May, 2007 The Freedom to be Addicted by William Pryor Director, Unhooked Thinking Exploring the Metaphors

May, 2007 Is Addiction the Global Warming of the Self? The number of selves in the world increasing by 203,800 every day Tripled since only 1928 to today’s 6.5 billion An indirect cause of both Global Warming and Addiction

May, 2007 Addiction is a Metaphysical Malaise Manifesting as a Medical Malady Addicts Mind Being Here

May, 2007 Liberty (of the Self) is the Greatest Good for both New Left and Neo-Con Right We will give you Freedom, whether you want it or not

May, 2007 The Self has the Liberty to Consume, and be Consumed “Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product,” William S Burroughs.

May, 2007 Addiction, the Price we Pay for Freedom? Freedom and addiction - polarities that feed on each other. “To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves,” Virginia Woolf.

May, 2007 The Free Self: a Double Bind, a Conflicted Cul de Sac a dank place of anxiety, isolation and existential angst. “I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves,” Ludwig Wittgenstein

May, 2007 Free to be Attached “Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none or very slight ones,” Plato

May, 2007 What is it to be Free from Addiction, to be Unhooked? A very different liberty, a freedom from the burdens, frustrations and delusions of the self “To know how to free oneself is nothing: the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom,” André Gide.

May, 2007 Though (or Because) it ’ s a Construct, the Self and its Stories are the Source of all Addiction “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self,” Albert Einstein

May, 2007 “You Cannot Find Peace by Avoiding Life,” Virginia Woolf

May, 2007 Global Warming Threatens Man’s Existence - Addiction Arises from Threats to the Self’s Existence, Globally “The whole (global warming) thing is created to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability,” Jerry Falwell (founder of the Moral Majority)

May, 2007 Unlike Global Warming Addiction goes away when the threat to the self is found to be a myth, unreal. “Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life,” Joseph Campbell