Show notes
You Can't Just Tell an Addict to Stop. You're Asking Them to Die.
This Chabad Chassidic discourse is the ultimate manual for healing trauma, addiction, and emotional pain.
This is the third of a series of classes on the Maamar (discourse) Yafeh Sha'ah Achas (מאמר יפה שעה אחת) by the Miteler Rebbe, published in Maamarei Admur Haemtzarei (מאמרי אדמו"ר האמצעי קונטריסים).
The class was presented by Rabbi YY Jacobson on Thursday, 2 Kislev, 5787, November 12, 2026.
Why would an intelligent, decent, loving person risk destroying their marriage, family, reputation, finances, and everything they cherish for a few moments of pleasure? Why can food, money, sexuality, or other compulsive behaviors become so overwhelmingly powerful that even the most devastating consequences cannot stop us?
In this extraordinary Chassidus class, the Mitteler Rebbe takes us beneath the surface of addiction and exposes its deepest psychological and spiritual roots. The real issue is not simply the food, the money, or the sexual gratification. It is that somewhere along the journey of life, we have learned to associate certain experiences, substances, behaviors, or relationships with our very sense of being alive. They have become our oxygen, our emotional ventilator, our source of vitality. Without them, we feel as though we are suffocating. Telling someone to simply abandon the addiction may feel to that person like demanding that they pull the plug on their own life-support system. What appears to outsiders as irrational self-destruction may be experienced internally as a desperate struggle for survival.
But here the Mitteler Rebbe offers a revolutionary path toward healing. If our deepest cravings are attempts to access life, energy, connection, and vitality, then merely fighting the craving will never address the full depth of the struggle. We must discover what our souls are actually seeking, understand the wounds and narratives that convinced us our life depends on something outside ourselves, and learn to reconnect with the authentic source of life within. We need to rewrite the story of what makes us feel alive. The goal is not merely to remove an addictive behavior, but to discover a source of vitality so genuine, profound, and nourishing that we no longer need to depend on destructive substitutes to feel that we exist.
This is not about shame, punishment, or simply demanding more willpower. It is about rediscovering your soul, reclaiming your life force, and realizing that the life you've been desperately searching for has been within you all along.
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