What Is The Opposite Of Addiction?

Is the opposite of addiction sobriety or being clean? I don't think so. 

Transcript

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Time again for Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard Podcast. I am Dr. Jacques Debruckert, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard, The Addiction Recovery Podcast. to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for it is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help if you actually need real help and you're in need of help please seek that out if you're in dire need of help you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them but don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help it's not it's just a podcast. It's for entertainment and information only. So let's keep it in that light, alright? Have a good time, learn something, and then get the real help that you need from a professional. I've been talking to some of my clients recently about their travels, their adventures in recovery, and Several of them have asked me this week, what is the opposite of addiction? Like, where am I? What is it? Sobriety? Like that's being clean, sober. And, you know, so they're aiming towards that thing that they believe is the opposite of addiction. Addiction is the behavior. You have to remember that like addiction is the behavior. of the usage of a chemical or a substance or be you know it could be gambling or shopping or whatever but it's a behavior so if we go with the premise of addiction is a behavior so the what's the opposite of addiction well abstaining so really it's really not what i like to position people in when they're trying to work on recovery like what is recovery is it abstinence because if addiction is simply the behavior of the use of something to cope then the opposite of addiction would be abstinence but just because you're not using doesn't mean you're clean and sober that's the conundrum like we're all in that place we're trying to figure out what is it i believe that the opposite of addiction is peaceful it's not clean and sober. That's, that's a ending of the usage, but you can not use. And we all, you know, everybody's heard the term, a dry drunk, somebody that's out, you know, they're just out there, uh, fake sober, you know, whatever you want to call it. Um, there, there are, there are transference addiction and they've switched from, uh, I don't know, cocaine to pornography or something. Right. So it's just, it's, So the opposite of addiction for me and my treatment approach is one that it's all about being peaceful. Trying to get to that place where you're coping with things easily because you're at peace. You're at peace with yourself. You're at peace with what's going on. And it's important to really understand where you're going when you're trying to travel in that journey of peace. Getting there. And if you are in a place now where you are actively using, and I know some of my listeners are in that place and you're really struggling with trying to figure out how in the world am I supposed to get out of this? You really need to work on why you're uncomfortable. Because in my estimation, in my view of addiction, we use because we're uncomfortable, period. That's it. You use because you're uncomfortable. Now, it could be physically uncomfortable. It could be emotionally uncomfortable. It could be spiritually uncomfortable. It could be uncomfortable in your relationships. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The triggering behavior that got you to the point where you were uncomfortable is what you've got to work on. And if you really, you know, think about this. I feel uncomfortable, so I'm anxious. I'm depressed. And that's why I always kind of laugh when somebody comes in and they're on an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety medication, a benzo, because their psychiatrist says, okay, well, you know, you're feeling depressed, so let's put you on some Wellbutrin. And, you know, you have some anxiety, so I'm going to give you a benzodiazepine. I'm Um, you know, once a day by mouth, uh, or as needed that way that you'll, you'll feel much better. You won't be anxious and your depression will go away. Okay. But see, the next step is what's making you so anxious and what's making you so depressed. Cause if all I'm doing is treating the symptoms, I'm not treating the cause. How are you ever going to get to where you can be peaceful? Cause you're just walking around all the time, uncomfortable. And now you're a medicated, uncomfortable person. Um, And the minute you stop that medication, bingo, bango, you're right back to uncomfortable because you haven't been artificially propped up with a medication. You need medication at times. Yes, of course. The whole purpose of it is to stabilize so you can treat and you can't treat somebody who's unstable. I get that. So it has its reasons for being applied to your condition because that is your presenting condition. You are presenting in that state. I get it. But I am more in line with let's treat the cause, not just the presentation of symptoms. So if you're uncomfortable and you're not peaceful and you're using, to me, that means that the opposite of usage, the opposite of addiction, is peaceful. So every... I'm going to say, well, every addict I've met who is rock solid in their recovery has a general... well-being they have this general state of comfort this peacefulness around them and it's it's enviable you know i i've seen some people that were just man they their stories are heartbreaking so horrible the things that they survived in their life and the stuff that happened to them and then the things that happened because they were engaged in their drug of choice and it just became so destructive man they were huffing they were shooting up they were they were uh freebasing They were just, you know, just whatever it is, man. It's just so bad. And the worse the story, the stronger the recovery, the more peaceful they seem. And I've met some people, man, that were just so almost Zen-like in their piece. They just were just like these very centered, focused people that so calm and so collected. If you, you know, one of my friends, Heather Hagelman, did a podcast. You can look at it. I think it's podcast number 15. She did a two-parter. She was one of those people that was just like out of her mind crazy and just very dysregulated all the time. She talks about that. But she learned how to self-regulate through the practice of yoga and now she teaches trauma yoga and teaches other people how to experience trauma yoga as well as treat people with it she teaches practitioners and she's so peaceful she's so calm and peaceful and I'd known her for a long time and I just I was so and it's interesting because I didn't know her story fully until