The Disenchantment of the Soul: How Technology and Addiction Has Stolen Our Attention Away from Lugh
This essay was published on January 5, 2026 as the ninth entry in my “Cripping Clover: Essays on Lucid Tinn Brains, Demedicalization of Disability, and Irish-American and Celtic Heritage” series.
My essays so far in this series have been relatively concise, pointed, and organized logically. This essay is going to wander a bit more.
When I was in high school, I was a member of the speech team, and in my first year, I wrote an original speech about “The Disenchantment of the World.” It was a mess and scored poorly. It combined pro-life ideology, personal stories about a family loss, and philosophy about technology.
As a then 15-year-old, I was only just beginning to question the christian and conservative beliefs I had been raised with. I was also confronting my sexuality and gender and feeling an increasing amount of turmoil about my faith. At the same time that I was worrying about how I couldn’t be Catholic because of my queerness, however, I was also so passionate about the idea that technology was ruining the enchantment in life and that spirituality and faith were an answer that I was standing up and giving speeches on it.
At age 31 now, I would disagree with many, if not most, aspects of my 15-year-old self. However, I do think I was maybe onto something about the disenchantment of the world and my need for faith and spirituality.
As I got more into theology and philosophy in college, what I found is that most people’s sense of faith does not come from reason or argument. It is something people feel deeply, that comes from their heritage or traditions, and that connects them to a community. I wanted those things.
Deconstructing my faith was one of the most important actions I took to begin questioning whiteness, colonization, and capitalism. However, the loss of my faith was devastating to me and created an enormous void.
I filled that first with technology and after that with addiction.
I am an alcoholic.
I can’t use alcohol at all, or my life spirals.
I meet many atheists and agnostics at Alcoholic’s Anonymous (AA) where they often find (reluctantly) that the solution to the hole they feel inside them which led them to drink is spirituality (i.e., a connection to a higher power). This “solution” can come with a lot of baggage for queer and trans people, and it certainly has for me.
It has been a big barrier for me engaging with AA.
I also have struggled immensely with the idea that this hole in me (caused by trauma connected ultimately back to colonialism and capitalism) should be filled by a white christian dude’s book about alcoholism. While much of AA is collective, the main texts do not demonstrate awareness or any sort of critique of whiteness, colonialism, or capitalism. How can someone offer you a solution if they haven’t correctly identified the problem?
I know AA works for people, and I know a lot of people approach it from the perspective of “take what works, and leave the rest.” But for me, these issues have felt consequential enough that this has felt like the wrong setting to search for my spirituality. (If I need human connection and social support related to drinking, AA works great for me in that capacity.)
But who is this higher power that I’m searching for?
I feel them. I have always been very attuned to some sort of divinity hovering just beyond the page, outside the wall, or after the final lyric.
I have also felt deadened and disconnected from them.
As part of this essay series, I am reconnecting with my precolonial Irish and Scandinavian faith traditions. In this essay, I am going to re-define and re-interpret the idea of “disenchantment” within the context of Celtic spirituality as disconnection from the light god Lugh.
Lugh is a central god in Irish spirituality who embodies the divine light of the soul (anam). They represent the magical potential inherent in humans and is associated with creativity and inspiration. Their radiating glow symbolizes the vitality and wonder that sustain life (i.e., enchantment).
So how do we become disconnected from Lugh (i.e., disenchanted)?
Here, I am also going to re-define and re-interpret the popular psychological concept of flow. Flow is described as “a mental state of complete immersion and focused energy in an activity. You lose awareness of time, self-consciousness disappears, and performance peaks.”
Flow is sometimes described as a neurodivergent experience using related terms such as hyper-focus. However, I interpret flow more broadly to include a state of living where you are solely focused on doing the next right thing and you are able to act intuitively, discovering connections and meanings that you know innately but would otherwise be blocked by your conscious mind. Flow is made possible by environmental factors. For example, my sleep and work schedule and my social obligations can all allow or prevent me spending most of my time in a flow state.
Trauma, in my experience, along with abuse, can also greatly influence our self-confidence and sense of safety and thus our ability to enter flow. Hyper-vigilance (which has been my primary symptom from PTSD) and flow are essentially incompatible, because flow involves feeling safe enough to let the conscious mind stop and let the intuitive mind takeover.
In this way, I will describe flow as connection to Lugh.
