Addiction Treatment Blog

It would be nice if this illness was like strep throat. Get treated and it’s gone. Even if strep throat left long lasting effects, like scarlet fever or a heart valve problem, the disease itself is gone. Unfortunately, addiction is not like strep throat. The medication we use to treat the illness, at best, suppresses the symptoms. The treatment, at best, corrects any non-reality based learning caused by the disease. And if the disease would just go away those benefits of medication and treatment would be enough. Sorry, the disease is not going to just go away.

Some of you are saying, “But wait a minute. My Uncle Ben got religion and just stopped drinking and did fine for the rest of his life.” Yep, you’re right, and everyone knows an Uncle Ben. I’m sure you can find several examples. But if everyone like Uncle Ben, I could be doing something else for living. I’m doing this because Uncle Ben is actually pretty rare, and as we’ll discuss later, probably in recovery anyway, just in a different way.

So let’s talk about what recovery is so we can know why we need to be doing it. Of course my view of recovery is colored but my bias of understanding this illness in a biological way. There are many people who see recovery in a lot of different ways, and I in now way mean to invalidate them. I hope you see by the end of this answer that it doesn’t matter what words we’re using to describe recovery, but recovery is recovery. William White and others put together a monograph on recovery which is a much broader discussion than I’ll have here.

I guess I don’t have to repeat here that there is more to recovery than just not using. There’s also more to it than just not using and not having symptoms of low dopamine (irritable, not enjoying life, aloof). Not using and not having the symptoms of low dopamine are, hopefully, the end result of working a recovery program. They are the outcome, not the action itself. This concept is confusing to a lot of people I meet. It’s kind of like whishing for cooler weather so you put your thermometer in the refrigerator. Nothing changes but the number on the thermometer. So as we discuss recovery, remember the difference between the thing itself and the measure of the outcome.

So what is recovery? Well, I’ve been putting this definition off for few paragraphs haven’t I? It’s time to take the bull by the horns and answer the question. Recovery, for this addiction doctor at least, is taking action in every moment of the day to minimize the feelings of aloneness and less-than that precipitate a lowering of our dopamine receptor density.

I can imagine many ways to do recovery and everyone else can to. And if all of these ways worked, again, I’d be doing something else for living. So we have to go further. The actions we take actually have to be effective. Since millions of people have been in recovery in the past, we should have ample evidence as to what works and what doesn’t. But we can even do better than that. We can find someone like us, someone who tells our story when he tells his own, but has found a way to live that gives him the happiness, freedom, and joy that we want. I’m betting that the actions he lives by will have better odds of success than a random set we could come up with on our own. If you have any experience with 12-step recovery, you’ve probably recognized the description of how to pick a sponsor. Even if you don’t want to work a 12-step programme, the idea is the same. You can maximize the odds of a good outcome by choosing someone who you can relate to, someone who has what you want, and then by following his path. Kind of a cop out for me, huh? I said I’d tell you what recovery is and then told you to get a sponsor. Now that I got that out of the way, here’s what I think you’ll hear from that sponsor.

In watching many people’s recovery and in studying many philosophical and religious traditions, I think I see a commonality in what works. I’ve heard it expressed many ways: “Whenever I’m at the bottom of the hole, I’m the one holding the shovel,” “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable,” “It is a spiritual axiom that whenever we’re disturbed, no matter what the cause, there’s something wrong with us.” The main point for me is a recognition that the brain with the illness is not going to think of a way to fix itself, and all attempts to do so will only make the problem worse. That means we need other people and a set of directions for life we can trust.

It’s hard to trust others’ brains more than you trust you own. Maybe that’s why it often takes so long to get into good recovery. It’s hard to decide not to trust your own brain and trust others instead. Navy pilots have good results in treatment and recovery; maybe that’s because they’re trained to believe the instruments and disregard their own sense of position. They already understand that the brain can’t always be trusted. But it’s hard to trust something other than our own brain. We don’t walk around with a set of instruments like the pilots have. How do we find something to trust?

Well, it’s pretty axiomatic that if we aren’t going to trust our own brain we probably shouldn’t trust anyone else’s either. So I’m not advocating taking advice from other people. They can be just as wrong as you. We need a set of directions that transcend personal opinion. We need a set of directions that work and have worked for a long time. We surround ourselves not with people who will grace us with their opinions, but with people who will remind us of the directions that work. It’s especially wonderful when they guide us without their own egos involved.

Now, I’d like to say something about one of those directions that you’ll hear: help other people. It’s amazing how powerful helping others is and how common to all programs of recovery. Think about it this way. We were alone, others helped us, and now we have to help others who are alone. I like the symmetry of that.

So there are some things in common we will see in any successful recovery programme. It has to be that way because the only way recovery can work is to change the brain in a specific way to increase dopamine tone. And we know what increases dopamine receptors. So no matter what words we use to describe it, recovery will be recovery because it will have to do what’s necessary to keep the brain changed in a positive way even though the disease won’t go away.

First, there will be other people. That’s a must. The other people will not be in charge but we will be egoless transmitters of principles and directions that work in life, and one of those principles will be to help other people get what you got. These people won’t be perfect because they won’t be any better than you. So by practice they will be forgiving lot and not prone to shaming others.

This is where the idea of a higher power comes in. It turns out it’s pretty easy to feel ashamed when we compare something about us to another person. That’s why other people don’t work so well as higher powers. If you have the idea that what the directions are based on is larger than yourself, there’s not much shame even when you fall short. This is true for higher powers as diverse as “the laws of physics” and “God.” None of us can be as perfect as either of those deals, so shame doesn’t seem to enter the equation. That’s another thing in common about different forms of recovery; the directions aren’t going to be coming from the guy down the street or even from someone famous who died a while back. They’ll be an expression of truth that is more timeless than what we can learn in single lifetime. They’ll be directions for living that have worked for every generation. No matter what the word is that you use to define your “power greater than ourselves,” the directions will probably be the same.

So let’s go back to Uncle Ben’s religious conversion. Did Uncle Ben find religion and then go off by himself to live in a cave? I doubt it. More likely Uncle Ben belonged to a group of people who tried to follow a set of directions they themselves did not make up, and he engaged in acting on those directions with the help of those people. I’m betting that at least one of the directions was to help others. I’m also betting that they were a forgiving bunch and had rules about cutting themselves and others some slack when they fell short of the ideal. Remember, they are trying not feel less than other people.

It is amazingly optimistic conclusion that flows from the commonality of recovery that I’ll end with. Even though the disease won’t go away, even though it gets worse with time, if we join with and follow the directions that have worked for others like us we can be happy, joyous, and free.

The Causeway Retreat is an addiction treatment clinic, specialised in addictions, such as heroin addiction, cocain addiction, drug addiction. To talk about your condition and our help available to you, give us a call: +44 (0)207 100 7260.