later on after knowing her for a while and her level of addiction and the insanity and so there's this you know 20 year old beautiful woman who's just out of her mind and so dysregulated and then she got to where she got into recovery and she's very calm and peaceful and centered and focused and she practices that every day and I think that when you are in a place where you are feeling very dysregulated all the time And it seems like you're trapped. It's just, it's literally a prison. So in my journey of trying to get there and try to be peaceful, peaceful with the world, peaceful with myself, peaceful with my history, my own actions, you know, when we work on step four, the fearless searching moral inventory, we have to work towards understanding self, the good, the bad, and the ugly of self. And when we look at that, It's, you know, you're full of shame or embarrassment or anger, resentment, all the negativity that can be there. When you go through that fearlessly, you know, really do focus on it fearlessly, you can get to that place where you understand that how not peaceful you are. and how far away from peaceful you are i was always very drawn to people who have that and i always thought it was um would be a wonderful thing i remember when i was in my 20s and my 30s i was always fascinated by people especially in eastern cultures who could could could get to that place of peaceful And so I tried to learn the things that they were using as tools to get there. Um, not the things that weren't part of my own faith, my Christian faith, but, um, things like making bonsai trees, um, martial arts, things that were things that you required a lot of focus. I was always very impressed with, um, the way the Japanese are so contemplative about things. And Peacefulness and replicating peaceful representations in nature, whether they be trees or rock gardens or sand gardens or landscapes, just these beautiful things that are meant simply to enjoy. by being in them and in California there were a lot of places like that that I had seen where you would go and there would be a Japanese garden and it was very calm and you could sit and just soak it in and it was like to bring back the idea of calmness and peace and tranquility, something that in today's world is a premium value as we slowly become unglued. So I think if you are in a state of discomfort, dysregulation, medical term for it is being scattered and dysregulated and scattered and disorganized and chaotic, If you are in that place, you know, that's going to contribute to your addiction tremendously. And so when I'm working with people and trying to help them on their path, it's very challenging because they truly are not in a place where they can even, they can understand what peaceful, what the word means and what they can, you know, what they can do when they're there. They have just never had it. Man, when people come in, the first few times I'm meeting with them, they are just wrapped up so tight, man. Just so tight. It's like an overwhelmed clock. And if you just knock one of the gears out of the way, the spring is just going to go flying all over the place. And probably damage something in the process. Yeah. tear up the tear up the room as the spring is flying all over the place and that's how people are they're just literally like levitating they're vibrating out of a chair because they're so so dysregulated and if you have ever had that experience i've had that experience many times so you just you're spinning and moving a thousand miles an hour but you're going literally nowhere It is a horrible feeling. And so to me, that was always the opposite of peaceful. And so I tended to move towards things that I would have liked to have been able to experience. Calm, peaceful. That's why I like being at the beach, the ocean. I find it very peaceful. Bodies of water for me are a thing. That's, you know, that's my preference. But different people have different things that are peaceful to them. My wife probably experiences, you know, beautiful snowscapes and that very peacefully. I find deserts to be very peaceful and she finds them to be kind of irritating and overly hot and not particularly comfortable I really enjoy it she calls me like the lizard because I like being in the heat but finding that I tried to move towards that and at the times when I was the least the least at peace and being at a loss as to find that peace it was very challenging for me and the more I could understand the that I needed it. And then I would try to identify those things that provided it for me. There were people in my life that were very difficult to deal with, people with personality disorders, people with behavior problems, people with anger issues, addiction issues, friends, previous romantic relationships I'd had when I was younger. These were people that were very chaotic. And then, interestingly, probably much like you, I would find someone who was not that, and then I would drive them insane because of my own craziness and Sometimes even people would try to help me get to a more peaceful place with no luck whatsoever. And I would get very upset about it because I really wanted what they had, but I just didn't think it was possible for me to have it. So I know what that feels like, and I know what it looks like. And I'm sure that if you're listening to this, you have some experience with that. You certainly do if you have any addiction issues, and I'm sure you wouldn't be listening if you didn't. that being in that state of dysregulation, it feels like a prison, and it feels like there's no escape from it. So taking these little steps towards recovery and trying to figure out how to slowly move that direction is something that you actually can do, but you have to know where you're trying to go. It's kind of like if you said you got in your car and you wanted to go somewhere, I want to go somewhere. Where are you going? I don't know. Somewhere. And you get in your car and you just start randomly driving. You might find something interesting, but it's probably going to get pretty irritating along the way because you have no idea where you're going. Or somebody said, hey, meet me in this place. And you say, okay. And you get in your car and you start driving and you realize you forgot to ask, where are we supposed to meet? And you have no idea. So you just start randomly driving around. That's kind of what it's like when you're trying to figure out how to get out of some place that you don't know how to get out of. So trying to get to a point where you can practice peacefulness is a progressive movement towards that. It's not an instantaneous. And as addicts, we love the right now. We want it right now. So we don't have a lot of patience many times to... wait around for the time when we can actually get it. We want it right now, which