It's been almost 2 months since I stopped drinking, and I've started to notice a subtle transformation happening in my life...instead of losing Friday evening and Saturday evening to booze and socializing, those nights are starting to be about creativity and study and fun connection. A few Fridays I've come home, taken a hot bath, and read books for a paper I'm working on. It used to be that Friday nights were a write-off, I accomplished nothing and come to think of it I didn't nourish myself. Now that I'm not drinking, other things are coming into my life. The spaces in my week that used to be filled with drinking and numbing myself out are now open spaces where other things flow in, like reading, making nice dinners, connecting, thinking.

I did not expect this to happen. It makes me want to stick with the not-drinking to see what unfolds for me.

I decided to not drink any alcohol for the whole month of February, since it's a short month. Ha ha. About half way through February I decided that only 28 days without a drink is not much of a challenge, so I decided to abstain for the month of March as well. Now I'm wondering, why take it up again? When I drink it's always to satisfy a craving which is just as well satisfied with a grilled cheese sandwich, or jellybeans, or nachos. And when I drink I often am chasing the buzz, then I drink too much, then I feel sick. Not to mention some recent study that said that drinking is linked to breast cancer. I'm in my 40s so I have had just about every alcoholic beverage there is: beer, white wine, red wine, martinis, cosmopolitans (made me itch), shooters (university), irish coffees (why?), even mojitos in Cuba. What more is there? That said I did have a dream a week ago that a friend brought me a special bottle of european lager, and boy was it delicious....my feeling in the dream was that I was doing something illicit, and I was disappointed in myself for breaking my streak of sobriety.

I'm thinking about my teetotalling a lot, and feel proud of myself. I go out a lot and my friends all drink. However they have all supported me in my little test of willpower. It feels good to control the drinking, my fear is that it was starting to control me.

Encouragement welcome!!!

I have been reading everyone's posts on addiction with interest.   I first of all want to thank those who have posted about your own struggles with addiction and being willing to be vulnerable and share your story with us.  For me, I have struggled with the concept of the traditional disease model of addiction.  To some degree I felt it had the potential to leave the addict with a  of hopelessness.  However, I do understand the historical context of making it into a disease model which depathologizes the issue.  My mother was a nurse and I was reading one of her notebooks from the 1950's from the university at which she was studying.  Some of her notes regarding alcohol state that "alcoholism leads to insanity and that  20% of all insanity cases are caused alcohol".  Additionally,  "53% of children who had drunken parents were deemed to be mentally defective".  I was quite taken aback when I read this and it certainly made me understand why there was a need to depathologize  addictions.  I also recognize that with addictions coming under the auspicious of a disease model it then can come under our healthcare system and addicts can receive the treatment they so desperately need. The reason that I had some resistance to this model was that I felt the medical community attributed the addiction to a genetic issue and that there was a lack of emphasis placed on the environment in which the child (now adult addict) was exposed to.  In reading Gabor Mate's book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts I believe that he brought these two issues together beautifully.  He talks about how some people may have a genetic disposition towards addictions because of their brain structure, however it is the environment which they grow up in that greatly affects whether or not these neural pathways are activated.  For me the more exciting portion of Mate's discussion (and others in the field of brain plasticity) is that through talk therapy these neural pathways can be changed.  I have always been a strong proponent that the key to dealing with addictions is working with the emotional trauma and pain that initially may have lead one into addiction.  It is nice to see that at least some of the scientific and research community is finally acknowledging the incredible power of talk therapy.

I was thinking that my biggest issue is depression, thus the addiction. If I can heal my depression my vulnerability wouldn't be so low to wanting drugs. One huge thought I had is that I can not afford to laps in my recovery because the emotional turmoil you go through afterwards is so detrimental. I had a laps two weeks ago, and had thoughts that I was definitely going to hell for all the sneekiness around this terrible habit. Wasn't worth a few hours of feeling buzzed. The road to being able to feel the way I used to feel without taking drugs seems so long. I feel like I have short-circuted my " happy" transmitters with all the depression. It is the dopamine I really want! Addiction isn't the root of the problem but perpetuates the lack of ability to feel loved in the world. Then depending on how out of control it gets, it is the primary problem. Huge challenges. Isolating illness. That is why it is so important for us to reach out and connect. We are so alone when we are sick, the answer to coming back to reality is with other people who we trust and know won't judge us.

