All 12-step programs use some variation of the following as their first step: “We admitted we were powerless over (insert addiction here)–that our lives had become unmanageable.”  Many of us had trouble admitting to ourselves that we were powerless, and in some cases were unable to come to terms with the idea that our lives were unmanageable.  So here’s as simple an explanation as I can come up with.

What it comes down to is that, when we talk about what we call “survival instincts,” we have far too high an opinion of our ability to think ourselves out of trouble.  When it comes to survival, or what we perceive as survival, we generally react much as other critters — we do what our bodies and instincts tell us to do.  We don’t have to think about it.  If we did take the time, really bad stuff might happen.

Instincts are extremely powerful impulses that are mediated by a part of the brain that can’t even think — what we call the “primitive brain.”  Powerlessness over drugs and pleasure-seeking behavior is related to changes in our primitive brains, which also control breathing, heartbeat, the secretion of hormones and other chemicals, and the thousands of other processes that go on in our bodies without our having to think about them. When we drink or use other drugs, or engage in certain activities, chemicals are released (or mimicked) that make us feel good.

Over time, our primitive brains and other body systems become accustomed to the high levels of the pleasure chemicals.  In many cases, actual physical changes take place in the brain in an attempt to adjust to the heavy stimulation.  If the stimulation decreases, our bodies — which have adapted to the higher levels — no longer have the amounts they need to feel good.  We begin to feel bad.  Really bad. To our thinking brains, it seems that if we don’t get more booze or drugs, we’ll simply die.

Even if our thinking brains know otherwise, the signals from the rest of our body are really hard to resist, and there is an almost overpowering impulse to get more drugs.  Combine that with the fact that our thinking brains are still not functioning well, and the likelihood of relapse is extremely high. This is where the powerlessness comes in.  It’s a matter of biochemistry.  When we are using, our thinking brains are dulled and mostly useless, and when we are not using the primitive brain keeps telling us we’re in huge trouble. We are literally powerless over those physical facts, until we are off the drugs long enough for our thinking to get back to something approaching normal — and that can take months.

It’s not too hard to see how this sort of thing can lead to a lack manageability in our lives, but we’ll talk about it a bit in the next post.  See you next week.

Fear is one of the biggest obstacles to recovery.  It is subtle, it masquerades as other things, and often we don’t realize that it is there at all.  What is there to fear about recovery?

First of all, most folks fear losing their best friend (their drug or drugs*) and their identity.  When we begin using, the chemicals give us everything we think we need.  Naturally we come to think of them fondly.  Then, as our addiction progresses, the drugs become the only thing we can really count on.  No matter how badly our lives are going, no matter how unmanageable they have become, the drugs are always there for us.  After a while they become the only things we can depend on.

In addition to becoming our best friend, the drug and booze re-shape our identities.  They control where we go and how long we can stay there, the things we do, the things we are able to do, who we do them with, and on and on.   They reshape our ethics.  They steal our friends and families — or change them, too.  They teach us to lie — about our using, our relationships, our finances — about most of the facets of our daily lives, to one degree or another. They steal our courage, and replace it with aggression and bravado.

Most of all, they teach us to lie to ourselves. “I’m OK.  I don’t use all that much.  Look at Al there, he drinks twice as much as I do!  It makes me more creative.  The kind of job I’ve got, I need (insert drug here) to relax.  If I’m gonna stay married to that s.o.b., I HAVE to drink!!”  And the biggest addict lie of all — the one that eventually brings us to our knees — “I can quit any time!“

Finally they dump us on our butts, with a world of problems and failing health, and we still think they are the only friends we can count on.  Only when it becomes painfully clear that we’ve been led down the garden path and are now in the compost heap does it begin to look as though maybe they aren’t doing what we need done.   Now the pain never goes away, but we go on hoping that they’ll be our friends again.  We keep on trying.

So we end up in jail, or detox, or treatment, or someplace else that we don’t want to be.  The folks there tell us that we can’t have our best friend, and we’d better not hang out with our other friends either, unless they get clean and sober.  They tell us that we have to change our lives.  That we have to admit all the ways we screwed up.  That we have to do our best to repair — or at least say we’re sorry for — all the stuff that we brought down on other people’s heads.  Sometimes they tell us that we have to change relationships of many years’ standing.  Good grief!  Why shouldn’t we be afraid?

And that’s OK.  Fear is a great motivator, properly directed.  What if I told you that you could accomplish those things and get most of the important things you lost back?  What if I told you that millions of people have done it successfully?  What if I told you that you can walk right through all that fear?  Would you believe it — just a little bit?  Enough to buckle down and give the same amount of time to getting clean that you gave to getting messed up?  A few months for the years you gave away?  A little bit of trust in a proven process?

What if I told you that you don’t have to die?

What if…

*When I use the term “drugs,” I’m also referring to alcohol, which is simply one of the legal ones.

To Kevin,

Your uncle is not suffering from PAWS after 10 years.  In the worst cases, Post-acute withdrawal lasts only about two years after complete abstinence.  Complete abstinence includes opioid and synthetic opioid pain meds, as well as benzodiazepine tranquilizers, among other drugs.

There are a number of other conditions with similar symptoms, including diabetes. He needs to discuss them with a good internist, and he needs to be totally up front with the doc about his history of drug use and his recovery.

This evening I was thinking back to the few weeks immediately prior to when my wife and I got sober.  Things were not going well for us at that point.  We had been evicted from two homes within the past year, and had two homes foreclosed — one of them the house where my mother lived.  My wife had not worked full-time in several years, and not at all for a couple of months.  I was employed in a good job, making good money (that we were totally unable to manage), but in danger of losing it due to a criminal investigation.  The criminal issue was bogus, but — again — I was in no position to attend to business.

We were living in a motel with our cats when my boss called me in to his office and told me that I could choose: treatment and keep my job, or be fired.  By that time I knew that my life was totally unmanageable, and it seemed as though he was throwing me a life preserver, rather than an ultimatum.  Nonetheless, I bargained as addicts are wont to do.  Maybe I could just go to some day program for a couple of weeks?  Maybe I could keep working and go in the evenings?

Those were non-starters.  I was to have an interview the next day, and enter inpatient treatment as soon as they could get me through the doors.  I agreed.  Three days after I entered treatment my wife and the cats were evicted from the motel amongst much publicity, all but four of the cats went to the shelter (getting the picture here?) and my wife entered treatment two weeks later at the same treatment center.

That’s the value of “hitting rock bottom” that they talk about.  When there is no way to go but up, we become willing.  Willing to grasp at anything that will help us stay afloat.  Willing to turn ourselves over to someone else — for a couple of weeks, 28 days, however long.  If we keep that willingness, we have an excellent chance of getting better.  If we start trying to regain the power that we never really had, it’s only a matter of time until we go back to doing all the other things we used to do.

The reason I was thinking about this: we spent a half hour at the bank today, opening a business account for my wife’s new psychotherapy practice.  We’ve both stayed clean and sober.  She’s a respected addiction therapist, and I’m respected in my field, in addition to writing little ditties like this for Sunrise Detox and other sites.  We’re happy, prospering, and life is really, really good.

It didn’t have to be that way, but when you start doing the things you should be doing, you start getting what you deserve — just like before, but good things this time.  It’s been years since I wanted a drink or a drug, and I can’t take the credit.  All I did was what was suggested to me.

Us addicts want what we want, right now.  When we learn that we have to wait, that’s when we’re on the road to our new lives — “trudging the road of happy destiny,” as they say.

Join us, won’t you?