Addiction & recovery

“The treatments, rehabilitation programs, medications, technologies, techniques, and tools, and the therapy and self-help books -- they provide relief and interrupt uncontrollable and sometimes dangerous patterns of addiction, but why do most people find themselves right back where they started?”

This was the first question posed to me in Being True To You - Recovery Coaching Training. The answer slowly revealed itself to me as the lectures continued.

Addiction has been labled over the years as Sin, moral failing, bad choices, crime, misconduct, weakness, flawed character, a substance problem, a mental illness, a chemical imbalance, a genetic influence, unresolved trauma, developmental problem, emotional deficiency, self-medication, social disconnect, a learned behavior. Is it a coping mechanism for mounting stress or economic pressures? Perhaps it is a side effect of a disjointed culture, a consequence to the war on drugs, or a lack of spiritual connection.

However addiction or chronic anxiety or depression comes about, what ever cause or label we want to put on its source, we still have to deal with it.

One thing I’ve learned in my training is that the lens through which we view the problem will directly influence the methods employed to solve it.

Throughout history, the addict has been vilified, rejected, incarcerated, committed, exploited, and misunderstood. Treatments have varied from lobotomy, to “snake-oil cure-alls”, to individual therapy, to 30-90 day rehabilitation centers. Something the Being True To You program heralds as the one sure thing a person needs on the path of recovery is the Conversion Experience. This is the shift in ones consciousness that brings about the willingness necessary to be successful in recovery. This can be seen as “hitting rock bottom”, having a “spiritual awakening”, or simply realizing that your “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

“At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only toward the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future -the two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the center, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit -with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action-, and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive, and meaningless mind whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction -and it serves the same purpose.” Gabor Mate