I have been sober for almost 9 years now.  But I still remember the cycle of pain that felt so good that I was caught up in alcohol, drugs and sex these things were the source of my power.  I still think of the moment that I finally surrendered myself to an admission of "powerlessness" that of my own accord I could not and would not find the means to change my behaviour and thinking on my own.  I thank God for 12 step and some of the good people in those rooms.  Also for therapy to help me look at some of my core issues with support and non judgement.  It feels just like yesterday whenever I think about myself in active addiction, I still have a love hate relationship with those behaviours and thoughts as they helped me and hurt all at the same time.  I never could have dreamed my life to be what it is today and only could have dreamt it as a sober person as the walls of my addiction closed my mind to alternate truths about myself.  I was so identified as an active user and abuser, then when I stopped I became identified as someone in recovery.  Now as more time has pasted I am identified with being a fallible and lovable person. What is important to me today is my personal integrity that I could never get a hold of when I was "out there" before.  My bottom was an emotional one which was made clear by the realization that my life could just go on and on in constant agony as that was the orbit that I was stuck in.  The problem with addicts like myself is my vision was myopic in the sense that I rarely could see beyond myself, and how I was affecting others.  It has taken a lot of work and time sober to recondition myself to see past my stuff and to take in others.  The nature of addiction is to end up alone and numb which almost sounds like an alive version of death to me now.  However painful, addiction seems to be a human condition that comes with all of us on some level which gives us all the opportunity to look at it and be honest or to continue to live in a waking dream that is progressive and destructive.  I guess I chose the blue pill or was it the red one?   

 I was so happy to see the comment about taking the label "addict" into perspective. When I was in rehab, I don't know why but I hated saying "I am an addict" all the time. I wanted to say, I have an addiction. I am way more than an addict. I am not even close to wanting to define myself by that entirely, although I know the "addicted brain" is a complex issue. Struggling person. Ya

I absolutely LOVE the interview.  I will be listening to it a few times before I am ready to write a full response but I wanted to at least take the time to express my gratitude to OPC for posting this.  Psychotherapy has been a loving experience for me and this interview just supports my process.  Thank you.

I cannot think of a better expression to describe what happens when you lose your struggle with an addiction. We go along with bumpy and smooth rodes, on this wagon of life, passing different scenarios, events, situations, vistas, and then, just when you might not be looking for it, a bump, and not necessarily a huge one, comes along and you're tossed right off the wagon. If one is lucky, the wagon stops long enough for you to get right back on, and lick your wounded ego into understanding what just happened. If you're lost in it, then you have some running to do to catch up to the wagon. That image is what has stayed with me over the past few days. In my eons-long struggle with food issues, I fell off the bulimia wagon two days ago and have not been able to figure out why. There are no issues in particular that may have set it off, but I do feel like I was not in my body as I watched myself overeat all kinds of food, then proceed to get rid of it. I'm sorry if this is grossing anyone out, but it is a fact of my life that I am both ashamed of, and yet it is within the analysis of this behaviour that I will find the source of my pain. I have not had any urges in the past two years, and now, there it is. I am sitting with this and continuing to try and figure out exactly what I was feeling in those moments. It's the picking apart of "the moment" that I find so intriguing. Therein is the world of knowledge about myself. I just can't figure it out yet. Or, at least, why, at this time, when everything else I do seems to be accounted for, this cropped up. WElcome to my world of addiction.

Am I the first one to post a comment on addictions, really?

I don't see any posts.

I became addicted to opiods about two years ago. In March finally found the courage to

tell my therapist my horrible secret. I was weeping. Nobody knew, but people were starting to get suspicious and I was panicing. I was desperate to stop but so afraid of becoming depressed and going through withdrawal. I was taking enough that I could have accidently killed myself. I didn't see this until I saw the doctor. It was an absolute nightmare. I went to rehab, I know go to NA meetings, am in recovery thank God. I have only told three other people. The shame is overwhelming. Feeling like such a stupid idiot, but at the same knowing that I was in extreme emotional pain when I started, and then didn't know how to stop. I feel I am at ground zero with all the work I have already done in therapy. It all got washed away with this. I have to start all over again to figure out what led me to it. How I think, how that effects me emotionally, addictive thoughts, toxic emotional pain. If there is anybody else that wants to join this discussion with me, I am here. No-one knows accept another addict the hell it puts you  through. The book "Hungry Ghosts" has been my bible. Helps me have some compassion for myself when the embarrassment starts eating at me.

thanks for reading.

