Addicted to something? The final solution is this || IIT Bombay (2022)

Questioner (Q): You have said in your old videos that through valor and intelligence, one has to come out of addictions, such as smoking or binge watching. I am finding it very hard to come out of them. Can you help me with this?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, you have to first of all respect the facts of your addictions; they are doing you some good. Those things you are addicted to exist because you have nothing better in your life.

Understand this. No point in just cursing one’s addictions; addictions exist to fill a deep inner void. You have a need to be addicted, and that is why those things exist. Be it the TV shows or videos or drugs or the many other things one can be addicted to, they didn’t plead you to let them into your life; you went to those things. The videos don’t suddenly pounce at you from your mobile screen after midnight; you must be clicking at the application, and then scrolling through the list of videos, and then choosing one particular video, then another, and binge watching.

So, you are the one going to those things. Why are you going to those things? That is what spirituality is about—look into yourself. Why do you need to go to those things? You need to go to those things because there is a crying hollow. Unless you bring something higher into your life to fill that hollow, those videos and other things will continue to exist, irrespective of how much we beat our chest over them. Get something into your life that you know to be more important than those little things.

I refuse to believe that a young man of your intellectual caliber cannot think of something worthier to pursue. Set your mind upon something good, high, noble, and then you will find that you have no time for all the petty things that surround you and potentially attract your attention. Your attention, then, will be super focused; you know what is important, and you don’t want to look at other things.