Dhamma Detox: ordain to recover? (film)

Indie documentary filmmaker Thida Nathalie, featuring Americans Dave and Sarah, Thabarwa Nature Center, Los Angeles; Dr. Gabor Mate; Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Sam Kinison in the 1980s

Drug-abusing stand-up comedian Sam Kinison once pointed out that rehab facilities don't accept credit cards.

If you want to check yourself in to rehab to rid yourself of, say, a bad coke habit, it's going to cost you $10,000.00 cash.

Then he quipped, "You show me a guy with ten thousand dollars in cash, and I'll show you a guy who doesn't have a bad coke habit."

Insatiable craving is the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

It's counterintuitive, but drugs are not addictive. Addiction and Recovery Specialist Dr. Gabor Mate explains: That's not to say that people never become addicted. They do. How could it be?

If drugs (or anything) were addictive, everyone who consumed them would become addicted. Only some do. Those are the people with histories of childhood trauma, which is nearly all of us. That's due to the broad definition of "trauma."

"Ordain." - "I'm hungry! Gimme! Gimme!"

Verbal, sexual, physical, psychological, economic... -- trauma comes in many varieties. We may not remember, but the body remembers. And When the Body Says No, sickness shows up. There's a hidden cost to stress (nervousness, worry, strain, hyper-vigilance, always being on high-alert).

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How can I make merit, by giving or letting go?

Dr. Mate wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction after more than 30 years of treating addicts. He explains in Zeitgeist: Moving Forward how we abuse children, traumatize them, set them up for addiction, get them addicted as adults, then blame, shame, and punish them for those addictions.

Theravada Burmese Buddhism has a long tradition of temporary ordinations. It is a way to make merit, giving young people a chance to learn Buddhism, practice the path intensively, a rite of passage to become an adult (or a human in case one is currently more of a "hungry ghost").