How addictions (even the little ones) interfere in the process of enlightenment

 

Addiction is carried by restlessness and a sense of lacking something or being incomplete. It makes you forgot who you really are, which is the essence of illusion. 

The object of your addiction becomes a fixation of infatuation and fear. Whenever the addiction is threatened, the result is anxiety. Whenever the addiction is indulged, most of the pleasure felt is really just relief from that anxiety the addiction gave rise to.

All of this is further complicated if the addiction involves a chemical component. Eating junk food can become addictive and unhealthy but is not addictive in the way heroin is, for example. Both have the same underlying confusion but require different kinds of help to emerge from it. 

Enlightenment is not far away. It is not somewhere else. It is closer to you than your ego, body, and mind. Essentially, it is you before you were born, you during life, and you after death. Before and after the appearance of the universe, even. 

Addiction is maya, illusion. It obscures this from your view. Taking on a body is itself a kind of addiction or tendency that propels us through multiple births. It is also rooted in confusion. 
Like maya, addiction operates in a cycle. Unchanging cyclic behavior is its own kind of suffering as well. 

Chemical addictions aside, I don’t think you need to “fight" an addiction to overcome it. Bringing your attention thoroughly into the present, into the experience of your actions and how they change over time, and daily practice of meditation to grow out of restlessness will all help tremendously without the need to judge or repress yourself. 

{via here and here}