They gorged on the right but still were hungry, and they devoured on the left but were not satisfied. – Isaiah 9:20a (NRSVUE)
Content warning: This devotional discusses addiction, particularly alcoholism.
Several years ago, I realized I didn’t have a problem with alcohol: I had a problem without it. While genetics and circumstances played a role, there was also an emptiness I was trying to fill, a voracious hunger I couldn’t satisfy.
Bottle after bottle, I was trying to drown a Hungry Ghost, but it only grew hungrier, thirstier, emptier.
In Buddhism, Hungry Ghosts are emaciated creatures with huge, distended, empty bellies. Never sated, the Hungry Ghost forever searches for something to fill them, its claw-like hands futilely reaching to scrape up and consume whatever it can find.
Dr. Gabor Maté likens it to addiction: “The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects, or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need. We don’t know what we need, and so long as we stay in the hungry ghost mode, we’ll never know. We haunt our lives without being fully present.” (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
The “aching emptiness” of a Hungry Ghost can lead us to devour everything around us in our attempts to fill it. Ultimately, the emptiness can devour us as well if we can’t address the need. Ask that Hungry Ghost what it needs, and it will demand more of the same. But ask God what you deeply need—the source of the emptiness, the depth, the shape—and transform the aching void into a willing vessel, ever-filled.
Help me exorcise this Hungry Ghost, Holy One. Transform any emptiness. Through you, I am filled. Amen.
