A temporarily desirable state
I heard this today on a video from trauma expert, Dr. Gabor Mate, author of the Myth of Normal (on trauma and it many manifestations) and the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (on addiction):
“Actually, so the addition wasn’t your problem. Your addition was your attempt to solve the problem. The substance gave you at least a temporarily desirable state, it wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t a stupid thing you did, it was actually it was a way of feeling more yourself, more normal, more in charge of your life and less overwhelmed.”
This. was. me.
The point here is not to say that we are not accountable for our actions when in active addiction or that we do not have substance abuse disorder or to minimize the harm or danger to myself and carelessness to others when I abused alcohol -
The point is to say -
“We use because we don’t know how to live.”
Both can be true at the same time.
I appreciate Dr. Mate because he validates why people use, he frames it as behaviors and symptoms that has greater roots when exploring ‘the why’.
To minimize someone’s experience with drug abuse or alcoholism to “they’re just an addict” or “they’re just an alcoholic,” is part of the problem and the stigma.
Ultimately, it also does nothing for the person to aid in their recovery.
Most any 12 step program will tell you that the behavior is only a symptom of the greater problem, the cause, the brokenness inside of you.
The maladaptive behavior was the way of trying to manage your life that otherwise felt unmanageable.
This is why in my 12-step program we often say “it [the abuse of the substance] served me, until it didn’t.”
Alcohol abuse served me for years, helping me sleep, dissipating my anxiety, managing my mental health, powering through my doctoral program, my mother’s death, COVID, my miscarriages, my relocations, my partner’s betrayal, etc.
I used alcohol and abused alcohol for so many years. I felt that feeling all that I had to would break me. So much had happened that felt too big, too insurmountable, to be able to feel all of that.
And truly, I felt incapable of addressing all those emotions, the repression, the grief, the trauma, the shock.
It reminds me of what a doctor I saw once told me, when understanding my family history of both alcoholism and anxiety and depression.
He said, Well, of course they abused alcohol if they had anxiety:
Alcohol was [is] the most readily available, cheapest method for anti-anxiety, anti-depression, insomnia -
A great remedy? A sustainable one?
Absolutely not - but-
But we also live in a society, even in our wealthy, developed, advanced country, where mental health services are often not affordable or accessible.
It becomes very easy to see why so many turn to substances to numb out, to manage grief, trauma, and undiagnosed or untreated mental illness.
It also makes me realize how so many are so quick to judge and uphold stigmas surrounding mental illness and substance abuse -
Even when they too have physiological conditions, in part created due to their own poor responses to mismanaging their stress or conditions; that may have been their own maladaptive ways of mismanaging their own lives.
It continues to baffle me, but it is an interesting part of humanity - I feel badly about myself, but at least I’m not ——like them. Their —— shortcoming makes me feel better about myself. Because I can compare myself to them and then I can create false hierarchies where I come out on top.
It’s fascinating the lies we tell ourselves so that they are worse than we are.
Our justified we feel.
Because to admit that they are just like me, we are the same, I’m no better - is too much for some people to handle.
I am no better than the unhoused, unemployed, person addicted to heroin or cocaine who lost everything.
It could have been me - with a few different strokes or luck or turn of events -
But, the beauty of a 12 step program and a spiritual awakening is that -
I. know. that.
So, I can embody that humility and gratitude with me, and have it re-orient my life and perspective.
This is why it makes sense to me why Laura McKowen wrote, ‘We are the luckiest’ when she talked about her path to becoming sober.
You could look at these folks as, I’m better than they are because I haven’t -
Lost a job, lost a house, lost family members, been arrested, ended up in jail, etc.
So ‘it makes me feel better about myself,”
Or -
You could see how so many of those people move through life differently, act differently than they used to, because they are intimately acquainted with a life-changing, soul-searching, spiritual awakening experience -
One that fundamentally changed them at their core.
This is also why so many people say that the 12 steps are a good guide for life for anyone.
Not just for addicts or recovering alcoholics.
When you are made to confront your own darkest moments, your demons, and rock bottom - it can rewire and transform your inner being.
I’ve had that experience. And for that, I am humble and grateful.
And yet still, it’s nice to have someone like Dr. Gabor Mate, a trauma expert, who - even though he is not in recovery- draws links to his own ‘addictive behavior’ and maladaptive ways of coping in his phenomenal book, The Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
It’s nice to be validated, to be seen -
That’s why in this video, the woman he said this to, she started crying, because he validated her pain, her story, and confirmed why she engaged in those behaviors, which does important work to absolve the shame of those embodying and carrying trauma.
Interesting read 👌