The Mouth was Designed as the Contact Place for Love and Security

When you don’t feel good about yourself, you go into insecurity. When you’re insecure, you start “sucking your thumb”. People who smoke cigarettes have exchanged the thumb for something else. The reason cigarettes are smoked is not because of the nicotine. Science has told us that it is the nicotine of the cigarette that is causing the stress and anxiety. The person thinks they need to smoke to calm them down, when in fact it is just feeding their stress. So what is a cigarette emotionally and spiritually to a person? It has little to do with the nicotine – it is what hits the lips for nurturing. Nurturing is needed and this is driven by the need to be loved. The sucking reflex of eating or of something touching the lips has a nurturing effect. Not many people understand the depths of this need.

People who have weight problems because of excessive eating have made an addiction out of food. This is a direct result of not feeling good about themselves. They have a lack of self-esteem and introspection where they look inside themselves and don’t like what they see. Stuffing food into their mouths is an attempt to feed the need to be loved and to soothe or comfort themselves because they don’t feel good about themselves. Did you know that many of the diet pills on the market have nothing to do with suppressing appetite? They work by increasing the serotonin levels, which then makes you feel good about yourself. It is an artificial way of increasing your self-esteem. Whenever you feel good about yourself, you don’t put your thumb in your mouth – you have no need to put food to your mouth. However these diet pills have many terrible and dangerous side effects and are in themselves addictive.

The mouth and whatever you put in it (food, cigarettes, alcohol etc) is designed to bring you to emotional security. The lips are the nurturing point. That is why there is a strong emotional component to breast feeding a baby or kissing somebody. When people stop smoking, they often put on a lot of weight. The reason is because they are subconsciously craving the sugar rush produced by nicotine when it stimulates the liver. Thus they start eating a lot and they don’t realize that they are doing this to try and get that sugar rush, and because they need the satisfaction of putting something to their mouth. Alcoholics can develop a problem where they like sugar, carbohydrates and desserts because the body converts the sugars and carbohydrates into alcohol. So not only does the person get the satisfaction of putting something into their mouth but they also get an alcohol fix. Alcoholics often have a characteristic “beer belly”. This weight gain is not only because of over eating, but it is also because of a slowed metabolism. The hypothalamus also responds to thoughts of a low self-esteem, guilt, condemnation and self-hatred by lowering the body’s metabolic rate. This predisposes you to putting on weight more easily because the body just does not burn the food that you eat. When people with an addiction bring the food, alcohol, cigarette or drug to their mouth, it triggers the release of dopamine which is the pleasure chemical that I spoke about earlier. In order to compensate biologically for their spiritual deficiency, they need a dopamine rush! The rush of dopamine in the brain produces a “high” which brings temporary relief, comfort or fulfilment. When a person gets the feel good rush of dopamine or the high from the alcohol, cigarette, drug, pornography etc they have the chemical equivalent of what should come out of a spiritual and emotional relationship. They think, “That was great! I don’t need God, I don’t need anybody, I don’t need a wife, I just need a drink or a pill.”

However the dopamine rush is short lasting and it soon wears off. The person goes back into real life and they are faced with themselves and their old feelings of being unloved again! The feelings never went away, they were just drowned out by the chemical rush. The person sinks into a “low” where they feel the pain and the despair and they are drawn to that memory of fulfilment when they had the drink, cigarette, drug etc and they reach for it again. This is how the negative cycle perpetuates.

In Summary

Addictions follow individuals that have a need to be loved unfulfilled and a low self-esteem: they are attacking themselves spiritually in their thoughts with self-hatred, self-condemnation, guilt, shame, self-rejection, self disapproval and self bitterness.

One of the things that the hypothalamus does in response to this (brain translates your thoughts into a physical reaction) is to lower the serotonin levels.

Reduced serotonin levels cause the person to feel bad about themselves and they bring alcohol/cigarettes/food/drugs to their mouth because the mouth is the contact place for love and security. The lips are the nurturing point.

The alcohol/cigarettes/drugs/food causes a rush of dopamine in the brain producing a short term pleasurable, comforting sensation (Dopamine is the pleasure neurotransmitter that stimulates the reward system in the brain).

After the short lasting fulfilment, the pleasurable, comforting sensation wears off and the person often becomes filled with guilt, self-condemnation and/or self-hatred because of the alcohol/food binge they have just been on. In terms of weight gain, the more the person eats, the more the person puts on weight. The more the person puts on weight, the more it assassinates their self-esteem… and what does the hypothalamus do in response to these thoughts? Lower the serotonin levels! And so the negative cycle perpetuates. The devil sure knows how to keep people in bondage and captivity.

Shop lifting is the same as binging. Kleptomania (which is compulsive stealing) is a result of self-hatred, self-rejection and guilt. People who take the credit card and spend thousands of dollars on a spending binge are exhibiting the same behaviour as those who are binging on food. They are trying to increase the serotonin deficiency artificially and not only that, dopamine is also being secreted, which is the pleasure neurotransmitter because of the rush they get to fill the void.