The high likelihood between trauma survivors

and substance abuse

Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash

7 to 10 times more likely.

Did you know that those who have experienced a trauma are 7-10 times more likely to develop a substance abuse problem?

It makes sense.

The point in mentioning this is not to blame our traumas on our own substance abuse disorder or addiction, but to understand more about experiences that have affected our mind and body, why we hoped to/felt we had to find ways to calm ourselves down, to sleep, to manage our mental health.

Many turn to this when we don’t have mental health help - proper medications or readily available therapy.

It’s a gentle affirmation of why we got here and also as a reminder that we now—if we’re sober—we have a choice — to engage in other methods of healing.

I am thankful that I did a lot of mental health therapies and tried alternative ways of healing from hot yoga to sound and light therapy to various types of therapies, EMDR and craniosacral therapy, before I got sober.

Because though - obviously - getting sober calms your mind and body and anxiety down - in tremendous ways, I still believe my nervous system would have been dysregulated and my mind/body poised at hypervigilance if I hadn’t done work on my mental health prior to getting sober.

I am grateful for my 12 step program.

However, as many in these programs will tell you - it’s their therapy.

It’s cheaper, they say.

Or, “it’s the only thing that work,” by that they mean, has worked for them.

Some people dismiss why they became an alcoholic or an addict, because they don’t believe it really matters, and that you can (over)-analyze it or you can work on treating it and recovery.

But I don’t agree with that.

At least, not for me. It doesn’t work for me.

Because to me, it’s a cop out. And it means that there is less that is required of me to engage in my own personal growth and healing.

Yes, I am an alcoholic, but I wasn’t always an alcoholic, from a teenager or from the first drink. For decades I was not - this came later.

It’s one part of my story that needs attention and recovery and healing but I have many other parts as well.

Perhaps it’s because my story is one that I didn’t drink to excess and to black out from the very beginning of when I started drinking. (I understand many alcoholics have this relationship with alcohol from the beginning.)

But that wasn’t my relationship with alcohol. I became an alcoholic because of sustained abuse of it, as an attempted antidote for my anxiety and insomnia. It was prolonged exposure to drinking to medicate that caused me to developed tolerance, dependence, then a longing for more and more. I also wanted to numb, because I didn’t know how to survive in a world where my dad and brother blew their brains out, so I wanted to self-medicate and escape into oblivion, or a bottle or two of wine.

I’m not proud of this - I was warned that alcoholism ran in my family. I became an alcoholic any way.

I felt that I needed to be stronger and shoulder it - as I was taught to do so. The hero of an alcoholic family.

But alcohol was my consolation prize; it was something I kept for myself, even after I knew that I had a problem - ‘just in case’ - It felt like something that I should be able to save for me, to numb out and escape, to sleep, when I really couldn’t deal with life.

When I didn’t want to have to live with the fact that 2/3 of my immediate family members took their own lives.

I’ve watched clips with Dr. Gabor Mate, where he’s listening to people’s stories of addiction, affirming why they were in pain and turned to substance abuse, and with this validation, they cry. Simply because he validates that they were in pain and that it was smart what they did, they were trying to live. He says that though it got out of control, they were trying to cope, to live, to survive, and that that was a smart thing.

Many alcoholics - and I would imagine other substance abusers- say, it worked for us until it didn’t.

Yes, I can’t drink anymore. Yes, I abused alcohol until it went into full blown alcoholism.

But it also did work for me for many years until it didn’t.

It did put me to sleep - though not well, of course, but when you are struggling to calm your mind down to sleep at all, black out-wine sleep felt like a gift to be able to lose consciousness for even a little while.

Alcohol abuse did temper my anxiety (even though it comes back full force, then two fold, but at first it tempers it) after I would address my mother’s breakdowns, my doctoral course and dissertation work, and feel like I ‘managed’ my father’s suicide, because I couldn’t fall apart because my PhD work or teaching beckoned.

It doesn’t [serve me] any more.

We don’t like to look at those with addiction problems.

We like to look away and pretend we’re different, better.

