Though it’s hard, it is important to face the void/emptiness/loneliness/pain inside you, Don’t try to cover over it and flee from it using various addictions, ways to keep busy and distracted, or self-medicating. Plastering over the cracks is never a long-term solution. Like with any addictive behaviour or symptom, it is important to deconstruct it and first understand its personal meaning and function to you, as well as your unique and subjective way of experiencing it.
“Emptiness. The attempt to overcome it by intoxication…intoxication by cruelty…intoxication by blind worship. The attempt to submerge oneself…in any kind of working routine, any silly fanaticism; a confusion of all means, illness as a result of a general lack of moderation” (Nietzsche in Will to Power).
“Addictive behaviour is not inside the person, but takes place between individual and the world, at the point of interaction. ‘The person cuts himself off from possibilities for authentic relatedness, and lives instead in a “wish world”‘ (Heidegger, 1962, 240) – an illusion of escape from insecurity. nothing will ever be enough to satisfy this insatiable need. There is a blind hankering after more and more, but this closes off real possibilities, so the individual loses himself/herself further into the addiction. Entering this closed, unrealistic world, the person seeks omnipotence. When high, the fantasy feels real, anything is possible, and everything is perfect” (61-61)
