Journey of Addiction

This Is The Journey Of Addiction.

The Hallmark Of Addiction is Loss Of Control

and

Its Sustaining Force Is Denial.

Denial isn't necessarily of the addiction, but of the expanded impact of the addiction in our lives.

Addiction Involves a set of compulsions, highs, habits, fantasies, and rituals, settings and beliefs that become repetitive, designed to produce a desired goal.  If we can't do the addiction, we can do the ritual or we can seek the setting or fantasy.

Discussion

The mind set ALSO creates the high.  An addict needs the settings, intensity, to find the high.  The addict can experience what is referred to as a contact high, that is they just have to be near to people they believe to be high and they will get off on the proximity to the drug of choice. 

Addiction is a set of urges that creates obsession and preoccupa­tion. 

Rituals contribute to the obsession and the high.  The settings become important parts of the high.

Adolescents, especially those who lack identity and socialization skills, tend to find that the rituals of addictive behavior help them socialize.  The drug-using groups often provide a place for the adolescents to socialize when they lack socialization skills.  When an adolescent has enough consequences, they end up in treatment.  Since adolescents are good at rituals, they go through the rituals of treatment quite well.  They learn treatment talk, group talk and the rituals of recovery talk. 

When people leave treatment and head back into their old familiar settings, there is something that happens that most are not ready for. Nothing has changed. It’s all still the same. The old gang is there. The families are still doing what they always did. The places where the pain, the abuse, the neglect are generated are still operating.  People still have the problems of how to socialize, Do I Fit In Here? and if they are not ready for their reality then they tend to lose their sobriety very rapidly and lean heavily on old habits learned in childhood. 

What they discover quickly is that the rituals of treatment don't work as well in the real world as they did on the therapist’s couch. So somewhere in the time frame from 6 days to 3 years the individual goes back to what he or she knows they can depend on ... drugging, drinking, lint ball picking, food addictions ... again.  Why do they go back? This answer is so simple.  It works. The no trust rule is invoked ... Don’t Trust Anyone and you won’t be hurt they withdraw back into themselves and do what they have always done ... do it on their own. 

For the addict it is a requirement that they need to deal with the settings and the rituals of their addiction, not adapt those rituals from their addiction to their next supposed new way of life. They need to deal with the context of their lives, their social conditions, their emotional conditions and the dynamics of the social setting where home is. This is not the same for everyone, but the necessity of doing is the same for all.  They need to deal with their family and learn coping mechanisms and survival skills that suit their lives today. The Adult Child needs to learn how to socialize with others as a key part of recovery.

The preoccupation and fantasies of the addiction may be the high.  But when they are not the high, they, the preoccupation and fantasies, will enhance the need for the high and set the individual up to act out with the substance of his or her addiction; because after all, I Know. Not really ... but!

Solution, we have to change what we think about.  Our beliefs, our mind set ... those things that create, enables and enhances the high.