Addiction Is Not A Choice, But A Decision Is

Some would say that addiction is you just choosing to use. Others say it is beyond your control. I say life is about decisions and you can make a different decision today to do something else. 

Transcript

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I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at DocShock, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. All right, so you decided you wanted to get into recovery, or you needed to. Somebody told you to. Something happened. And here you are. So the question that comes up a lot is, how in the world am I supposed to just stop using whatever it is I'm using? Drugs, alcohol, whatever. And society tells us that it is a problem of impulse control. So you can't control your impulses. That's why you use. So if you just stop using, then all of a sudden you're going to get better. Because life is better when you're not high and drunk. You can function. Okay, wonderful. But now we're back to failure of willpower, decision making. Is it a decision or is it an impulse? Well, if it was a decision, then you could just say, I'll stop using today. And then the problem is solved. No more usage. But everybody who uses drugs and alcohol and has an addiction problem knows that is not the case. It is not as simple as just saying, I'm not going to use. So then what is it? Is it something you just decide one day, okay, I'm going to change or what? What are you doing? Well, that's the question for the day. How do I get sober? How do I get clean? If someone is telling me to, or I just decided I'm done. How do you do it? I've had people that come to me and they say, you know what? I just decided one day I'm done. I have a very dear friend who was an alcoholic for 20 plus years and reports having just a baptism and it's over. It was just a life-changing event. I've had other people who have struggled for years trying to get into sobriety or getting clean. It comes down to change. So the decision is do you want to change? It's not the decision that I'm going to stop. It's the decision to change. And I think that's pretty much where it lies. It's not as simple as just I'm going to stop because you don't. And anybody who tells you that that's the case is probably not telling you the truth. At least they wanted to try again. Maybe later they did some experimenting and maybe I can use just once or once in a while and can contain it. But it just doesn't work that way. That's not how this happens. Recovery is a long, drawn-out process with a lot of ups and downs and a lot of failures and successes combined together. To make the one magic sauce of recovery. So that's the question. Is it a decision or is it something else? Magical thinking would tell you that it's simply a decision and you can change tomorrow if you wanted to. But as the name implies, magical thinking is just that. It's magic. So it doesn't really happen that way. the pessimistic viewpoint is once an addict, always an addict, you're never going to be able to stop. And it's just going to be a monkey on your back for the rest of your life. And hopefully at some point you will have strung together enough days, weeks, months, years where you can say, I'm in recovery. Clinically, we count five years as long-term recovery. And then beyond that, we don't really look at it that closely. Before that five years is up, if you go back and relapse and start using, and by relapse, I want to make sure I preface this, doesn't mean using just one time. It means using for an extended period of time. So given that, if you did relapse and it was prior to five years, you're kind of more in the norm because long-term recovery is much harder. It's harder for a variety of different reasons. And all of you know what those reasons are because you're living this life of struggling with recovery. However, the long-term recovery rate, if you look at it in five-year intervals, yeah, you're doing well. So the decision to change is more what's happening, not changing. you did change. You immediately changed. That's unrealistic. So the decision to change, I believe, is where recovery begins. I wake up one day and I say, I can't do this anymore. I can't do it because it's just killing me. It's killing my family. It's killing me. People sometimes will get to that point after it's been a horrible experience for them. They've lost their freedom. They've lost their health. They've lost their relationships, their money, their job, their security, their housing. One of those major losses. That's usually where it happens. And it's very, very difficult to watch somebody go through the process where they've got to get to the point where they've lost that. It's sad. It's frustrating. It happens all the time. With hope and luck, it's not their life that ends. but they lose something. So the decision to change occurs because, as I've said many, many, many times, you are about to lose the one thing that you don't want to lose or you've already lost it. And that's the change point. For some people, that loss, if it's not combined with mental health illness, which sometimes negates that threshold of loss, If you are of sound mind outside of your addiction, that loss is one that is difficult to