In withdrawing from drugs we experience excursions of emotion, and especially the debilitating mind state of guilt: We feel that we should have known better; we could have done better, and we could have chosen more wisely. Perhaps we are thinking we could have chosen not to start taking the drug-- but it's the choice we made that we fret about.
That non-stop internal voice gleefully admonishes us that we made the wrong choice, we did bad! And while we make an effort to quiet the voice through distraction, mediation, and Mindfulness, we rarely address the content of that perpetual scolding: YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN OTHERWISE!
So let's look at that. First, what is guilt? How about this simple definition: "Guilt-- remorse caused by feeling responsible for having committed some offence." If you could have chosen otherwise, the guilt is warranted-- but if you could NOT have chosen otherwise, there's no guilt to be carried.
We live in a universe of cause-and-effect where every event has a prior cause. Every event-- from a super-nova in a distant galaxy-- to the fender-bender at the intersection-- to the choice you just made 5 seconds ago. While you must endure the consequences of all your choices, you are not responsible for the actual choice-- that was determined by a litany of prior causes that go all the way back to your birth and beyond. Of course experience teaches us to make wiser choices as we grow, and that next choice (the wiser one) will come from that new information.
You didn't build your mind. Shed some guilt about the act of choosing; learn from the consequences of your choices and your subsequent choices will yield less fallout. That's simply called experience.
If one is able to make choices that are not derived from prior causes, that would be an event occurring outside the natural world; it would be in fact supernatural! All choosing comes from prior causes-- you don't control it; you don't think your thoughts before you think them. Cut yourself some slack; shed some guilt.
