Freedom from Addiction Requires Discharge
A basic step in ridding oneself of an addiction is to halt the practice of the addiction, since each such rehearsal of the addictive activity reinforces the pattern and leaves it stronger.
A decision to end the addiction will be necessary to completely eliminate it, but the period of “withdrawal” and the apparent “suffering” during the withdrawal will perhaps be necessary before the victim is able to make a decision.
Much of the “suffering” of withdrawal, which is treated with such respect in the wide-world culture, is, of course, simply discharge of the distress that has been accumulated in the past practice of the addiction. As long as discharge is treated as “suffering,” this concept will continue to confuse workers in the field in the wide world. No permanent freedom from an addiction is possible without discharge.
From The List, page 110
(Present Time 184, July 2016)