Alan Watt - Wellness Day 2011 Interview: Approaching Addiction

Alan Watt is a screenwriter and novelist. He is also the founder and creative director of the LA Writers Lab.

ONE80CENTER: How do you approach addiction directly or indirectly in your field of work?

"There is a real connection, I think, between addiction and creativity and I think one of the reasons I love teaching this creative process so much is because just like addiction is often viewed as a problem, it's the same thing with creativity. People approach story as if it's a problem to be solved. There is a great quote by Einstein where he says ' you can't solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created the problem.' So what I began to discover in working with story in working with writers is that at the heart of story there is no problem. What there really is is a dilemma and that's what Einstein is talking about because what we are struggling with as human beings is dilemma and I began to see that problems are solved while dilemmas are resolved. There's a shift in perception and story is all about transformation. Its the reason we are drawn to story .T he desire to write is the desire to evolve or resolve something that we are seeking to understand. This is why the 12 steps are so effective for addiction because it's a spiritual malady. You can't solve addiction just like you can't solve story."

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