An addiction is anything or anyone that takes us away from ourselves. It is a pathological, recurring relationship with any mood-altering event, experience, person or thing that causes major life problems. The addiction isn't because of the substances, experience, person or thing. It is the relationship with the substance or experience that goes awry.
The real addiction is not to the substance or experience, but to the high. The real addiction is not physical, but emotional. It is the psychological dependency, the belief in the need and continued use in spite of harmful consequences. Anything that removes or alters unwanted feelings can become an addiction. The process of addiction is reinforced by the fact that the more we use it, no mater what it is, the less ability we have to deal with that feeling, so the more we need the addictive activity or substance.
Addictions are primarily about feelings, a need to alter, avoid or distract us from our feelings. Why do we need to do this? Why do we need to avoid our pain to distract ourselves from our emotional reality? Why do we protect our addictions?
In childhood we find out whether or not our feelings are OK. Normal feelings are present, expressed, affirmed and then go away. We simply pass through them. When we don't acknowledge, express and affirm our feelings, they become repressed and acted out. Addiction is one way we act out the feelings we can't express.
The hallmark of addiction is a loss of control, marked by attempts to control. Addicts are very controlling people and very controlled people. They control feelings, the people around them, and try to control their addiction with repetitive, futile efforts. The first step in dealing with addictions in 12-step programs is admitting that you are powerless. In recovery we have to face powerlessness--that we cannot control. This is the first step in accepting that our lives have become unmanageable. We are powerless.
It is puzzling why we protect an addiction. We hold on to an addiction even though it may be destroying our lives, hurting us, and keeping us from those things and people that are most important to us. As a child, if no one is dependable enough to depend on, we learn not to depend on people in healthy ways. We learn not to be vulnerable. Our very ability to depend on others in childhood is survival. Instead of depending on others, we learn to depend on our addictions. This gets us away from those uncomfortable feelings.
The dependency on the addictions starts to take care of the feelings and fears of survival. The addiction is misplaced dependency. To give up the addiction, we need to go back into those feelings and fears of survival that occurred in childhood. It brings us in touch of our fears about survival. The addiction that stems from our unmet dependency needs is now what we depend on and what we can't give up. It is too scary and feels like life and death. We hang onto it as if it were our very survival.
According to Terry Kellogg there are six stages of addiction. Stage one is learning. In this stage we discover an addiction as a survival skill, a coping mechanism. They are the ways we use to distract us from our pain, something that helps us survive or cope with the emptiness of self, with our fears and anxieties.
After we learn how to distract from pain we move into the seeking stage. We establish a trust, a relationship, a belief system that the addiction will work for us. We establish patterns and begin the rituals of addiction, seeking it and looking for new experiences with it.
The third stage is harmful dependency. The addiction has escalated and preoccupation becomes obsession and trust becomes a blind faith that the addiction will take care of us. The high of the addiction is our attempt to feel normal. Harmful consequences come in this stage.
Stage four is the controlling stage. This is where we try to reduce the addiction and its impact on our lives. It is in this stage, when we attempt to get one addiction under control that another addiction emerges to take its place. We can control our addictions for a while but eventually we go back to the harmful dependency.
At some point we hit the acute stage. We lose important things in our lives and our priorities are affected. We may suffer a loss of family, friends, health, self-respect, money or job. We lose our values, spirituality and sexuality.
Finally the chronic stage of addiction is met when we've lost all of the above. This is known as hitting bottom. In our society, we often wait for a person to reach this stage before we intervene. We think we have to wait until the addict is completely broken and they have to want help. Often times, though, an addict who has hit bottom has nothing to recover for. There is so much despair and helplessness that they do not want help and sometimes can't be given help.
Addictions are a huge problem in many lives today. Addictiveness is effected by our biological chemistry, modeled behaviors, opportunity, cultural messages and personal beliefs and the ways we learned to survive our feelings in childhood. When our own lives begin to fall apart or someone in our life's life becomes unmanageable, we are reminded to come out of denial and deal with addictions at their source. This is difficult and challenging and sometimes painful, but in order to get life back we have to deal with it.
