Muslims and Addiction Part 1/4: This Is Controlling Your Motivation & Satisfaction
Asalamualaikum,
my name’s Farooq, and in this get-together, we’re going to discuss Muslims and Addiction Part 1: This Is Controlling Your Motivation & Satisfaction.
Now, you may be wondering if addiction is actually a thing within the Ummah.
Or maybe thinking, “Well, I don’t have an addiction…maybe some bad habits, but not an actual addiction.”
Well, as a Muslim who reverted to Islam a little over 27 years ago, I can tell you that it’s been a long and difficult journey.
Not with Islam, but with myself.
I’m talking about things like, “Why can’t I establish my prayers consistently, every day?”
“Why do I keep falling into the same sins over and over? Why am I drawn to negativity lately?”
Or how can I turn to Allah for forgiveness when I can’t even forgive myself?
We all might have these kinds of thoughts from time to time, some of us more often than others.
I would always tell myself it’s shaytan and just kind of dismiss it.
But deep down, I couldn’t help but think that maybe it was just me.
And thinking, “What’s wrong with me?”
Then after years of personal development and reverse engineering my shortcomings, I found that it is me, but not entirely me.
Now, what if I told you..that you and I have at least one addiction that is negatively affecting our physical and mental health, and ultimately our relationships, how we deal with others, and even our Iman?
What if I told you.. that a molecule in the brain mimics our Nafs and physically rewires our brain? Essentially, setting us up to fail.
And finally, what if I can show a connection between addiction…that molecule..and Shaytan?
This isn’t clickbait or bro science.
May Allah reward you for being curious.
Let’s tie our 🐪
Chapter One: My Kids Call It Boredom
Millions of people across the world are unknowingly submitting to addiction, which ultimately lowers the quality of our lives, and we as Muslims are included.
You might hear the word addiction, and illicit drugs might come to mind, like alcohol, cannabis, or even a type of opioid.
And that’s because we’ve been conditioned to associate the word addiction through an extreme lens when most of us are dealing with one or more severe and harmful addictions without even knowing it.
So what is addiction?
Dr. Anna Lembke, a well-known psychiatrist, defines addiction..in her book ‘Dopamine Nation’ as
“A state in which a person engages in a compulsive behavior or uses a substance despite negative consequences.”
and so this behavior or substance use becomes the person's main priority, negatively affecting their relationships, work, or other vital areas of life.
I would add, for us as Muslims, our Deen.
Again, this is usually due to the fact that we don’t even know we’re addicted to said behavior or substance.
Many of us don’t even know that certain foods we eat are, in fact, addictive substances.
Dr. Gabor Matè, in his book ‘In the Realm of hungry ghosts,’ defines symptoms of addiction as follows:
compulsive engagement with the behavior, a preoccupation with it. So what you find yourself doing often
An impaired control over the behavior. You’re unable or find it very difficult to avoid the behavior.
A persistence or relapse despite evidence of harm. This especially holds true if you’re aware that you’re harming yourself, physically or mentally, or even harming others, and you still continue to persist or relapse.
And finally, a dissatisfaction, irritability, or intense craving when the object—be it a drug, activity, or other goals—is not immediately available.
Or what many of us, especially the youth, like to call boredom when a mobile device or tv isn’t available.
Chapter Two: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
So here are some common addictions that, unfortunately, are on the rise all over the world.
Let’s conduct a self-audit and see if any of the following pertain to you.
Substance Abuse: Includes the use of drugs, such as opioids, alcohol, nicotine, and other substances that can lead to addiction.
Some of those are something you may have never considered, such as processed foods (refined sugar, msg, seed oils, etc).Gambling: This is a behavioral addiction where a person is unable to control their urge to gamble, even when it causes harm to themselves or their loved ones.
Un-Fun Fact: Many of the free mobile games, one that I play included, use patented gambling algorithms to get the player to make in-game purchases.Even within the gaming community, I often hear people use the term ‘Whale,’ a gambling term used to describe a big spender.