Harm Reduction Blog

 

Thank you for reading my blog on harm reduction and I hope it will spark some interesting thoughts or discussion.

 

Harm reduction has become a term that has become both popular and co-opted in the past few years. Unfortunately, with the common use, it seems to have lost some of its meaning within the illicit drug user community. Unless otherwise stated, when I use the term drug user, I am referring to the illegal use of drugs (not alcohol, caffeine, nicotine etc). I want to take this opportunity to create a dialogue about harm reduction and what the term means for illicit drug users and for the larger community.

 

I consider myself to be quite left on the spectrum of politics. My father used to call me a socialist as a child. I didn't know what this meant but I could tell by the intonation of his voice that it wasn't a good thing. A number of years ago, I was speaking with a friend and she introduced me to the concept of harm reduction. She said that the term was about reducing the harms associated with drug use - mostly reducing the rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C within the injection drug using community. This seemed reasonable to me. Of course I would want to provide clean needles and other injecting equipment to people who are using drugs. However, I believed this was a short term solution until the person using drugs could stop using drugs through treatment programs or abstinence based programs like Narcotics Anonymous. My friend then said something to me that literally made me feel like my head might explode (similar to a computer when it can't compute). She said "we could legalize drugs like heroin and the world would be a safer place." To this day, I can still remember feeling like I was going to melt down. I respected this woman, I thought she was bright, compassionate, funny and hardworking. She was a middle class, white, 'older' woman who shared similar politics to me. I didn't understand what she was saying. I grew up in the era of "just say no to drugs", "drugs are bad", "people who use drugs are bad", and "using drugs like heroin, cocaine, and crack would immediately put you in a state of addiction that would lead to sex work, homelessness and jail". Every scene of every movie that involved drugs came back to me. What was she talking about?

 

Our next encounters challenged me more than almost any other political discussion I had ever had. I had to try and get my head around all the stigma, prejudice, judgement and fear I had around people who use drugs (at the time I was still using the term drug addict). I was desperate to challenge my mind because I was used to being the most 'left' in the room and this new information was causing inconsistency in my world views. This is what she laid out before me:

 

Drugs are neither good nor bad. Society has placed values and morals around people who use drugs for a variety of reasons that I now understand to be about a form of social control. Lots of people use drugs. I use drugs (alcohol, pot, caffeine, nicotine etc).

It is not drugs that are the problem but the criminalization of drugs that is the problem. This does not mean that some peoples' drug use is not problematic. Some people become dependent on drugs in a particular way that affects their ability to do what they want to do.

We could legalize and prescribe heroin today and it would significantly cut down on crime, drug overdoses, and homelessness.

We could legalize all illicit drugs today and it would cut down on organized crime, petty crime, violent crime, homelessness, prison sentences and it would improve peoples' quality of life.

 

We spent many hours in discussion and since that day I have been committed to getting a better understanding of some of the things she said to me. I needed it to make sense. My first response to my friend was that if we legalized drugs today, "there would be people lying on the streets with needles hanging out of their arms drooling or dead. People would go crazy in the streets, we would have addicts all over the place."

It was through reading and talking to people who use drugs that these ideas started to make sense to me. Tons of people use drugs. Unfortunately, the only people that we see are the ones living in the streets. This allows us to have particular views or judgements about drug users that are not entirely accurate. We do not see the doctors, lawyers, judges, actors, store shop owners and other 'professionals' who use drugs. They are hidden from the public eye and because some drugs are illegal, they are not spoken about publicly.  People use drugs for lots of reasons. Why do you use drugs (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine)? Sometimes I use them to escape, sometimes because I am at a party and it's for fun, sometimes it's to wake me up or put me to sleep. There are all kinds of reasons people use drugs. The reality is that using drugs can help with managing the symptoms of mental health issues (marijuana can help people manage anxiety, cocaine can help people suffering from depression, etc). These might not be the solutions that we see as 'helpful' but what is the difference between these drugs and drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical companies? My answer would be that one is legal, nicely packaged and regulated by the government. The other is illegal and seen as the 'root of all evil'.

