Untangling 10 Myths of Addiction Recovery

Foreign. Hey there everybody. Doc Snipes here. Today we're talking about Untangling the 10 Myths of Addiction recovery. And yes, there are a lot more than 10 myths, but we're just going to hit 10 of them today. First one, addiction recovery is only about willpower. No, it's not. What caused the addiction was not only about willpower. And what's maintaining the addiction is not when people have an addiction, there are physical changes that happen both in their nervous system, in their brain, in the balance of their hormones. Their entire body sort of retunes, if you will. It affects how they perceive the world, how they think about things, how much they trust themselves and others. So it infects every piece of their life. Addiction recovery is about learning how to feel safe and empowered and loved and get your needs met. The next myth is once you're detoxed, your symptoms will rapidly go away. No, sorry. You may go to a rapid detox center. And yes, the worst of the withdrawal symptoms, the acute withdrawal symptoms may go away quickly during that process, however, if you have developed an addiction, if you've developed a dependence upon alcohol, behaviors, drugs, dopamine, basically, then the recovery process is going to take time. And this is what we call post acute withdrawal. And post acute withdrawal impacts every part of your life. It impacts your sleep, your, your pain, your hormones, your neurotransmitters. It impacts your desire to be around others and your patience with them. It impacts your mood and your neurotransmitters that affect your mood. It impacts your attention and your memory and brain fog levels. And it can even impact your environment where everywhere you look, it may feel like there are triggers. And that doesn't go away the minute you're detoxed. When you experience triggers, then you start having urges and cravings. So once you're detoxed, yeah, you may have most of the substance out of your system, but your system has not rebalanced, rebuilt and healed. Unfortunately, pause generally takes anywhere from six months to two years, depending on how heavily you used, how, how long you were using, and any other co occurring physical health and mental health issues you have. I have several videos on post acute withdrawal that you can look at on the YouTube channel. The third one, one of my pet peeves. Relapse means failure. No, it doesn't. Relapse means you missed something. When people relapse, they often start relapsing long before they use again. They may relapse emotionally. They may start feeling depressed and anxiety and get stuck on their pity pot. They may relapse cognitively, where they're thinking the way they used to think. We call this stinking thinking. They may relapse environmentally, or they start hanging out in old places and doing things that they used to do when they were in their addiction. All those are relapses, and you can stop those at any point in time. Once you've gotten to the point of using again, whether it's drugs, alcohol, porn, sex, whatever it is, yes, that's a big relapse, and it's going to kind of jolt your system, your nervous system that's trying so desperately to heal, but it still doesn't mean failure. When I've worked with clients in the past who've relapsed, we've sat down, and instead of shaming them, you know, I encourage them. I'm like, I am so glad you came back. That took a lot of courage to admit that you relapsed. Now let's look at what happened and figure out how we missed this. How did we miss this crack that you fell into when we were creating your relapse prevention plan? Relapse means we're going to learn one more thing. We need to learn to stay clean and sober. Once the addict is in recovery, everything's going to be fine. Addiction is a family disease or a family condition, and the family develops strategies to cope with the person. When they were in their addiction, that probably didn't change when. While the person was in treatment. So now the person's going to come out, and they have all these new skills, and they're trying to live this new way of life, and the whole family is sort of stuck in a time warp. Unfortunately, what we often see is the family sucks the person back into that time warp, and they start engaging in those old behaviors, and it becomes a relapse trap. The person who has the addiction, yes, they need to work on getting in recovery, but the entire family needs to also work on recovering, on letting go of anger and grief and guilt and whatever else, on developing healthier communication skills. Addiction doesn't generally form in a vacuum, and in order to maintain the or achieve the rich and meaningful life that both the person with the addiction and their families are looking for. We need to define what that looks like and help everybody change in a positive direction. You must hit rock bottom to recover. That's not true. Everybody's bottom is different. Change causes crisis, and crisis causes change. This is something that a mentor of mine said when I was in graduate school, and it's always stuck with me. People are not going to be ready to recover. And until it is too painful for them to keep doing the same thing they need, they realize they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And what that looks like for different people Is going to be very different. Some people have to be broke, homeless, and on their second felony. Other people have may reach that pain point when they're at risk of losing their family, they're at risk of divorce and losing custody of their kids. So everybody's pain point is different. And this term of rock bottom, where we tend to think that people have to be on skid row, Is not true. It's not true at all. And as clinicians, we can actually help what we call raise people's bottom by helping them recognize the early changes that are taking place and how that's keeping them from moving toward their rich and meaningful life. How that is make putting them at risk of pretty significant pain, Making them actually wake up and pay attention to that can be helpful. Nobody has to get all the way down to that rock bottom. In my opinion, addiction is just about the substance or the behavior. And kind of like addiction is only. Addiction recovery is only about willpower. No, it's about changing your behaviors, Changing your thoughts, Changing how you deal with your feelings. Addiction itself is about feeling powerless, about trying to numb things out. Generally, when we diagnose addiction, we ask people, have you been using a substance or engaging in a behavior that has caused you pain, has caused you significant problems in one or more areas of life, but you continue to do it anyway? So remember, you don't change until the pain is great enough. So, yeah, I'm having problems in these areas of my life, but the pain of that is not great enough for me to give up my use. And then we start saying, why? What is it that this use is protecting you from? Is it fear of abandonment? Is it fear of failure? Is it flashbacks and trauma that you haven't dealt with? The list goes on. I mean, the list is literally limitless. But addiction is a symptom of a problem. And generally, addiction is a tool or a strategy that some