The drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it be an ingestive addiction or an activity addiction (like work, buying or gambling) is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with his work, or the alcoholic with his booze, are having a love affair. Each one mood alters to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame. Each addictive acting out creates life-damaging consequences which create more shame. The new shame fuels the cycle of addiction. Addictions create more shame, which sets one up to be more shame-based. Addicts call this cycle the squirrel cage.

I used to drink to solve the problems caused by drinking. The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed. Shame begets shame. The cycle begins with the false belief system that all addicts have, that no one could want them or love them as they are. In fact, addicts can't love themselves. They are an object of scorn to themselves. This deep internalized shame gives rise to distorted thinking. The distorted thinking can be reduced to the belief that I'll be okay if I drink, eat, have sex, get more money, work harder, etc. The shame turns one into a “human doing”, rather that a human being.

Worth is measured on the outside, never on the inside. The mental obsession about the specific addictive relationship is the first mood alteration, since thinking takes us out of our emotions. After obsessing for a while, the second mood alteration occurs. This is the “acting out” or ritual stage of the addiction. The ritual may involve drinking with the boys, secretly eating in one's favourite hiding place or cruising for sex. The ritual endos in drunkenness, satiation, orgasm, spending all the money or whatever.

What follows is the feeling of shame over one's behavior, and the life-damaging consequences - the hangover, the infidelity, the demeaning sex, the empty pocketbook. The meta-shame is a displacement of affect, a transforming of the shame about self into the shame about “acting out” and experiencing life-damaging consequences. This meta-shame intensifies the shame-based identity.

“I'm no good; there's something wrong with me,” plays like a broken record. The more it plays, the more one solidifies one's false belief system. The toxic shame fuels the addiction and regenerates itself.