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The Opposite Of Addiction Is Not Sobriety

Johann Hari, author of the New York Times best-selling book “Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs,” has been exploring the true cause of addiction, something he believes is largely misunderstood.

In a Ted Talk filmed last month, Hari challenged the belief that addiction is caused by chemical hooks, saying patients who receive painkillers after medical procedures but have no issue getting off the drugs largely disprove that theory.

“If what we believe about addiction is right, if those people are exposed to all those chemical hooks, what should happen? They should become addicts,” he said. “It doesn’t happen.”

What Hari believes to be the cause of addiction – be it drug addiction, gambling addiction or even addiction to your mobile device — is a lack of human connection.

“Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond. And when we’re happy and healthy we’ll bond and connect with each other,” Hari explained. “But if you can’t do that — because you’re traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life — you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that’s our nature, that’s what we want as human beings.”

Watch Hari’s Ted Talk above.

“For a hundred years now we’ve been singing war songs about addicts,” Hari said. “I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them. Because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”

Read Johann Hari’s blog for The Huffington Post, “The Likely Cause Of Addiction Has Been Discovered, And It Is Not What You Think,” here. Hari will be speaking on August 26th in Edinburgh, in early September in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, and in mid-September in Mexico City. For details of these events go towww.chasingthescream.com.

Wrapping it up

We hope that you found this article fascinating and helpful. If you are struggling with an Addiction or know someone who is. Please feel free to contact us and we can help you with your next steps.

Cherrywood House is a rehabilitation centre for people suffering from substance and other addictive disorders. It is situated in the tranquil, semi-rural environments of Constantia, Cape Town, South Africa. We offer  Residential Programmes, Aftercare Support Services, Outpatient programmes, Family Support Groups. For more information. Visit our Website Here.

This Is Your Brain On Neuroscience

By Zachary Siegel 07/05/15

Addiction science and neuroscience will make your head spin.

It’s not brain surgery Shutterstock

It’s the age of what people are calling the “neuro-disciplines.” It all began with a now well-known branch of medicine called neurology, the study of the nervous system, whose first registered use was in 1681. The Ancient Greek prefix has since attached to, well, just about every discipline under the sun: neurolaw, neuroengineering, neurotheology, neurophilosophy, neuroethics, neuroeconomics, neuropedagogy, neuromarketing.

And of course, addiction cannot escape the long-armed “neuro” prefix as there is aburgeoning body of neuroscience dedicated to the study of need, desire, and addiction. Last month, The Fix interviewed Dr. Nora Volkow, the pre-eminent neuroscientist directing research at the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Dr. Volkow said there is “physical evidence that addiction hijacks not only the ability to feel normal pleasure, but also the very circuits in charge of exerting free will.” NIDA, then, essentially determines what is mainstream addiction neuroscience.

In preparation to get the other side of the story, The Fix reached out to a number of not-so-mainstream but equally brilliant scientists and neuroscientists who are wary of the reductive simplicity—a leap from brain to behavior— put forth by an institution such as NIDA that informs drug war policymaking, what kind of research gets funded, and ultimately affects how one with addiction gets treated.

Cross Addiction

If you understand the fundamentals of addiction, you’ll understand that it was never about the drugs or alcohol or other self-destructive behaviours.

What characterizes addiction is the obsessive and compulsive nature of the behaviour and also what happens when we do act out on that behaviour. We start a process that is exclusive to our condition, POWERLESSNESS. Powerlessness means that we lose control and our lives become unmanageable. Unmanageability can be characterized by looking at certain areas of life.

Socially, Financially, Spiritually and emotionally. If we take an honest look at those areas of our lives, we will see, specific examples where the powerlessness has affected our very core.
Cross addiction is when you swop one drug of choice for another, quiet plainly it’s just allowing the manifestation of obsession to filter into different areas.
The way the brain works in addiction is like this. Our pleasure centers get overloaded with dopamine to name but one chemical.
Dopamine is a brain chemical involved in many different functions including movement, motivation, reward – and addiction. Nearly all drugs of abuse directly or indirectly increase dopamine in the pleasure and motivation pathways and in so doing, alter the normal communication between neurons.
-drugabuse.gov

How Do Addicts Make Decisions

By Jeanene Swanson 06/02/15

Learning about the economics of decision-making could mean the difference between relapse and long-term sobriety.

Most, if not all, addicts and alcoholics struggle with quitting and staying sober. And many have an equally hard time understanding why. What if would-be recovering addicts and alcoholics knew more about what goes into the making decisions—and how setting and achieving goals, and putting value on rewards, goes wrong in addiction? Learning about the economics of decision-making will not only make life in recovery easier, but it could mean the difference between relapse and long-term sobriety.