 

Some of the problems that arise from certain drugs being illegal are:

You cannot go into a store and buy them. You must find someone who sells these drugs either on the street or someone that will come to your home. This automatically makes the buying and selling of drugs more dangerous and unpredictable.

You never know what dose of the drug you are buying. Imagine getting aspirin at the store and not knowing what the actual dose is. Do you take 1 to cure your headache or 12? Each cut is different and therefore you never know what you should be taking. This leads to overdose and sometimes getting a bad cut (not enough). In either case, there is no recourse. There is no better business bureau and you cannot file a complaint with the police. Unfortunately, this means people take measures into their own hands and it usually leads to violence. Think about the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920's.

Because certain drugs are illegal they can be expensive. This often leads people into petty crime to be able to afford their drug of choice. I am not saying if drugs were legal that everyone would be able to afford them and therefore not commit crime. What I am saying is that the mere fact that the market is not regulated creates a particular pricing problem. Combine this with not knowing what kind of cut you are getting and additional problems arise. Prescription heroin is already a reality in some countries. People go to their doctors and receive heroin in the morning before they go to work at the end of their day before they go home to their family. People are able to work their jobs and maintain a family while using heroin. They are no longer trying to guess how much of the drug they need, they no longer have to think about where they are going to get it, how much it is going to cost, is it safe, will they be arrested, how can they hide their use from their family or from work. People who use drugs have said that it is a 24 hour a day job to try and maintain their drug use. Now that they can receive their drug of choice through prescription, they are able to focus their energy and time on other pursuits. Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) programs are also effective for some people who use heroin. MMT is a synthetic opiate that acts as a substitute for heroin and has been an effective treatment for people who no longer want to be trying to access heroin on the street.

The mere fact that some drugs are illegal puts anyone who is using these drugs in the category of criminal. This creates a market for organized crime. Make illicit drugs legal and you eliminate a large component of the underground economy associated with illicit drugs. I could go on about this but it is only to stretch your mind around the possibility of what making illegal drugs legal can mean to society at large.

 

Some of my thinking around these issues has been quite linear at times. I think about legalizing drugs in our current society and although I believe we could just legalize drugs and things would improve for a particular segment of our society (for people who are already using drugs and suffering the consequences of their illegal nature). I also can see how many people reading this would think this is outrageous. But what if we were to change the lens just a little more? What if we looked at the legalization of drugs as only one strategy amongst a much larger shift in the way our society runs? What if we start looking at people with compassion, thoughtfulness, creativity and love? What if we chose to create real solutions versus more punitive approaches and punishing people? What if instead of looking at drug use as the problem we start to look at some of the social factors that contribute people's problematic use of drugs?

 

Here is a very short list of some of the issues I believe are connected:

 

Protecting children from violence and sexual abuse in the home (many people who use drugs are coping with childhood trauma). This may mean creating programs and more healing processes for family members who are caught in a cycle of violence.

Create low income housing. A lack of affordable low-income housing means that people living below the poverty line are forced to live on the street, in the shelter system, or rooming houses.  These are often unsafe environments, and people end up using drugs to escape form the harsh realities of their situation. 

Increase mental health services that work from a real harm reduction perspective. Many people who use drugs have mental health issues. Unfortunately, we live in a society that mandates people to stop using drugs before they can get their mental health issues addressed. People who are using drugs also have problems when going into treatment centers because treatment programs insist that people have to get help with their mental health issues. This contradiction makes it impossible for people who use drugs and have mental health issues get assistants.

Creating alternatives to prisons. Prisons are dangerous and do not 'rehabilitate' people. I have worked as a prisoners rights advocate for over 15 years and have seen the debilitating affects prisons have on people. There is no space for them to work on personal issues, no job training, and no access to appropriate programs (this is another topic all together). Prisons often have the opposite affect on those that it hopes to 'cure'. Prison often exacerbates peoples use of drugs because now they have a criminal record, they have experienced further degradation, humiliation and violence.

 

This is just a short list of interconnected issues and could be the focus of another article. I haven't even addressed the larger systemic issues such as on-going colonization, racism, classism, sexism, white privilege etc. that contribute to the ways our society creates problematic drug users. This is not to take away from a persons agency, only one perspective of a very complex set of social issues.