observe. It's difficult to be part of. As a clinician, I struggle with the idea that I have to stand by and watch my clients suffer these horrible losses. and then get into recovery. But I know that if I start trying to get them into recovery and pushing, pushing, pushing, I'm doing all the heavy lifting. That means they're not doing it, which means that they're actually not going to really get into recovery. It's kind of a false recovery. It's a fake recovery. It's not real. The perception of it happening is what they're experiencing, not the reality. And it's very difficult to watch as a clinician as you are waiting for someone to get to the point where they're about to lose the thing that they need to lose to get there. And sometimes the losses start to add up and you think, this person can't possibly tolerate losing this, whatever this is. And yet they do. And then there's another thing that they could lose and they're going to get there. And it's very painful. And I feel sorry for the people that have to watch that happen to their loved ones. It's crazy making time when you're standing around watching somebody do this. But at the same time, it's a necessary thing. So trying to rush in and get them to help is just really putting that safety net under them. And it's keeping them from losing the thing they need to lose to get into recovery. But once you decide that you are about to lose or you have lost the thing that you did not want to lose, then all of a sudden you're faced with a decision. Work on recovery or not. And if it's work on recovery, it's long, difficult work. Seemingly impossible, but you just don't give up. I've worked with people in a clinical setting where it's taken them two or three or four years, sometimes five years, before they actually get there. Alcoholism, statistics would say, the data show that it's about five years of attempts at recovery for one year of sobriety. So five years of working on it for one year of sobriety. Conversely, for opiate drugs, the statistical average in our country is residential treatment six times completion before you get to the point of getting clean. So that's six completions. Enter the rehab. Stay for the 30, 60, 90, 120 days. Discharge. Start to do your aftercare and your relapse. Six times. That's the average. So on the bell curve, that's at the top. You have the outliers that did it once, and you have the outliers that they've been working on it, and they've gone 27 times maybe. That's the record in my practice. An individual that went through 27 different attempts at recovery and still had not gotten there. Now, I don't know... how involved or successful those recovery attempts were i don't know exactly what was going on there but that many attempts and still not there quite frustrating and the person is losing money health housing relationship children the relationship with a husband children people are not talking to them homeless And they just keep trying and they're just not getting there. I've known other people that have struggled and destroyed. There's literally, literally like the tornado blowing through town that is just destroying the entire town and seemingly incapable of getting into recovery. And then just magically, just one day, they just made the decision that they were going to work on it and check themselves into a rehab and actually hung in there. And it's funny because when you start to make those decisions and you really start working on it and you start to embrace that idea that you're going to get there, suddenly it becomes so much easier. Your life becomes easier. The recovery process becomes easier. It's something that allows you to have some stability. It's like roots to a tree. If a tree is trying to grow its roots in very shallow, sandy or loamy soil, it's not stable. It can't really grasp onto it until it finds like some rock formation and starts attaching roots to that. And then it stops getting windblown and torn out of the ground. And that's kind of what it is for some people. They will go through the process of trying to get into recovery and they tried all kinds of things until finally the roots of that treatment and that embracing of that kind of sink into some kind of stable force, like a rock, you know? And then it takes hold. So when you are trying to decide if you want to get into recovery, it's a decision point. So like in AA, we say one day at a time. And so what do you have to do? Well, if you want to drink, go to a meeting. So that's a decision. I didn't decide I wasn't going to drink today. I decided I was going to go into a meeting. Same thing with drugs. If it's I want to get high and you have the drugs, you don't decide one day, oh, I'm just going to stop taking drugs. It's more along the lines of I'm going to decide to do something different today. Maybe before I do the drugs, I'm gonna tell myself I'm gonna do something different. And the difference, the thing that you do that's different is you went to a friend, you talked to a sponsor, you talked to a counselor. I'm gonna get in the herd. I'm gonna be around people. It doesn't even have to be recovery people. It can just be people. And I'm going to use something. It's not distraction. I'm gonna make that distinction. You're not distracting