Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘consumption’ operates across at least three distinct registers that rarely speak directly to one another yet share a common psychological substrate. In its clinical-pharmacological register, consumption designates measurable alcohol and drug intake — drinking days, heavy-drinking episodes, drinks per occasion — against which the efficacy of interventions such as naltrexone, acamprosate, and omega-3 supplementation is calibrated. Here consumption is a dependent variable, a behavioral metric of disorder and recovery. In its socio-psychological register, pioneered most forcefully by Alexander, consumption names the compensatory hunger of dislocated selves: compulsive acquisition of goods, energy, and experience as substitute for authentic psychosocial integration. This register connects individual pathology to the structural logic of free-market society. In the contemplative-depth register, represented most richly by Easwaran, consumption is a spiritual disease of the senses — the gobbling of experience through ungoverned perception, the rajasic expansion of appetite that hollows out interiority. Thomas Moore provides a synthetic moment, reading disordered eating as the soul’s failed attempt to metabolize outer experience into inner substance. What unites these registers is the recognition that excessive consumption is less about the objects consumed than about the psychic condition — dislocation, sensory enslavement, or soul-hunger — that drives the consuming. The term thus sits at the crossroads of addiction theory, political economy, and contemplative anthropology.
They consume energy with the same avidity that they consume material goods.
Alexander equates energy consumption with material consumption as twin expressions of the compensatory, dislocation-driven acquisitiveness at the heart of addictive culture.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008thesis
the esophagus is an excellent image of one of the soul’s chief functions: to transfer material of the outside world into the interior. But in this dream it is made of an unnatural substance
Moore reframes disordered consumption as a failure of the soul’s metabolic function — the inability to translate outer experience into genuine inner nourishment.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992thesis
People who are highly taste-oriented, for example, are extruding their palate farther and farther and farther. Obsessed with food, always thinking about what to eat and when and where
Easwaran diagnoses compulsive consumption as a spiritual-psychological contraction in which consciousness collapses into a single sense organ, producing existential insecurity and dependence.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis
you can see them opening to gobble up everything they see. Some gift stores have a little sign: ‘If you break it, you’ve bought it.’ Yama would say, ‘If you gobble it, you’ve bought it’
Easwaran argues that ungoverned sensory consumption — even merely visual — incurs a hidden psychic cost, binding the self to what it greedily takes in.
, Essence of the Upanishads: A Key to Indian Spiritualitythesis
sense-impressions should not barge in; they should wait politely while we examine their credentials. If they are a selfish crew who will come and eat up a lot of our vitality, we should have no hesitation
This parallel Easwaran text frames unchecked perceptual consumption as a drain on vital energy, advocating a disciplined gatekeeping of consciousness.
, The Upanishadssupporting
per capita consumption of alcohol, death rate attributed to alcohol, prevalence of alcoholism, death rate due to heroin and cocaine overdose
Alexander marshals per-capita consumption statistics to demonstrate that dislocation-driven addiction is a systemic, socially measurable phenomenon rather than an individual moral failing.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting
we describe the characteristics of included trials and then results for alcohol consumption outcomes (return to any drinking, return to heavy drinking, drinking days, heavy drinking days, drinks per drinking day)
McPheeters operationalizes consumption as a multi-dimensional clinical outcome variable against which pharmacological efficacy is systematically assessed.
, Pharmacotherapy for Adults With Alcohol Use Disorder in Outpatient Settings: Systematic Review, 2023supporting
Naltrexone had moderate strength of evidence for reducing return to any drinking, return to heavy drinking, percent drinking days, and percent heavy drinking days at the 50 mg oral dose.
This review establishes naltrexone as the pharmacological intervention with the strongest evidence base for reducing alcohol consumption across multiple clinical metrics.
, Pharmacotherapy for Adults With Alcohol Use Disorder in Outpatient Settings: Systematic Review, 2023supporting
outcomes related to reduced alcohol consumption are clinically meaningful and important to patients. Some studies indicate that less than 10 percent of those with AUD are able to achieve long periods of reduced alcohol consumption.
McPheeters documents the clinical shift from abstinence as the sole goal toward reduced consumption as a meaningful treatment endpoint, while noting the rarity of sustained reduction.
, Pharmacotherapy for Adults With Alcohol Use Disorder in Outpatient Settings: Systematic Review, 2023supporting
People who practice physical exercise on a regular basis have a lower rate of drug use problems and vice versa. there have been lower rates of consumption and/or ‘craving’ in consumers of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, methamphetamine
Giménez-Meseguer positions physical exercise as a broad-spectrum intervention that reliably reduces substance consumption and craving across multiple drug classes.
, The Benefits of Physical Exercise on Mental Disorders and Quality of Life in Substance Use Disorders Patients. Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2020supporting
the quantity of grain converted to alcoholic beverages might have fed twenty million people. And he asked, Who at this conference on world hunger even saw the connection?
Easwaran frames alcohol consumption as ethically inextricable from global food distribution, arguing that personal habits of consumption are structurally linked to collective suffering.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
it is challenging to estimate the magnitude of reduction in the risk of health problems that is derived from a reduction in consumption. For example, it is unclear how much benefit (for health outcomes) is derived from 10 percent fewer patients returning to any drinking
McPheeters identifies a fundamental epistemological gap: reductions in consumption are measurable, but their translation into health outcomes remains uncertain.
, Pharmacotherapy for Adults With Alcohol Use Disorder in Outpatient Settings: Systematic Review, 2023supporting
eating and drug disorders share a common neuroanatomic and neurochemical basis. Not only are the identical incentive-motivation and attachment-reward circuits impaired in the brains of overeaters and drug addicts
Maté grounds compulsive consumption — whether food or drug — in shared neural circuitry, linking overconsumption to impaired reward regulation and attachment deficits.
, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, 2008supporting
we are gobbling the earth as if it were ours, all ours, to gobble. Nothing is ours. Nothing on earth belongs to us. We are tenants on earth, nothing more.
Easwaran extends the pathology of individual consumption to planetary scale, framing ecological overconsumption as a collective failure of spiritual restraint.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
Significant improvements in abstinence/alcohol consumption. Better results in abstinence/consumption in participants who attended more than 66% of the sessions
This meta-analytic finding establishes dose-dependent exercise adherence as a predictor of reduced alcohol consumption, supporting exercise as a behaviorally active intervention.
, The Benefits of Physical Exercise on Mental Disorders and Quality of Life in Substance Use Disorders Patients. Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2020supporting
Non-standardized regression coefficients of the mixed models predicting outcomes related to alcohol consumption measured by the TLFB.
Pauluci employs longitudinal mixed-model analysis to track alcohol consumption trajectories in the omega-3 versus placebo groups, using number of days of consumption and alcoholic drinks consumed as primary metrics.
, Omega-3 for the Prevention of Alcohol Use Disorder Relapse: A Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Clinical Trial, 2022supporting
When rajas predominates, a person runs about pursuing selfish and greedy ends, driven by restlessness and desire.
Easwaran attributes rajasic consumption — the restless, greedy pursuit of sensory satisfaction — to the fundamental spiritual quality of rajas, linking psychological appetite to cosmological category.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside
everything in this state is tainted with selfish attachment – ‘I, me, mine.’ This is Rajas’s fatal flaw.
Easwaran identifies rajasic self-absorption as the psychological root of destructive consumption, including environmental and social despoliation.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside