The Key Factor in Addiction Recovery

Positive Lifestyle Change

The Key Factor in Addiction Recovery

By David H. Kerr                  January 22, 2015

What is addiction? 

Is it a disease?  Is it a sickness?  Is it a mental health problem? Is it a moral failing?  Is it a crime? Is it a harmful lifestyle?  Is it something else?  The debate roars on but today I would rather call addiction a harmful lifestyle. Addiction is a lifestyle choice that harms self and others, no debate about that. 

How can people recover from addiction?

The National Institute on Drug Abuse classifies addiction as a medical disorder: Considering that, here’s what they say about how to recover from addiction:

“How Can People Recover Once They’re Addicted? – NIDA’s points

1)     As with any other medical disorder that impairs the function of vital organs, repair and recovery of the addicted brain depends on targeted and effective treatments that must address the complexity of the disease. We continue to gain new insights into ways to optimize treatments to counteract addiction’s powerful disruptive effects on brain and behavior because we now know that with prolonged abstinence, our brains can recover at least some of their former functioning, enabling people to regain control of their lives.

2)     That said, the chronic nature of the disease means that relapsing to drug abuse is not only possible but likely, with relapse rates similar to those for other well-characterized chronic medical illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. For all these diseases, including drug abuse, treatment involves changing deeply embedded behaviors, so lapses should not be considered failure but rather indicate that treatment needs to be reinstated or adjusted, or that alternate treatment is needed. But addicted individuals also need to do their part. Even though they are dealing with a compromised brain that affects decision-making and judgment, people with drug abuse or addiction must also take responsibility to get treatment and actively participate in it.”

To help an addict, I have found it more practical to see addiction as an acquired harmful lifestyle with possible genetic origins rather than or as well as a sickness or disease.  Changing the addiction lifestyle is a major factor leading to lasting recovery!  It usually involves finding new friends who are positive and changing our interests and where we work and “play.”  As they say in AA, changing “people, places and things” is required for recovery[1].

Mankind has always been curious, always seeking quick ways to feel happier and/or ways to be quickly removed from intolerable physical or mental stress and pain.  Many substances now legal or illegal, fill that need.  This is where the trouble can begin and for some, at an early age and then lasting a lifetime.  Media advertisements for opioid pain killers plus word of mouth descriptions of the good feelings associated with taking these legal medications and illegal drugs, especially heroin, fuel the curiosity and soon comes the statement, “I want to try this just once!”  Often this “once” leads to years of addiction to the pain killers and then for some, to heroin!  Situations like war can cause rampant drug abuse and addiction so that many of our veterans are returning physically addicted or detoxifying on the plane ride home.

The same positive lifestyle changing goals we use for addicts in long term recovery often work for returning war veterans.  Those returning soldiers who want to stay clean and sober here in the states, often have to break ties with veteran friends who choose to continue to use drugs upon returning to the states.  They must avoid the places that are known hangouts for addicts and substance abusers as well.  They must avoid the kind of idleness that often is the open door for the addiction lifestyle to enter.  They must move forward and/or relearn a new positive healthy lifestylethat will promote their feeling of self-worth, a critical ingredient to staying clean and sober for any length of time.

Finally, you’ll be interested and perhaps surprised to know that the vast majority of addicts whom I have met, know this!  While this knowledge is essential, it is only the first step towards building that new and durable drug free lifestyle.  Doing what they know they should have been doing for years, is the key to building the bridge to lasting recovery.  How do you get an addict to start doing and stay doing what he/she already knows is right?  Now there’s the key question.  The technical answer to this is “you don’t.” 

Remember, the addict doesn’t need a “counselor” he[2] needs a coach since the addict is his own counselor!  The addict must go through the process of healing himself.  He must do it but he can’t do it alone.  He needs someone by his side to remind him of his “good” and his strengths so that he can begin the process of restoring his faith in himself.  He may need to enter a drug free residential program that is long-term focusing on lifestyle change rather than on medically oriented treatment.

Author Johann Hari in his new book, “Chasing the Scream” offers his point of view about addiction.  Although not agreeing with all of them, I find that his ideas are more consistent with my experiences and understanding of the addicts I have met since 1965.  The title of Hari’s article below is: “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think.”  Hari traveled across the country interviewing addicts and compiling a picture of their lives and addiction itself.  Here are eighteen points from his thinking and understanding that are well worth a look:

1)      “But what I learned on the road is that almost everything we have been told about addiction is wrong - and there is a very different story waiting for us, if only we are ready to hear it.”

2)     Hari even reviewed the studies of rats, designed to predict the reason for addiction.  In an experiment with rats giving them a choice of good or drugged water, “the rats with good lives didn't like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did.”

3)     In a comparison with soldiers who went to war and became addicted: “But in fact, some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers - according to the same study - simply stopped (when they returned to the states). Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage (as per the rat experiment above) back to a pleasant one, so they didn't want the drug any more.”

4)     “Professor Alexander argues this discovery is a profound challenge both to the right-wing view that addiction is a moral failing caused by too much hedonistic partying, and the liberal view that addiction is a disease taking place in a chemically hijacked brain. In fact, he argues, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage.”

5)     “In the hospital around you, there will be plenty of people also given heroin for long periods, for pain relief. The heroin you will get from the doctor will have a much high purity and potency than the heroin being used by street-addicts, who have to buy from criminals who adulterate it. So if the old theory of addiction is right - it's the drugs that cause it; they make your body need them - then it's obvious what should happen. Loads of people should leave the hospital and try to score smack on the streets, to meet their habit. But here's the strange thing. It virtually never happens. The Canadian doctor Gabor Mate was the first to explain to me, medical users just stop, despite months of use. The same drug, used for the same length of time, turns street-users into desperate addicts - and leaves medical patients unaffected.”

6)     “The drug is the same, but the environment is different.”

7)      “But in fact, some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers - according to the same study - simply stopped. Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage back to a pleasant one, so they didn't want the drug any more.

8)     Professor Alexander argues this discovery is a profound challenge both to the right-wing view that addiction is a moral failing caused by too much hedonistic partying, and the liberal view that addiction is a disease taking place in a chemically hijacked brain.  In fact, he argues, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage.”

9)     “He says we should stop talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding'. A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else.

10)  So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”

11)   “You can have all the addiction, and none of the chemical hooks. I went to a Gamblers' Anonymous meeting in Las Vegas (with the permission of everyone present, who knew I was there to observe) and they were as plainly addicted as the cocaine and heroin addicts I have known in my life. Yet there are no chemical hooks on a craps table.”

12)  “But the Office of the Surgeon General has found that just 17.7 percent of cigarette smokers are able to stop using nicotine patches. That's not nothing. If the chemicals drive 17.7 percent of addiction, as this shows, that's still millions of life ruined globally. But what it reveals again is that the story we have been taught about The Cause of Addiction lying with chemical hooks is, in fact, real, but only a minor part of a much bigger picture.”

13)  “There is an alternative. You can build a system that is designed to help drug addicts to reconnect with the world - and so leave behind their addictions.”

14)  “The results of all this are now in. An independent study by the British Journal of Criminology found that since total decriminalization, addiction has fallen, and injecting drug use is down by 50 percent.”

15)  “The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live - constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.”

16)  “The writer George Monbiot has called this "the age of loneliness."We have created human societies where it is easier for people to become cut off from all human connections than ever before. Bruce Alexander - the creator of Rat Park - told me that for too long, we have talked exclusively about individual recovery from addiction. We need now to talk about social recovery - how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.”

17)   “Loving an addict is really hard. When I looked at the addicts I love, it was always tempting to follow the tough love advice doled out by reality shows like Intervention - tell the addict to shape up, or cut them off. Their message is that an addict who won't stop should be shunned. It's the logic of the drug war, imported into our private lives. But in fact, I learned, that will only deepen their addiction - and you may lose them all together. I came home determined to tie the addicts in my life closer to me than ever - to let them know I love them unconditionally, whether they stop, or whether they can't.”

18)  “When I returned from my long journey, I looked at my ex-boyfriend, in withdrawal, trembling on my spare bed, and I thought about him differently. For a century now, we have been singing war songs about addicts. It occurred to me as I wiped his brow - we should have been singing love songs to them all along.”

Summary

As we work to help addicts relate to and feel their own self-worth let’s be sure to understand that a critical part of this is for the addict in recovery to choose and practice a new drug free lifestyle!