yourself. you're deciding that you're going to do something different. For me, it was a lot of I'm going to go to the gym. I found that going to the gym for me was extremely kind of centering and it allows me to focus. I could think, when you go to the gym, and I don't know how many people have this experience of going to the gym, but when you go to the gym, it's interesting, you're living your life in sets, right? So picture this, and if you don't go to the gym, I'll help you with this, try to talk you through this, but you go to the gym and if you're lifting weights, you're gonna do a set of eight, 10, 12, 15 repetitions, and then you stop and you take a minute and a half between your sets. So you're kind of living your life a minute and a half at a time. So the actual work that you're doing, which lasts maybe 15, 20 seconds as you're lifting, Then you stop and you've got a minute and a half. And that minute and a half of time is really where you're kind of living. That's where you're aware. Because when you're lifting weights, when you're doing exercise, you're just focusing on the lift. And everybody who works out in a gym knows what I'm talking about because there's nothing worse than somebody standing over you talking while you're lifting. You can't focus on it. And you have to look up and you tell the person, can you wait until I'm done? Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And it's a weird thing because you would think that that's a different part of your brain. But you're so involved in what you're doing that the lifting that you're doing kind of interferes with your ability to focus or think intellectually or cognitively about something else. I don't know what the neuroscience there is, but I'm sure there's some studies on that one. But it's kind of like driving. If you're trying to follow directions and drive and then somebody keeps talking to you about... their day yesterday, you can't focus on that many things all at one time. It's very distracting. So you go to the gym and you're lifting weights and then you're focusing extremely hard focus, a very involved focus on the lift. Then you stop. Then you have a minute and a half. I always have like a... you know, my cell phone, I have the timer set up. So a minute and a half, because sometimes I'll shortchange myself on that minute and a half and I'll end up going like 45 seconds and I'm kind of bored. So then I got to go to the lift again. It's not enough time for recovery. So in that minute and a half that you're living, maybe your mind is wandering a bit. So when I go to the gym and I'm feeling something and normally what I would have done is drink. Okay, fine. What I'm doing instead is I'm spending that minute and a half Just kind of being present. Maybe I'll look around the gym. I'll look at the floor. I'll focus on my breathing. I'll feel my body as it's trying to, you know, the blood is pumping through my veins and I can feel that. As Arnold would say, you know, you're feeling the pump. Yeah. Yeah, you are. And, you know, if you stay in a gym and you work out and really what you wanted to do instead was drink but you didn't do it or get high, then you focused on something different and it's it is a distraction sort of but you made a decision to do something different and what would happen to me is by the time i got out of the gym an hour later hour and a half later when i was younger two hours later i didn't really want to anymore it was not a thing anymore i had worked through physically what i had been feeling emotionally And that is the decision that I made. I made the decision to not drink. No, I made the decision to go to the gym. And you can't drink when you're at the gym. You can do this with anything. You make a decision. I'm gonna decide to go wash the car. I'm gonna decide to cut my grass. I'm gonna decide to call up my friend and have a conversation on the phone. Maybe I'm gonna decide to go painting or fishing or knitting or whatever. You're just doing something other than drinking. Now, again, I'm emphasizing strongly. I am not advocating distraction. What I'm talking about is your empowerment and your ability to change the direction of your life through a decision. And it is not the decision of I'm not going to drink or I'm not going to get high. It's the decision to do something else instead. And that decision, that empowerment, is the thing that can bring you from constant, this dialectic inner voice that's going on in your head constantly. And if you are a normal addict... The reason that you're drinking or getting high is because you're uncomfortable. And you're uncomfortable because of what you've been thinking. So in the recovery community, we call it stinking thinking. So if you are stinking thinking, you're thinking about all the stuff that's bad. And that's where a lot of times people will say, yeah, but you don't understand. That's what I hear. It's like, what's going on with you? You don't understand. Okay. What is it I don't understand? Don't just tell me I don't understand. Tell me what it is I don't understand. Explain it. And when I say that to clients and I'll pull them, you know, in the session, they don't say to me, I don't understand, but they're saying it in their head. So they