I’ll be doing a video on this topic in more detail soon inshAllah.
Internet and Technology: Also referred to as Digital Drugs in a lot of the psychology literature, they can contribute to addictive behaviors, such as compulsive use of social media (which I’ll cover in the next chapter), gaming, and internet browsing.
These behaviors, such as scrolling on your favorite social media app, release a molecule in the brain (which we’ll cover shortly), similar to illicit drugs which lead to addiction.Food Addiction: This refers to an unhealthy relationship with food, often characterized by compulsive overeating, binging on foods that are made up primarily of highly processed carbohydrates and sugar, and experiencing cravings and withdrawal-like symptoms when trying to abstain from those foods.
And! Not only are these foods addictive, but they’re also one of the primary causes of many diseases, such as type-2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.These processed foods, containing seed oils and refined sugars, have the most significant negative impact on our health today—especially Muslims.
InshAllah, more on that in another video when we’ll discuss insulin resistance.
Haram Websites: I try to keep my videos family-friendly and a bit cryptic, if you know what I mean.
This is an addiction that involves compulsive engagement in physical activities or consumption of haram websites, despite harmful consequences on a person's relationships, work, school, or other aspects of life.
Un-Fun Fact: Haram websites are notorious for destroying ambition and motivation.It also creates devastating consequences for the youth when they later come of age to start a family. May Allah protect us. 🤲🏾
Shopping: This compulsive buying disorder involves an uncontrollable urge to shop and spend money, usually leading to financial problems and emotional distress.
Not just for the addict but for the family as well. Now I want to just mention quickly, in that we don’t want to confuse an addiction with a habit.
A habit is a routine of behavior repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously; it’s more of an automatic reaction to a specific situation.
We can have habits that are beneficial (like brushing your teeth) or detrimental (like biting your nails when you're stressed), like me!
However, unlike an addiction, habits don’t typically interfere significantly with a person's life.
Like having significant consequences, withdrawals, or tolerance like with addiction.
Chapter Three: The Molecule of More
So what is this molecule I mentioned?
Well, there’s a molecule in our brain, also known as a chemical or neurotransmitter, that’s made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and a single nitrogen atom.
or otherwise known as… Dopamine.
Now.. you may have heard of dopamine or even know a bit about it, but hear me out,
I want to discuss it from a Muslim perspective.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps send messages between nerve cells in the brain.
It’s often called the "molecule of more" because it’s involved in making us want things and pursue goals, which is an essential reward system that motivates us to do stuff.
Like finding a spouse, earning a living, or even doing a good deed.
But sometimes, this reward system can get out of balance.
That's where addiction comes in.
You see, the thing with Dopamine…is that it’s never satisfied.
It feeds the void that we all have within us, only instead of satisfying the void’s hunger, it makes it hungrier. It reminds me of a hadith where
It was Narrated by Sahl bin Sa`d:
I heard Ibn Az-Zubair who was on the pulpit at Mecca, delivering a sermon, saying, "O men! The Prophet (SAW) used to say, "If the son of Adam were given a valley full of gold, he would love to have a second one; and if he were given the second one, he would love to have a third, for nothing fills the belly of Adam's son except dust. And Allah forgives he who repents to Him."
SubhanAllah, that sounds a lot like dopamine!
I can’t help but think of Dopamine as a physical representation of our Nafs.
Steven Pressfields book, “The War of Art,” is about what he calls ‘The Resistance’ which describes as an internal struggle—it's that voice inside that tells you to procrastinate, that instills fear and doubt and comes up with excuses why you shouldn't do your work.
Especially work in a moral or spiritual sense.
As Muslims, we would think of this concept as our Nafs,
In science, we’d think of it as Dopamine.
Coming back to the Internet and technology addiction, they’re designed to release dopamine in the brain.
As we scroll through posts, videos, or even wallpaper apps, that constant context switching from one post to another releases dopamine; it’s released when we anticipate a reward.