Temporal discounting

The concept of temporal discounting is not new. In fact, it can be traced back to the earliest philosophers. In temporal discounting, people put less value on more distant rewards. “A bird in hand is better than two in the bush,” as the saying goes—the distant, seemingly-uncertain reward, even while greater, appears less valuable than the more immediate, certain one.

Many studies have shown that addicted people show higher temporal discount rates.And that’s at the crux of a substance use disorder. If all the reward from using heroin, let’s say, came 20 years down the road, and the problems with relationships, or the law, came immediately, addiction wouldn’t exist in the same form as it does now. “The immediacy [of the reward] is integral to the problem of addiction,” says Dr. John Monterosso, a professor at the University of Southern California and author of an intriguing article with Dr. George Ainslie on the behavioral economics of will in recovery.

Pushing Through

It’s not always rainbows and sunshine in early recovery. Gone is the myth, just because I’ve stopped using everything will be okay now. On the contrary, because you’ve stopped using or acting out on your addiction you will start to see the REAL wreckage of your past. All those feelings that have been pushed down for so many years start to surface. Don’t back away, it’s now time to move forward and start sorting through it all.

Pushing Through To Recovery

My experience with this was particularly moving. There have been very few times in my life when I have experienced such an immense amount of freedom through turmoil. Digging into the shame and guilt of the past was difficult but I noticed the harder it was to feel and deal with, the more freedom I experienced.

It isn’t and hasn’t always been easy since those days.
I’ve often heard people say “Life on Life’s terms” and I realize that I’m not only powerless over my addiction but I’m powerless over people, places and things.

Integrity

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no-one is around.

Recovery happens in secret. For many years I put up a front when I got out of treatment.  Everything was fine and I was now in recovery. How did I know that it wasn’t real ? I was not the same person when I was alone as when I was in public. There were times when I knew that I could get away with certain behaviours and I indulged in that. Then the next day I would go out a different person filled with guilt and shame. Something had to change this time. Covering my history with substance abuse was not enough. ALL my addictive behaviour had to be addressed. Acting one way on the outside wasn’t enough, I was doomed to fail. My insides and outsides have to match up in order for me to stay clean, because, just like recovery, relapse happens in secret. If I’m fearful when I hand someone my phone because there are things on it that I don’t want people to see, then something is wrong. If I don’t want people to go onto my computer because there are things that I hide, there is a problem.

Life on Life’s Terms

As we all know life throws out some curve balls. Nothing is to be expected except the unexpected. People pass away, friends leave, plans change. The only constant is that life has its own terms and conditions. I can’t control the way other people are, I can’t change the way life works, I can however change the way I react to life. Being clean has given me the ability to understand these principals. I have also come to understand that I’m powerless over people, places and things and no matter how much time I put into trying to change others it will never happen.

All I have control over is me and my reaction to life.

How To Help A Drug Addict

Intervention

The goal of an intervention is to get the chemically dependent individual to accept the need for help now. Three key facets need to be considered as a means of creating as successful an intervention as possible:

  1. Dynamic Factors: The abuse of loved ones, the possible removal of all help and support, the possibility of the loss of a job, the possibility of enforced confinement and legal implications.
  2. Format: The intervention needs a presentation of REALITY to the chemically dependent person. This presentation could include: facts about the disease of addiction, a family discussion on the unacceptable behaviours being noticed, a recitation of crimes committed and feelings abused, personalized views of the affect on the family, friends, jobs and health.
  3. Method: Include addiction specialists, medical specialists (family doctor), family members, and maybe one or two trusted friends. Each person then gives specific descriptions of the disease, the consequences of the disease and concerns about attitude and behaviour changes seen by family and friends.

Referral:

For family members, we suggest that you have the website of a reputable alcohol and addiction teatment centre ready to be viewed by the chemically dependent individual, straight after the initial three facets of the intervention have been applied. At that point, it is ultimatum time, but please ensure that you are ready to ‘say what you mean and mean what you say’ – idle threats always prove counterproductive.

Upon agreement to receive treatment for the addiction, the suffering addict must be transported to the pre-arranged clinic as soon as possible. In our experience, it is at this ultimatum stage that the addict usually exhibits intense resistance. This is not a bad sign if you consider the predicament in which the addict suddenly finds himself. For the addict to run at this point is not unusual. It is their distorted way of going to say goodbye to the drug and have a final hit. Eventually, they surrender – just be ready to go when they return.

Next Steps

We hope that you found this article about behavioural models helpful and encouraging. If you are struggling with an Addiction or know someone who is. Please feel free to contact us and we can help you with your next steps.

Cherrywood House is a rehabilitation centre for people suffering from substance and other addictive disorders. It is situated in the tranquil, semi-rural environments of Constantia, Cape Town, South Africa. We offer  Residential Programmes, Aftercare Support Services, Outpatient Programme, Family Support Groups. For more information. Visit our Website Here.