don't want to talk about it. But when I run into that in my practice, that is what I want to know is like, tell me, like share, share your story, share what you're thinking, share what you're feeling, right? It's weird. People don't realize what talk therapy is. Talk therapy a lot of times is just allowing the person to talk and you listen as a therapist. That's what it should be. It's you talk, I listen. And what you look at me for is somebody to reflect back to you what emotion that creates in me. So if somebody is telling me about their childhood and they are looking for somebody to say that's really bad because they didn't hear it, It is really bad. That's really bad. So you're deciding that you're going to expose yourself. You're going to talk to somebody. You're going to share. Isolation is addiction's best friend. That's one of my phrases I've coined. And you know, it's true. Isolation is addiction's best friend. Because isolation is the thing that allows addiction to exist, really. Some people will drink in a social environment. I'm not going to dispute that one. Absolutely. Some people will get high as a communal thing. Absolutely. Ask any pothead. They love to get high with each other. But what are they doing when they're doing that? Not a whole lot. There's not a lot of camaraderie going on there other than focused around the drug usage. And I know that for a fact, too, because if you ask somebody who is a communal... drinker or get high person tell them to stop using and still be around those people and see what they see what you get see if you get the enjoyment out of it if you take the drinking or the smoking or the snorting or the shooting or whatever out of it you're probably going to find out that you don't really have that much in common with the people that you're doing these things with And that's one of the complaints that I hear many times from people is I can't go out with my friends and not drink. Why is that? Well, because I'm, I'm left out, left out of what? Oh, the drinking, because that's all you're there for. So if I decide that I'm going to do something different, I'm going to take charge. I'm going to remove myself from that situation and I'm going to do something else. It doesn't matter what it is necessarily, but you're going to do something else. That's where the decision is. That's where change occurs. That's where recovery starts in the decision making. I've decided I'm going to do something different. I still have the option to drink and I'm most certainly might actually do that, but I've decided I'm going to do something different today. and if you're living the reality of choose to do something different choose to be different choose to then the usage becomes less and less important to you less necessary i use because i'm uncomfortable so work on getting comfortable and how whatever that is so if you have been highly traumatized and your discomfort is in like a ptsd type reaction to whatever the thoughts are that keep coming back and you keep losing time and space in that moment, having flashbacks or having that physical response to fight, flight, or freeze when there's nothing there, then you have to learn how to recover from that, not the usage of drugs and alcohol. Because remember, drugs and alcohol are the coping mechanism. They are not the problem. So if you're working on your experiences with a highly traumatized situation and you have PTSD or that type of reactivity, work on that reactivity part by getting into good therapy, using EMDR, emotionally connective therapy, things like that. Because if you don't, what's going to happen is you're just going to keep retreading the same problems over and over again. So my thought for the week is recovery occurs because you made a decision to do something different than use. I'm going to not use because now you are powerless and you're going to sit there and white knuckle it and not be really probably successful. So I'm going to choose to do something different. I can still go use if I want to. But I'm going to choose to do something different and see what comes from that and see if you feel more empowered, stronger. And if you're able to withstand what's happening to you and maybe go a different way. And so that you're not really experiencing the level of discomfort that you did the day before, perhaps. So let's go out there and try to do that. and stop living a destructive life. Well, hey, that's it for this edition of Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard. I hope you've enjoyed what these podcasts bring to you and an idea that maybe you too can get into recovery. Sane, stable, and sober, man, that's the goal. And if you can get there, life will be so awesome. Hey, and if you need the help, reach out to me, Dr. Jacques DeBruyckert. You can find me on my website, wellspringmindbody.com. I can give you some direct directions, pointers, maybe some help directly to you. So remember, it's not worth ending your life to save your addiction. That's just crazy. Man, don't do that. Get the help so you too can get sane, stable, and sober. And go get help at a rehab or a treatment center or a therapist. Do something. But do it today. Don't wait. So until next time, this is Doc Jacques saying, see ya.