What Addiction Treatment Gets Wrong — and What It Gets Right & Why Plant and Earth Medicine Might Just Be the Cure We’ve Been Missing

by Christopher Shaw, Founder Merkaba Church, Merkaba Retreats, Lumara

Co-Founder, ArcherShaw

For decades, addiction treatment has been dominated by two intertwined paradigms: the medical model and the psychological approach. Both have helped millions — and yet, both are fundamentally incomplete.

If you’ve ever wondered why relapse rates remain so high, why so many people leave treatment still feeling hollow and unfulfilled, and why the “cure” never seems to stick… this is why.

What the Medical Model Gets Wrong

The medical model of addiction has been both revolutionary and reductive.

On one hand, it rightly recognized addiction as more than “bad choices” — acknowledging the neurological and biochemical underpinnings of craving, dependence, and withdrawal. That was a step forward.

On the other hand, it framed addiction primarily as a chronic disease, to be “managed” — possibly for life. The idea that you are forever “sick” and never truly whole has been baked into treatment systems, fostering a quiet despair beneath the surface of recovery.

It pathologizes what is, at its core, a human soul’s cry for connection.

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What the Psychological Approach Gets Wrong

Psychological approaches — like cognitive behavioral therapy, group work, trauma-informed care — have helped many people understand the roots of their behavior. They offer frameworks for accountability, emotional intelligence, and better coping skills.

But here’s the problem: insight does not always lead to transformation.

Understanding why you drink doesn’t always stop you from drinking.

Understanding your trauma doesn’t always release you from it.

The psychological approach often remains stuck in the mind — and the addiction lives deeper, in the body and spirit.

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What These Models Get Right

To be clear: both approaches have value.

✅ The medical model correctly identifies the neurological changes and physical risks of addiction.

✅ The psychological model rightly centers trauma, environment, and emotional healing.

But neither goes deep enough.

Neither fully addresses what’s underneath it all:

The longing to feel connected to something larger.

The yearning to come home to yourself.

The need to heal not just the mind and body — but the soul.

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Why Plant and Earth Medicine Work

This is where plant and earth medicine comes in — and why so many are now turning to it when nothing else has worked.

Sacred medicines like ayahuasca, psilocybin, iboga, and wachuma have been used for millennia to treat what indigenous cultures have always understood: that addiction is a spiritual illness.

Not a moral failing.

Not just a brain disease.

Not just bad habits.

A spiritual illness — a disconnection from self, from Source, from the web of life.

Plant and earth medicines, when facilitated ceremonially and with proper integration, help people:

🌱 See and feel the traumas driving their pain — and release them.

🌱 Reconnect with their body and its innate wisdom.

🌱 Reclaim their sense of purpose, belonging, and divinity.

These experiences are not just therapeutic — they are transformative.

They don’t just help you stop using.

They help you remember who you really are — and make using unnecessary.

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Can Addiction Be Cured?

Here’s a radical thought:

Maybe addiction doesn’t have to be a life sentence.

Maybe, by addressing the root — the spiritual disconnection — we can actually heal it.

We’ve seen it happen.

People who, after years or decades of struggle, return from a single ceremonial experience saying:

“For the first time, I feel whole. I feel free.”

Does that mean plant medicine is a magic bullet? No.

It requires commitment, integration, and support.

But when combined with compassionate guidance, it can succeed where traditional treatment fails.

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The Future of Recovery

It’s time to evolve beyond a purely medical or psychological paradigm.

It’s time to remember what indigenous healers never forgot: addiction is a spiritual wound — and it can be healed.

Plant and earth medicines don’t just treat symptoms. They treat the soul.

And in doing so, they just might cure what we’ve been told is incurable.

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✨ If you or someone you love is ready for a deeper path of healing, I invite you to reach out. This is the work we do. And it would be an honor to walk it with you.

With love and devotion,

Christopher