Dr. Gabor Mate points that out in his book, The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, but it is you, just amplified.

After all, no one wakes up in the morning and thinks, I think I’ll toy with losing everything and control over my mind and body, I think I’ll destroy my liver or wind up in jail. I think I’ll just throw it all away for wine or coke or heroin or whatever -

It’s because life and living is painful.

And people can - and do - find ways that they’re better because theirs is healthier or because I didn’t do this —- and you did —

And that may be true, but as the expert (Mate) tells us, that also won’t get you very far on your healing journey, with the comparisons and judgments, and if your focus is there rather than on our own predisposition to coping, soothing, maladaptive behavior—you aren’t addressing your pain or your repressed emotions, your distraction to make yourself feel better and not face head on your own junk.

Because we all have that - the tendencies to not want to deal - stuff it down as far as it will go - don’t talk about it, retail therapy/buy shit, or gorge ourselves, eat our feelings away or down, sleep as much as possible/nap incessantly to just forget, zone out in front of a tv or a screen, judge another because it makes me feel better about myself….

We all have tendencies to numb out. Even if yours is just buying a lot of records of classical music like Dr. Gabor Mate.

One of the thing that I admire most about him in his book is that he admits his own judgment and his own tendencies towards (his own) addictions, humbling himself, and trying to understand and validate those who end up at the true bottom, having lost almost everything to their addictions.

Many people don’t do that - especially doctors.

It’s affirmative. It’s humble. It’s genuine.

And he knows that that is also how people heal - to be validated, affirmed, to minimize shame before they can work towards addressing the trauma and the addiction.

He’s real and it’s also very true.

Many don’t like to acknowledge the humanity of those with addictions because it’s our shadow side - perhaps it reveals times when we are not proud of ourselves or it reminds us of someone or something that was hurt us or it reminds us - we are faced with what humanity is capable of -

So they turn away.

They judge.

They compare.

And in doing so, they can always come out on top.

But one of the things that 12 step programs has taught me is this - any one of us who has struggled with some addiction, we have learned to say - ‘not yet’ - because it could have been/could be you -

I didn’t end up unhoused…yet.

I didn’t end up put in prison for life…yet.

I didn’t end up losing everything…yet.

I didn’t end up institutionalized…yet.

I didn’t end up dead….yet.

It’s a call to understand the seriousness of our addictions and to be humble.

I know someone who spends a lot of time with recovering addicts, is married to one, and says that being around them, knowing them and their addictions, jail stays, and problems, that it makes her feel better about herself -

It’s humanity’s tendency to elevate ourselves when we compare to others.

That used to frustrate me - but now, knowing what I know - I feel sorry for this individual. Because when we need others and their lowest points to compare, to feel better about ourselves, that says a great deal about our own sense of inferiority and lack of self worth/esteem within our body/mind/spirit.

I also am thankful because I have had to come face to face to my potential to self-destruct and my lowest points but it’s also an opportunity to grow, to evolve, to heal -

Those with addictions have had to face their demons, their capabilities, their diseases, their traumas, their mental health - or at least they’ve been certainly strongly nudged to do so -

Sure, they can ignore it. Many do, they relapse, they keep going.

But many use them as wake up calls to get sober and change.

Some people can easily poo-poo their “addictions” and never address them because they haven’t brought them to their knees.

But that doesn’t mean they help you. It won’t help you heal.

I never understood for the longest time why many people said “I’m a grateful alcoholic” or “We won’t regret the past” -

I do now.

It was one of the hardest points in my life to be there, at the low point, but my life is now so much better than it was.

I would rather be an open and affirming recovering alcoholic than a closeted one in active addiction.

I would rather be aware of my tendencies to self-medicate and escape, because I didn’t know how to cope with life, how to live.

I didn’t know how to live.

I would rather know that I am just as capable of ending up unhoused and dead than to think myself superior.

I still don’t know how to live.

But I am committed to a sober life, to trying. To find better ways to heal as I embody this traumatized body and mind that I live in.

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