Tag: addiction

The Addicts Shame

Addiction is a disease that not only affects the physical body, but also crushes the soul. Feeding the disease requires a preoccupation with obtaining and consuming substances. This is often accompanied by deceitful and irresponsible behavior, taking a toll on relationships, family commitments and careers. It is easy to blame the individual for bad behavior – lying, cheating and stealing, as well as angry outbursts – rather than putting the focus on the disease that creates those behaviors. The addicted person is generally not proud of those behaviors. Being shunned by family, friends and society only contributes to greater shame and self-blame.

It is difficult to have compassion for people when presumed poor character is confused with the disease characteristics that undermine it. Compounding this is the common belief that people choose to become addicted, based on weakness, lack of will power and poor judgment. Again, looking beyond myth, science informs us that there is a genetic predisposition for addiction, as well as a range of environmental factors, especially those that occur in early childhood.

Feelings of shame that are become normal to the addict have shown to have a detrimental effect to chances of recovery. Research has consistently demonstrated that whilst guilt can have a positive association with self-forgiveness, shame negatively associated the capacity for self-forgiveness.

Overpowering negative emotions can derail efforts at achieving sobriety. A few therapy-informed techniques can help you stay on course. Many of our feelings are simple reactions to specific events that we perceive as pleasant or unpleasant. After the event is over, the related feeling usually fades away. We can easily see that our emotions are fleeting and impermanent.

Shame does not work this way. The hallmark of shame is a constant awareness of our defects. Without realising it, we become continual victims of shame-based thinking. Every day, we focus on our failures. Every day, we re-convince ourselves that we are defective. Our thoughts become riddled with judgment, regret, and images of impending failure.

There are many thoughts that therapy can bring up to help challenge our internal feelings of shame, judgement and abandonment. When working through specific areas of our lives we may be asked to question our negative thoughts and replace them with more accurate reflections of the self.

Is this thought really true?
How do I know it’s true?
What is the evidence for this thought?
What is the evidence against this thought?
Can I think of any times when this thought has not been true?
Is this thought helping me or hurting me?
What could I do if I let go of this thought?
What’s the worst that could happen if I let go of this thought? Can I live with that?

Working with a therapist who is committed to understanding and promoting recovery can create shifts in the way we regard addiction. Understanding that we need to take fault out of an addicts life and replace it with responsibility can mark a positive step in this direction.

Book review – The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath. By Leslie Jamison.

Jamison describes addiction and particularly the dynamic of the female addict, bouncing between her own story and the tales of others who have battled alcohol and mental illness.

The mythic male drunk manages a thrilling abandon —the reckless, self-destructive pursuit of truth —his female counterpart is more often understood as guilty of abandonment, the crime of failing at care. Her drinking has violated the central commandment of her gender, Thou shalt care for others, and revealed itself as an intrinsically selfish abnegation of that duty. Her self-pity compounds the crime by directing her concern away from an implicit other —real or imagined, child or spouse —and funnelling that concern back toward herself.”
― from “The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath”

She highlights and questions when an ordinary craving become pathological…suggesting perhaps this is when it becomes tyrannical enough to summon shame. When it stops constituting the self and begins to define its lack.

“For shame is its own veil,’ Denis Johnson wrote, “and veils the world as much as the face.”

When it comes to alcohol, women lose the battle of the sexes on almost every front. More and more women are struggling with heavy drinking and alcoholism, a disorder that was once believed to be primarily a man’s issue. The disease is in many ways more physically detrimental to women, who, for example get cirrhosis of the liver at twice the rate of men. Even so, they seek treatment less often. The female addict sits in a tremendous amount of guilt and shame, and is afraid to tell even those closest to her the truth about herself. She views herself as a “bad” person needing to become “good,” not as a sick person needing to become well. Many others will view her this way too and it will keep her from seeking treatment.

Addiction is a very patient disease; it lies in waiting, is stealthy and manipulative. Jamison is able to convey the struggles of being in recovery, someone haunted by her past, yet also in some way nostalgic for it.

Our sense of self is never really fixed, yet we tell ourselves one historical narrative, constantly rewritten to make sense of the changes in our lives. It can be all too easy to look back on the person that we “used to be”, with a fondness and regret that are often misplaced

The book highlights the simple truth; that stability is indeed a humble, and messy process which can feel like an immense struggle within a culture that craves simple narratives about addiction and sobriety, genius and madness.