walked through addiction and emerged
23:50 into consciousness holds a rare
23:52 medicine, not perfection, but
23:55 understanding. You know what it means to
23:58 lose yourself. And now you know what it
24:00 means to find yourself again. Not as you
24:03 were, but as you are becoming. You will
24:05 see others still bound in the cycle,
24:07 still unconscious, still reaching for
24:10 the bottle, the needle, the ritual. Do
24:13 not judge them. They are you from
24:16 another time. Offer your presence, not
24:18 your superiority. Offer your truth, not
24:20 your doctrine. Be the mirror you once
24:24 needed. We do not heal in isolation. We
24:27 heal in relationship to self, to symbol,
24:30 to others. When you share your story,
24:33 you invite another into their own. When
24:36 you speak without shame, you silence the
24:39 tyranny of secrecy. And when you love
24:42 yourself as you are, you teach others it
24:45 is possible. Now I must say something
24:48 that may surprise you. The self, the
24:50 great archetype of wholeness, does not
24:52 care whether you are perfect. It does
24:55 not care whether you never relapse,
24:58 whether you meditate every day, whether
25:01 you always say the right words. The self
25:04 cares that you are awake, that you are
25:07 honest, that you are listening to your
25:10 dreams, to your body, to the symbols
25:12 that arise each day in the small and
25:14 ordinary moments. A conversation, a
25:17 tear, a bird outside the window. These
25:19 are not meaningless. They are messages.
25:22 Life is always speaking. The question
25:25 is, will you hear it? When you do, when
25:27 you live from that place of inner
25:29 listening, you become a different kind
25:32 of being. Not controlled by fear, not
25:35 driven by shame, but animated by
25:38 meaning. You may not realize this now,
25:39 but the journey you have taken from
25:41 compulsion to consciousness is the
25:45 hero's journey. Yes, yours. You
25:48 descended into your own underworld. You
25:51 faced the dragon. You learned its name,
25:54 and you returned not as a savior, but as
25:57 one who knows the truth. The truth is
26:00 simple, and it is sacred. You are not
26:03 broken. You are becoming. And everything
26:04 you thought was failure was really
26:07 initiation. Addiction was not your
26:10 ending. It was the dark womb of your
26:12 beginning. So go now live from that
26:16 knowing. Dream from it. Create from it.
26:19 Forgive from it. And when the shadow
26:22 returns as it will do, not panic. You
26:25 now know its language. You now know your
26:28 own. And that that is freedom. [Music]