 

So then, what is harm reduction? Real harm reduction for people who use drugs goes beyond providing clean needles (although this is very important). Harm reduction for people who use drugs is about reducing violence, making money to buy drugs, avoiding prison and stopping the criminalization of drugs that makes using drugs much more dangerous.

 

I grew up where drinking was a regular occurrence in the home.  Even though, alcohol was misused in my childhood home, it is only 1 part of my struggle with addictions.   My struggle with addictions stemmed from my childhood experience of having emotionally absent parents.  I remember feeling very alone in my surroundings even though there were four people in the home.  However, my feelings of aloneness started earlier; from the moment of my birth when my mother was unable to take me home from the hospital.  When asked, I was told that she simply could not handle seeing me and not be able to take me home.  When I entered into psychotherapy, I did not understand what an impact the unconscious has on our lives.  Once I started to let go and open myself up to my therapist I started to understand how my ability to trust and get close to people had been affected from being abandoned as a baby.  However, before that happened I went through a myriad of many other destructive life experiences like starting to smoke pot at age 12 and gradually moving to harder substances as time went on just to distance myself from my home life. To be continued…

My thoughts on growing up in an alcoholic addicted family.  I am the oldest daughter with two younger sisters.  The effects of parental alcoholim began very early long before I was aware there was a problem.  Our family atmosphere included unexpressed feelings of confusion, guilt, anger, shame and fear.  Rage was the family sescret and shared but unacknowledged family pain.  
My parents were themselves children of alcoholics and were still traumatized when they became
parents.  For me family life was inconsistent, unpredictable, and chaotic because everything was based on anger or a drug which impairs functioning.  What was true one day may not be true the next day.  Their personalities would change with alcoholism.  I learned to repress spontaneity, to first check things out to see if the parents were upset and how to shrug off disappointment.  Arbitrariness would occur from the whimsical and impulsive changs that would occur from one day tothe next and I was unable to determine the basis for these changes.  Most of the time I felt inadequate, ntense and  upset.  The fear of being "out of control" and wanting to let go of strong feels were experienced as being out of control.  The avoidance of feelings and the fundamental believe that feelings are wrong, bad and scary was a constant.  When I expressed feelings I was met with disapproval, anger and rejection.   This led to a major source of anxiety and conflict over control in my life to this day.

As I began therapy I was able to focus on the denial which permeated my family of origin.  I looked at the child within and found that I learned the rules of "don't talk, don't trust, don't feel".  I learned my judgment was poor and incorrect, nothing is wrong I was told but everything seems wrong.  I must be misperceiving.  I must be wrong.  I learned to tolerate amny intolerable situations.  My natural responses were somehow unacceptable, wrong, not to be trusted.  I learned one of my parents were lying or telling something that is totally against everything I am sending, everything that my experience would tell me was real.  I was taught not to trust myself or others.  I learned in therapy when I do not trust my experience, my body signals I would ignore my feelings.  To survivie I would have to separate myself from my feelings.  I did not learn to integrate my feelings, thoughts and observations.  I would feel confused, scared, bad, sick or crazy.

During my process  with psychotherapy I have learned I was a survivor.  I have become aware of my psychologial and physiological vulnerabilites which I acquired as a result of being reared in a home where there is chaos; I was very adept at pleasing conforming, looking good, dress well, appeared successful and was admired. But all the while my internal dialogue would center around feelings of inadequacy, the thought "I'm not good enough". I often experienced loneliness and a sense that things are not right. With my therapist's support I learned to give myself permission to take care of myself. To learn that I could have privacy, to know that there is a language which I am learning to use to express my needs. To learn about personal boundaries and professional boundaries. My personal growth is a continuing journey. It is an ongoing process of learning to love myself.

I am addicted to daily exercise and feel as if I can not live without it! Even when I go on holidays I make sure there are opportunites for a daily workout.  I go to the gym,lift weights, bike on the days I do not do yoga. I began this routine 40 years ago and it has saved my life in addition to therapy.   Moving my body helps me feel alive.    As I am aging, my body is becoming less flexible but I am determined to keep moving.  I am SO glad that the compulsive part of my personality has a constructive outlet.  Otherwise, I could be addicted to alcohol and/or drugs.