"I can not make the voices...stop."

Sure, there is no way to make them stop, because they are you. One common thing I see among all of us in this condition is this idea that there is some external force that has gotten in, or is impinging on us somehow. Is this true? And even if it were true, what difference does it make now that "it" is on the inside, in our mind and heart? When you say "voices" you really mean your own mind, your own thoughts, right? How do we make those stop? We can try religion or drugs or relationships or money, but again none of those work. Any attempt to make our mind stop is a projection of will, which is just another fragment of the self, a strengthening, a supplementation of the same fragmented mind, just like all the other "voices," right?

Perhaps it would help to think of these voices as a board of directors of a company: Self Inc. It is like there is a committee at Self Inc, and they have elected one among them as "the thinker" and this chairman, the thinker, the orator, the actor, the doer, is like a super fragment that will set straight all the other fragments, glue all the pieces back together. But this is an illusion, right? This super fragment is alas but a fragment, thus part of the problem too, right? Fragmentation itself, the "I am not this, I should be that; I don't have this, I should have that; this has happened but should not have happened, now I have to live with it, which is wrong, but one day I shall overcome it......" is an endless, infinite set of fragmented desires, decisions for the chairman, largely in conflict and competing with themselves, that create divisions between oneself and love, the very denial of love. To observe this fragmentation, without escape, without control, without fear, is the beginning of understanding and freedom from it, freedom from the suffering of it.

You were/are right to get off and stay off the drink/drugs/smoking/caffeine, etc. those do not help this. Our minds need to be sensitive, clear and our hearts simple if we would have the energy and clarity not to escape. The media and society at large all recommend ALL TYPES of bad things for all of this, drugs and other fixes are sold on every commercial, every street corner, because there are lots of people who enjoy profiting off of our maladies, off of human suffering. This, what you are feeling, after all is the suffering of all of mankind, right? All of man is caught in this, just some have adjusted to it better than others, learning to profit, being swifter thinkers, having more money and resources. So the closer you come to this, the more openly you observe it, without fear, is the degree to which you are aware of all of humanity, all those who suffer, which gives birth to compassion, the essence, the very movement of love. Therefore with observation the problem transforms from self pity to understanding of mankind, laying open a deeper humanity.

Another common thing I see here is the judgment. Apparently we determine that 100% in our judgment, the judgment of the super fragment, the thinker that what we are going through is bad, it should be put away, repressed, controlled, condemned. We are not what we should be, so says our chief fragment and all the subordinate fragments, thus we need to struggle to be something else. It is in this struggle we hope to solve the problem but this struggle is the very misery that needs to be solved. We have condemned it, what we are going through, but then we talk of love. Condemnation is not the way of love, is it? Condemnation does not beget understanding, does it? Will it ever?

It was helpful for me to see these conflicted, desperate, tortured fragments of the mind not as a series of desires in movement, chattering away forever, but rather as a single desire with multiple, transient objects. So, the objects of the desire change very quickly: I want to drink, I want to study, I want to have sex, I want to XYZ, but the desire is a single movement: I want to change what I am at any given moment into something else and I am using a broken, fragmented, conflicted mind to see that change through, which is insane. Therefore the only option I have is observation. Right?