people developed in order to try to manage unmanageable distress. Addiction recovery is a linear process. Prochaska and declemente talked about the stages of readiness for change. Pre contemplation. I don't have a problem. Contemplation. I've got a problem, but I'm fine. I got it covered. Preparation. Okay, I've got a problem, and maybe I need some help, But I'm not. I'm not ready to actually do it. Action. I've got a problem and I'm ready to get help. I recognize I can't do it on my own. And then maintenance and what I have seen over 25 years working with people with addictions is that a lot of times they will start treatment. We'll say in the action phase, that's ideal. And then they get into treatment a little bit and they start feeling feelings and it hurts and it starts to feel overwhelmed, overwhelming. And they drop back to contemplation. It's like, okay, yeah, that's a problem, but I don't need your help. You know that that's too painful. So they drop back to a earlier stage of readiness for change, and that's okay. Counselor's job is to help them increase, recognize why they fell back, what felt overwhelming or too vulnerable, develop the skills they need to re approach that action level again. But it's not linear. Everybody's going to have es and flows. Everybody's going to have days where they feel like they've got it licked and other days where they feel like they're just floundering and they can't do it. And that's okay. Recovery means abstinence only. And this is a big pain point for a lot of people. But when we think about addiction globally, there are certain things that people are addicted to that they may not want to give up, like food and sex. Therefore, saying addiction recovery means only abstinence is kind of problematic because we can't give up food and most people are not willing to give up sex forever. So we need to define what recovery looks like for the person. And, and I know that's a really touchy subject for a lot of people. Even with substances, some people will argue that there are harm reduction alternatives to complete abstinence. The next myth is that addiction only affects the individual. No, it affects the individual. It affects their family. If they've got kids, it's affects their kids. It's actually considered one of the top nine adverse childhood experiences to have a parent with an addiction. It affects their friends, it affects their employer. Is generally, if they have an addiction, at some point they're going to start showing up drunk or distracted or something else, or calling in sick a lot. And when it starts in impacting the individual, the family and the employer, then it also starts impacting the community and health care utilization rates, etc, so it ripples out. The next myth is that you can recover alone. I really argue with this because I, I had a wonderful, wonderful mentor when I was first starting out. His name was Art. And he looked at me one day and he said, I would never do individual therapy with an addict. And I'm bewildered because he was a brilliant therapist. And I said, I don't, I don't understand. And Art said, when I'm working with somebody with an addiction, it's two on one. I'm working with the person who wants to be sober and the addict in their head. And it's just not tenable to try to do by myself that. You can think about the same thing. If you're trying to recover alone, it's the part of you that wants to recover and it's that addicted part of you that is still wanting to be fed, if you will. Do you need to necessarily participate in something like 12 step programs? Not necessarily, but you need supports. You need somebody who can be a sounding board. You need somebody who can be a resource and a support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And it may not be the same person. You may have five people you can call on and that's fine. But I have yet to see anybody recover completely alone. There are a couple of people that I know that tried to do it by themselves with the help of God, with the help of religion. And I believe that they actually got a lot more support from their congregation and from their spirituality than maybe they realized. But in any event, it's important to recognize that you've been trying to do it alone on your own for a while. That's one of the characteristics of addiction, is that you've tried to quit and you've been unable. Well, the definition of insanity. And no, Einstein did not say this, but the def. Definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. So if you've already tried to quit on your own or cut back on your own, and you've been unsuccessful, then you're probably not going to be successful this time. So let's figure out who you feel comfortable enough reaching out to. There are support groups online called Smart Recovery that use cognitive behavioral therapy principles. And it's not quite as all encompassing, if you will, as AA meetings. You're not going to be going to a Smart Recovery meeting every single day necessarily. You don't have sponsors in Smart Recovery, but it is a place where you can get support from other people who are in recovery. And finally, addiction recovery is quick and easy. No, it's hard. It's hard as hell. I'll just go ahead and say it. Bad word and all. Addiction recovery is hard. And once you've learned that behavior, and you've learned how that behavior can actually trigger the pleasure system, it's always going to be there, kind of nagging. As you get stronger in recovery, that nagging voice will become more much quieter. But every once in a while, it may pop up. Addiction recovery takes time. Remember I said earlier that pause lasts anywhere from six months to two years. For a lot of people. Your brain and your nervous system basically need to do a whole rewire. Your gut microbiome needs to rebalance with healthy microbes that are not expecting stress, that are not expecting the toxin. Your emotions need to stabilize. When you're using, you're under a lot of stress. So your stress response becomes much stronger than your relaxation response. And as a result, when people are in early recovery, they often dysregulate. When they get upset, they go from 0 to 250 like that. That's expected because their nervous system is miscalibrated, if you will. And it takes time to strengthen that relaxation response and take away some of the power of the stress response. And that's part of healing your autonomic nervous system, Healing your vagus nerve. You need to heal your perceptions and the way you think about things, including the way you think about yourself. And you're going to need to develop strategies to handle triggers in your environment and create an environment that most of the time feels safe and free from triggers. You can't always avoid triggers, but you can create environments in your car, in your house, and at your work where you feel not triggered, where there are not things that are going to make you want to use, at least most of the time. I hope this has given you a few things to think about. I have a lot of other videos on the YouTube channel on addiction and addiction recovery. I also have the entire addiction counselor training series. That videos are on YouTube and the classes are available@allce.com.