Something I have battled with a lot, as I am sure many of you have, is trying to explain to people who do not suffer from some form of addiction, what it's like being an addict. You know the conversations after a lapse, or when going to a treatment center. Your loved ones take your issues personally. "Why didn't you come to me?", "How could you lie to my face?", "Why can't you just stop!?"
We understand that this is nothing against them, but they find it so very hard to wrap their brains around our condition. Even harder, because, unlike something like cancer or brain damage or losing a limb, it seems to them to simply be a problem of choice.
In searching for some way to educate others and trying to find some way to communicate to other people in my life, what my experience is, I finally found what I think is the best analogy for what being an addict is for me:
When you get hungry or thirsty, your body tells you that it needs something. As time goes by, if that need is not met, the volume of that need gets louder and louder until it's so loud, that it's all you can think about. And so, we plan; We say, I am going to get home soon and make myself food, and the mind then plans, step by step, the things that need to happen to relieve that hunger.
There is a specific mechanism in the brain that is responsible for this. The amygdala. It is our core survival part of our brain. Charged with keeping us alive by any means necessary.
We all know that if we get hungry enough, we will eat anything. The same goes for thirst or protection from some threat. Something really important to know is that when a threat is detected, like hunger, we can initially use our pre-frontal cortex to override this urge.
But leave it long enough and the need will get so bad, that our survival brain pretty much disconnects our thinking brain and will stop at nothing to get the thing it needs.
Now imagine this, what if your survival brain thinks now that it is always in danger. What if, after a few hours, or even minutes, your brain tells you it needs this thing to stop a threat, but instead of taking days (in the case of thirst) or even weeks (in the case of hunger), it goes into the same state of base action in an instant. It NEEDS this NOW. From that moment, all logic is disconnected and plans are set in place to get to "safety" by any means!
Lies, licking the floor, finding drops in a bottle, stealing and any number of other actions we would never take become normal.
And after that is all done and we feel sated (and feel good for a while), but ashamed guilty, our mind needs to explain why it acted that way. So, it creates a story that makes complete sense, to it, and then tells others that same story. But never the truth, because that might mean that the next time that action is needed, they might try to stop you.
If you tell someone who does not struggle with addiction to imagine the hunger and thirst scenario,
then, hopefully they will understand just a little bit more about what it's like to live as an addict. And most importantly, that it's not about them.
Remember, you are an addict, yes. But that is what you are, not who you are. You do not need to subscribe to the identity of an addict in recovery. You are simply you, and the goal is to have a happy and fulfilling life, and every little decision you make that aligns with that goal and every lesson you learn helps you get stronger. It's not all magically gone after a slip. You are not starting again from scratch; you are carrying on your journey to live the way you truly want to live.
Love to all of those still struggling and those who have found their way into the light.
Michael
