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Re: addiction and recovery MB

Posted by galtin on October 26, 2001, at 20:44:57

In reply to Re: addiction and recovery » Krazy Kat , posted by MB on October 21, 2001, at 11:39:15

Dear MB,


> > Re: self-medication - there are both - there are people who want to be high all the time. There are people who want to alleviate the pain they feel due to these illnesses. Do you see the difference?
> < snip >
>
> I hear what you're saying, and, when you put it that way, I do see that there would be a difference between someone who just wanted to be high all the time and someone who just wanted to alleviate the pain they feel do to illness. And I think in some cases, the difference might be that cut and dry. My case doesn't seem to fit nicely into either category, though. When I drank and did drugs, people used to ask me why I wanted to be so "f***ed up all the time," and the truth was that I didn't. I would tell them that if there was a drug that alleviated depression as well as booze or heroin (in the short term, at least) but that didn't alter my senses, I would definitely choose the one that didn't alter my senses. People couldn't understand. I didn't drink and do drugs so I could stumble around and pass out. Those effects were just unfortunate side effects. I drank and did drugs because they gave me temporary relief from the horrible depression and anxiety I suffered/suffer from. The only problem was that drugs (especially alcohol) would send me into a really bad mood cycle. I'd drink a beer, feel totally on top of the world like God was flowing right trough my heart, and fifteen minutes later, I'd crash into the worst, suicidal depression ever. Of course another beer would take that depression away again, the second time for only ten minutes, etc, etc, until I was TRASHED!! So I did want to be drunk all the time. But *not* because I liked slurring my words and stumbling and passing out...and *not* because I enjoyed distortion of the senses...but because I thought I was getting somewhere in the illusory process of chasing depression away by consuming larger and larger amounts of alcohol. I have a friend who smokes enormous amounts of pot...not because he has mental illnes, but because he likes getting wasted. He can't quit. I think he is an addict. Then there's my dad. He has anxiety problems. He used to drink too much. Then he was given Xanax, he quit drinking, he got counsiling, and he's doing better. He no longer drinks or takes Xanax. When he was drinking, I would say it was purly self-medication, not addiction. I don't think I fit into either category. I wouldn't have used drugs if I hadn't been suffering with mental illness, but I wasn't simply a self-medicater like my dad. He'd drink until the anxiety went away and then quit. I, on the other hand, because of the mood cycle alcohol would set into motion, drank until I passed out. So in that sense, I was very much an alcoholic. Maybe I'm just both. Maybe I need to quit trying so much to put myself in a nicly defined and labeled box and just concentrate on what makes me feel better. It's been two years since I've had a drink, and I don't feel better. I'm not on medication because that didn't seem to help either. I'm going to get a SPECT scan to see if they can find something that the other doctors missed. I hope the SPECT *scan* doesn't turn out to be a SPECT *scam*. BLAH BLAH BLAH thinks for letting me ramble. I can't shut up.

MB,


All the speculation and theorizing in this post and in yesterday's is interesting and beside the point. There is rarely, if ever, one identifiable reason to explain why an addict behaves addictively. The psychological, physiological, and environmental factor are all intertwined.

Recently, however, I did have a revelation on the causes of alcoholism, at least my alcoholism. A non-alchoholic friend asked me why it is that I am an alcoholic. After a moment's thought, I replied that the root cause of my alcoholism is that I drink too much. My friend turned the question around: "Why do you drink so much?" This time I did not need a moment: "Because I am an alcoholic." This is all I need to know, partly because it does not matter why I drank so much for 20 years. In fact, there was a considerable period of time near the end of that 20 years during which my trying to figure out the why of my alcoholism was just a way I could avoid doing something about it. Whatever the causes of alcoholism for any given person, they are irrelevant to getting better.

The term alcoholic has no clinical, diagnostic, or clinical standing, so the issue of whether somebody is or is not an alcoholic is at best a distraction. The most precise meaning that the term has is as a self-designation for people in AA. The meaningful question is that of whether drinking is fouling up your life. If so, the second question is, what are you going to do about it. If you want to stop and try to stop but fail, this merely confirms that you are addicted and probably need help.

I may be mistaken, but you sound addicted to me. It is right there in your rationale for drinking--to drive away the anxiety, etc. But in the next sentence you acknowledge that your respite is not only temporary, but then yields to a greater intensity of the feelings you initially tried to escape. A person who maitains this kind of drinking pattern would ordinarily be deterred by the increasingly painful consequences and would stop. To continue drinking in the face of repeated evidence that it not only doesn't "work," but produces worse suffering of the kind that the drinking was originally intended to sooth, strongly suggests a condition of addiction. The fact that you are trying to figure it all out instead of taking constructive action indicates the kind disordered thinking common to those who call themselves alcoholic. Whether you yourself are an alcoholic is irrelevant. Alcohol is screwing up your life.

I am sorry if I sound preachy. I am talking mostly out of my own painful experiences and as a very slooooowwwww learner myself. I hope you can accept your condition (whether it is a "disease or not is, again, irrelevant) and care about yourself enough to get help and support for getting out of your nightmarish cycle.


galtin


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