to go back to the idea of like one of the things I used to do to try to practice that or teach myself that was making Japanese bonsai trees. Well, it takes like 50 years to get a tree to be anywhere where you want it to be. That tree is going to be really old. You don't just get it and take a plant and stick it in a little shallow pot and boom, you got to bonsai tree that's not how it works it takes a long time some of these big giant beautiful like living sculptures can be 250 years old and that's like several lifetimes of people who have tried to get it to that place and i think with with us as human beings we are ever involving evolving um creatures that are changing and the daily change that is it's a daily change a slow progressive change if you if you look at the timeline of what the expectation is to get clean and sober it is a year and a half to two years of really hard work to get there like daily work you might be stumbling along the way the first few months Maybe you stop using, then you start using and then you stop. And then finally you're like, okay, I'm going to really try it. That's when the clock starts. So it's two years. A year is 365 days. A week is 168 hours. A day is 24. You know, it's like, these are really fairly long periods of time. You're not going to get there easily and it's not going to be quick. So moving towards clean and sober, If my destination is peace, there are so many things I have to do before I can even figure out the direction I need to go. Where is peace? Where is it? I have to identify it. Then I have to really kind of visualize what that may look like. But then I have to know, okay, well, what are the expectations? Peace, so that means I'm never mad? No. Does it mean I'm never depressed? No. Does it mean that I'm never going to be aggravated or upset about anything? No, absolutely not. It doesn't mean that. Of course you're going to be that at times. You're a human being. You're not an automaton. But these little progressive steps, I'm going to try to teach myself to be contemplative and breathe from my diaphragm, diaphragmatic breathing. I'm going to try that for five minutes today. Just five minutes. I'm not going to try to do it for two hours. I'm not going to try to turn my whole life upside down and be peaceful. No, I'm just going to try for five minutes today to breathe from my diaphragm and see if I can experience something different from the chaos I have been experiencing. Five minutes. Think if you did that five minutes a day for five days in a row. That's 25 minutes. That's almost a half an hour of calm breathing. from the diaphragm that's 25 minutes that doesn't seem like a long time but then the next week you change it from five minutes to eight minutes or ten minutes and then the next week you try it for 12 minutes and then the week after that 15. you see where i'm going with this so these progressive steps you're teaching yourself to take these moments to be peaceful progressively and increasing over time, going slow. And see if you can stay in that moment, which is very hard, especially if you're highly dysregulated because you have all these chaotic things going on in your world or you have a lot of intrusive thoughts because of childhood trauma. It's hard to spend five minutes, it seems like an eternity, if that's what's going on in your head all the time. The constant dialogue in your head of, I'm not okay. I'm not okay. The world's not okay. She's not okay. He's not okay. I don't like this. I don't like that. My job is terrible. I hate school. I hate my life. I hate my friends. I hate my relationship. I hate my car. I hate my house. I hate my neighbors. I mean, it's like if you're just going on and on about all the things that are not okay, it's very hard to spend five minutes taking a pause from that. And so it's the progressive steps. Addicts love to distract themselves. They think that's the answer to addiction. Like, let's just do something else instead. Let's go for a walk. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go and, you know, it's like that never works. It never works. I hear that all the time from people. I'm going to do something that's more healthy. And they do it once, maybe twice, and then they're off back into this horrible place again. I'm going to get a better job. I'm going to get out of that relationship. I'm going to move. I'm going to get a new car. It's like this does not do anything to move you closer to peaceful. Ironically, usually those things have the opposite effect. What they do is they cause you to have more stress because now you've taken on added responsibilities or added relationships or you've added to your life instead of taking things out of your life that are causing you that discomfort. So these progressive steps towards peaceful is the progressive and increasing over time slowly. Find those things that you can slowly change. When you are learning something new, you don't pick up, I don't know, a tennis racket or a golf club or pick up a bowling ball and expect that you're going to be able to do it at its highest success level, like the highest achievement you can with that that is possible. You're not going to bowl 300. You're not going to ace me on every serve in tennis. You're not going to be a scratch golfer the first time you pick up your clubs. So I don't know why people think that somehow addiction and recovery is done that way. Except that usually whatever they're experiencing in the moment when I start seeing them, it's a freaking fire drill and everything's chaos. So perhaps it's the addict thinking of, I want it and I want it right now and I want it to be perfect. Or... I can't stand this anymore. My life is falling apart and I don't know if I can take it anymore. So these, these motivators, these things that are like, Hey, I want to, I want something to change. Okay, great. So let's progressively get there and let's figure out a way to make it so that you can find ways to peacefully live your life. Peace. The opposite of addiction is peace. being peaceful, not dysregulated and chaotic. Work on that and let's see how you do in getting to a better place. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard, as much as I have. If you like these podcasts, please leave a review on whatever platform you're listening and let other listeners know how much you enjoyed the episode. If you need help, you can reach out to me through my website, wellspringmindbody.com. Jacques DeBruker, Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard. That's me, hoping that you can get sane, stable, and sober and live a better And like I said in the podcast, let's learn how to be peaceful. It's so much better than being chaotic. So get some help, find a way to get it, and let's start getting better, okay? So until next time, this is Doc Shock saying, see ya.