It’s like a slot machine, roulette table, or even bingo… that waiting for the result fires dopamine.
This concept is also known as prediction error, but we can deep dive into dopamine in another blog if it interests you inshAllah.
Now let’s compare dopamine and our Nafs: Kind of a side-by-side comparison.
They’re both involved in reward and pleasure
Motivation and reinforcement
Movement and motor control, which is a basis for survival
Cognition and attention, also survival.
Mood and emotional regulation.
and the ability to lead us to temptation and evil.
It’s like they’re roommates!
This is encouraging because it lets me know there’s a physical aspect of myself that I can control to a degree.
You know what I mean? Like, maybe it’s not all supernatural and out of our control.
Chapter Four: That Moment of Wanting
Our brains try to keep a balance between pleasure and pain.
This balance is also known as homeostasis.
One of the several needs we have as humans are the need for pleasure and to avoid pain.
When we do things that make us feel good, our brains release dopamine, which increases pleasure.
But when we experience pain or discomfort, our brains release chemicals that decrease pleasure.
This balance helps enables us to be content and healthy.
However, in trying to keep that balance, the brain adapts to the constant influx of dopamine caused by our addictions by reducing the number of dopamine receptors, which are responsible for receiving dopamine signals.
So this causes a decrease in the brain's ability to experience pleasure and an increase in the need for the substance or behavior to achieve the same effect.
This phenomenon is known as dependence or tolerance, leaving the addict having to continue using just to feel normal.
That decrease in the brain’s ability to experience pleasure can create physical pain or surface in the form of discomfort, anxiety, or boredom.
For example, when you’re stressed, tired, or bored, that moment of wanting is our brain’s pleasure balance tipped to the side of pain.
Craving equals pain, so what starts as an attempt to manage pain turns into a new source of pain.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Chapter Five: The Three Amigos
So maybe now that we covered what addiction is and isn’t (in the case of habits), and identified one or more possible addictions for ourselves, we can see how hard it is to resist addictive substances like sugar or addictive behavior like scrolling on social media or checking emails and messages.
Even after identifying our addictions, it’s challenging to get them under control.
It’s a daily struggle.
Now imagine someone encouraging and promoting those addictions while going through those struggles.
We don’t have to imagine that someone we know such a creation exists ….shaytan.
The Shayateen are constantly whispering to us, adding to the side of pain on our pain and pleasure scale and reminding us of our addictive behaviors to spike dopamine.
They know our inclinations and dopamine triggers (which I cover in another video)
And then drive those dopamine-producing actions and behavior forward…with just a whisper.
I like to call them DNS; dopamine, Nafs, and shaytan.
Chapter Six: Knowledge is Power…and Hope
Yes, we’re created weak, but not deficient.
We’re supposed to have weakness in our armor.
We’re supposed to feel guilty because we’re supposed to then turn to Allah and ask for forgiveness.
But we also have to forgive ourselves.
Too often, I allowed shaytan to convince me that I was supposed to be perfect.
That I should never want to seek out any pleasure and never have any vices or addictions,
These traits could easily qualify as a perfect person and ultimately lead to a sinless life.., but it’s not reality.
Abu Hurrah (May Allah be pleased with him) said:
The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "By the One in Whose Hand my soul is! If you do not commit sins, Allah would replace you with a people who would commit sins and seek forgiveness from Allah; and Allah will certainly forgive them."
So while we struggle daily to control our Dopamine, Nafs, and ask Allah to protect us from the evil whispers of Shaytan, I’ve found it critical to gain knowledge of the Deen and myself.
It was one of the ways that I was able to turn off the autopilot that was set by my addictions and be more in the moment, thinking things through.
As for the details and strategies that I used to control my addictions, based on research and personal experience, be sure to read Muslims and Addiction Par 2: How I Control Addiction.
May Allah reward you for being curious and keep tying your 🐪
Salamualaikum!