Importantly, this connection is not about producing anything, but rather about creativity as a process, experience, and way of living. Flow is not limited to art. It is about feeling comfortable enough in your self and your environment that you can let your fears ago and live playfully.
Self-criticism or criticism from others (when it is not constructive or when it is intended to make you feel self-conscious) are enormously detrimental to flow and to remaining connected to Lugh.
I first went to an AA meeting in 2021.
It took until 2026 to find my higher power.
I think Lugh is my higher power.
Get Dielle Lundberg (DL)’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
If enchantment is connection to Lugh and addiction is a symptom of disenchantment, I personally do believe the ongoing technologization of the world is a key mechanism contributing to disenchantment.
Just look at dating and sexual connection… Mindless hook-ups. Texting with strangers. Anonymous blow jobs. Jacking-off to screens. Relationships that mean everything one day and nothing the next. Endless disposability because there is an endless pool of options. Getting off to anyone.
I’m not saying there is no magic left in modern dating (see Grindr happily ever-after love stories). But I certainly haven’t seen or heard a lot of it.
Dating can become addiction.
Porn can become an addiction.
Video sexting can become an addiction.
Texting can become an addiction.
I argue here that these addictions emerge because of disenchantment. I believe most people engaging in these behaviors would prefer (and are in fact searching for) magic. But magic is hard to find, and technology is in front of us everywhere.
Just as trauma and hyper-vigilance, along with capitalism and our need to work and sleep in rigid routines, can block our connection to Lugh, I think the technologies that proliferate throughout modern life (especially those that promise connection) can also distract us from the magic we seek.
I can say from personal experience, using Grindr is often less about wanting to connect with a man and more about the rush of it.
Wanting a rush, I would say, becomes the underpinning of addiction. And when people are your addiction, I would argue we often behave poorly.
It is impossibly frustrating — to want something more, to have it tantalized in front of you constantly by technology, but to always come up short.
Most of the time, I didn’t even want a man; I wanted a god.
I wanted Lugh.
So how can I cultivate a relationship with Lugh?
For me, this has been a long-winded process that has involved (a) healing my trauma and hyper-vigilance, (b) organizing my life, work, and relationships in a way so that I can go about my day more intuitively, and (c) making creative containers for my various projects and interests so that when I am ready to enter into a flow state, I have a place ready to go.
This essay series is, unquestionably, a flow state project.
An individual’s capacity for flow can also be greatly enhanced if they find someone else who can and will engage with them in their flow state. Building on the Celtic concept of “thin places”, I also think that flow can be deepened through intentional engagement with places. For me, music and sound also serve as gateways into flow (i.e., into contact with Lugh).
In the case of my lucid tinn brain, my brain also goes through cycles of increased and decreased activity and alertness. There are some months where I remain in flow for most of the time, and other months when my capacity for low is lower. Personally, I appreciate both states.
I think the biggest thing I can do to create space for Lugh in my life is to be less busy. To provide more time to be creative, to play, and to act intuitively.
This essay, unlike the eight before it, did not have a specific question or thesis in mind. If there was one, it was a desire to connect the ideas of disenchantment, addiction, technology, and flow to the god Lugh.
I can sense here that this is the end of part one of the essay series. (note: I later decided to add one additional essay to the series).
I also sense that there will be a part two.
Perhaps soon. Perhaps months or years later.
I have explored a lot here that I now need to further integrate into my life.
If Lugh is the light, then this essay is not so much about illumination as it is learning to stand in my own humanity without hiding.
I made this essay series public in part because I decided I am done with holding privately and in shame, guilt, or confusion the parts of myself that are complex or I don’t feel ready to present in a clean narrative. This essay series feels like a coming-out in that sense. Not as queer or trans.
To be honest, it feels like… coming out as whole.
Note: Many of the insights shared in this essay are drawn from or informed by the scholarship, activism, and lived work of other writers. I have included a reference list highlighting these writers on the cover page for the essay series.
This is the ninth essay in a series entitled “Cripping Clover: Essays on Lucid Tinn Brains, Demedicalization of Disability, and Irish-American and Celtic Heritage” about decolonizing my understanding of my ancestry, faith, mental health, and disabilities. The prior (eighth) essay is: “Why Mutual Aid Is Not Enough: Anarchism, Disability, and the Need to Advance Change Within Health Care Systems.” The next (tenth) essay is: “The Capitalistic Myth of Being Self-Made: Cripping What Success and Worthiness Means to Me as a Creative (and a Novelist).”
