Spring 2023

03/02/2023

Addiction and Choice

I am going to attempt to put some thoughts down about addiction; because in the mental health world, I feel like there are a lot of complicated, overlapping theories and remedies related to addiction that often don’t address some of the underlying societal themes about why addiction exists.

Addiction begins with a choice. Sometimes in the moment, it doesn’t feel like a choice, and it’s so far back that many people who struggle with addiction can’t even recall where it started. But the choice was to cope. To avoid, to deal, to turn away from whatever the current stressor was, and turn towards something else to help it feel better. We all have this tendency and human resilience is built around it. We all want to feel better and so when things hurt, or things challenge us, we want to find a way out of it.

Addiction often begins way before substances. The beginning of it is to choose to turn away from our suffering and pain to find relief. And along the way, finding something that was so compelling that we kept going back to it over and over again, even when it stopped working.

Addiction becomes tied to helplessness, dis-empowerment, and inability to take accountability for life choices and consequences of those choices. Oftentimes people who struggle or have struggled with addiction; when in the middle of it, have very little insight into what they are doing. They don’t realize that this addiction is a choice, because by the time they seek help for it, it no longer is one, it’s a compulsion. Sometimes a life or death battle with themselves and the substance/behavior. It takes up all their life force, money, energy and relationships in it’s wake.

Here comes the tricky part. It’s not the kids offering drugs at parties, it’s not the media portrayal, it’s not the alcohol manufacturers, it’s not even the trauma/pain/discomfort that is to blame. All of these are factors and supportive elements to addiction, but the biggest, single-most important factor in our society that supports drug use; is the shame and blame culture that allows little to no room for people to have a hard time, and be supported. Addiction begins because someone taught a child that their pain is something to turn away from. This can take the form of being neglected by their care-givers, by being modelled detrimental coping responses to stressors in their environment, or simply by not having anyone respond to their pain in a way that said “this is ok to feel this way, and we can get through it together”. From very early on, someone who is prone to addiction, will have learned, there is no one here to support me through this pain but myself and they will turn to whatever takes their pain away. In no way am I blaming parents or caregivers for the person’s addictive behavior, but am saying that as a society, we don’t have a built in way to deal with pain and to acknowledge that discomfort is inevitable. It’s a crap shoot whether kids will learn the coping skills necessary to navigate the trauma of human existence in a way that makes them not feel alone.

To heal addiction, to change this pattern, a person must learn how to turn towards the pain, face it, and change the coping reaction to that pain. To build stress tolerance, to build pain tolerance, and to find compassion and understanding for why this avoidance started in the first place. To learn new ways to “deal” with discomfort, and often make huge life shifts so that they do feel like they have a choice to feel a different way, and create a supportive environment for that.

To re-train the brain that pain isn’t something to turn away from, is a long arduous process. Often, by the time someone realizes that they have a problem, a host of other issues have cropped up, and that person probably has a lot of pain happening in real time, not just the initial reasons they started the behavior in the first place. At this point people can’t even imagine a different way of dealing with life. Teaching resiliency, discomfort tolerance, new coping strategies, and taming some of the chaos is part of it. Learning that we can in fact make it through life without substances or behaviors to take away the boredom, the disconnection, the stress, also means big life changes must be made as well. This is not a small task. Recovery from addiction is a lifelong journey, and can be approached many different ways. Prevention means changing the way we see pain, and allowing it to exist alongside all the other life experiences, and letting it take up the space it needs to.

Every time of year brings it’s own challenges and joys. Spring has the opportunity for new growth, new direction, budding trees, planting seeds, but also requires some level of honing in and managing of energy and re-directing the flow towards projects and goals we want to see realized. Addiction is often life energy focused in the wrong direction, towards self-destruction, a lot of time and energy and resources building on the shame of existence, and tearing people down. To turn that around takes immense courage, and help from others, no one person can turn addiction around on their own. It thrives in silence and secrecy, the first step is to bring it into the light in a place where shame and blame will no longer perpetuate the cycle. To who-ever needs to hear this, you are not alone, your life is worth working on, and anything that is actively tearing you down, it’s time to change that. You do have a choice to begin.