Up: [[Compulsion]] Related: [[Addicts Reach for Spirit]] Created: 2026-04-02 > [!Orbit] Elizabeth Gilbert in *All the Way to the River* > … addiction is addiction is addiction — all the ways in which people binge, hoard, numb, act out, control, and self-medicate are just equally desperate attempts to cover up the same deep spiritual pain. (p. 476) As Elizabeth Gilbert says, the nature of the addiction is irrelevant. The initiating pain of all of them is spiritual (see [[Addicts Reach for Spirit]]) and the neural pathways used for all addictions are the same ones that are used for pain relief, motivation, and reward.