As you know, any addiction is a conscious or unconscious way to get rid of anxiety. Whether a person is drawn to a cigarette, alcohol, drugs, food or another person, this connection temporarily drowns out the primary trauma that we all carry within ourselves. For a short time, loneliness is replaced by a psychological merger with the Other. For this period, a person seems to return to the mother's womb, and then, as Rilke said, loneliness returns and continues to flow like a river. D. Hollis