Add & Subtract - Addictions

This week we look at Addictions

ADD TRAUMA AWARENESS

Psychologists estimate that 95% of people are running some form of addiction, from Netflix bingeing to alcohol overuse to smoking crack. While costs vary from mild to extreme, we are all involved somehow.

Old theories of addiction look at the problem in various, usually limited ways. Some models see medical, sociological or psychological causes. Others blame it on moral weakness, personality defects and character flaws.

Treatments have included: medication, support groups, building self esteem and coping with triggers leading to use, changing negative social environments, appeals to a Higher Power, lifetime abstinence…

However, no consideration of our addictive behaviours is complete without being trauma informed. When we explore the why behind our destructive choices, our attitude can shift from judgment to greater understanding. Seeing addiction as self-medicating pain management rather than merely weak personality is an empowering start.

While not excusing or rationalising our destructive actions, trauma awareness allows us to work with, rather than against, the parts of self driving our addictions. Remember the power of our subconscious mind, which is fighting to protect us 24/7.

Suggestion: Consider a personal habit that has an addictive aspect. If you paused to peer beneath the surface of the behaviour, what would you see and feel? What pain, stress, trauma are you using the habit to avoid?

Without the underlying psychological, emotional charge, would you make different choices? What life would your subconscious support you in creating if you had a healed sense of safety and self-worth?

Canadian physician and author Gabor Mate:

“Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden—but it’s there. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain”

Source: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

SUBTRACT SWAPPING

There is a known danger in recovery of swapping one addiction for another: hours of social media scrolling flips into online shopping, the gambler becomes a sex addict, the alcoholic moves onto meth.

Substituting behaviours is driven by the same problem as escalation of addictive patterns: we have not addressed underlying issues. While we can identify problems in our circumstances, environment, situations that are causing pain - and these need to change - our self-medication only continues as long as we feel inadequate to meet our suffering with strength and self-belief.

At some point, we all need to face our trauma and build up our self-love, to know our true Self is always greater than any pain we experience. Help from outside - friends, family, professionals - is always necessary, to get outside our psychological algorithms.

Suggestion: Please make that point sooner rather than later.

Edgar Allan Poe on his addictions:

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom”

On a lighter note…

“Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you are making too much money” Robin Williams

“You know you’re an alcoholic when you misplace things … like a decade” Paul Williams