Today, one of my people who is in recovery from alcohol abuse/addiction, expressed shame at the fact that she almost “chose alcohol over her daughter.. again”. I had an immediate reaction to this… I immediately challenged these words with my person and the fact that her choice wasn’t between alcohol and her daughter, but over feeling better the way she knows to feel better or continuing her day through the pain. It was so easy for me to point this out and I truly believe that. It also forced me to have my own realization…
For those of you that may not know, my middle daughter is adopted, born to my first cousin. I often share this with people and when they want to know how we ended up with her, I often respond with a similar statement that my person used with me…”unfortunately my cousin loved meth and heroin more than she loved her daughter or being a mom.”
I faced some of my own shame when I realized how often I throw this phrase around (and many of us do about those that suffer with addiction). The reality is, it is far easier for me to be angry at my cousin and to blame her. If I didn’t, then I would have to have empathy for a person who has hurt me and so many people I love so greatly over the years; not to mention this beautiful (albeit ornery and challenging) little girl that is now mine. My cousin has caused so much damage and pain to those around her over the years. I want to be angry at her…
Here’s the thing though, I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my cousin loves her children. I know that she wanted to be a good mom, and in some ways, she has tricked herself into believing she was/is a good one despite having none of her children with her. I also know that in those moments that she used or made a choice to do something, so she could, it wasn’t ever her going “hmm if I do these drugs it will mean I hurt my daughter, that’s okay, I’ll do them anyway.” She didn’t make a choice to love drugs over her kids…let’s be honest, she also doesn’t love drugs..
My cousin, as a child, experienced more trauma than I am sure I will ever know, and then I think about everything she went through because of her addiction and I feel sick to my stomach thinking about what she has probably had to survive. In all of that trauma is inconceivable pain. Pain that is all consuming, inescapable and intolerable and that she had no idea how to deal with.
I often tell my people that we aren’t responsible for our trauma but we are responsible for how we choose to heal from it, and this is true. We have to make a choice at some point to heal from the pain and that is on us, no one else. I also know that the vast majority of people have never had that opportunity or even known that healing was a real option. They don’t believe that someone can see the parts of themselves they keep hidden and still care about them and be there. They haven’t experienced unconditional support and have learned that others can’t be trusted. They don’t have models for what healing looks like, and they don’t believe that they even deserve it. Let’s say that perhaps, they get enough courage to ask for help, what if the person they ask shuts them down, gives up, is just doing their job and truly doesn’t care, doesn’t understand that trauma is beneath addiction, gives a Bandaid solution…the list goes on, should they somehow still believe that they can heal?
What the majority of people do have, is models of avoidance, of temporary escapes, of denial, of internalization, of desperate attempts at survival…so they do what they know to do to survive. We can’t build a house with a tool we don’t have or don’t know how to use.
In those moments, I believe that my cousin did not “choose the drugs over her daughter”, instead she chose to survive her pain in the only way she knew would work. She couldn’t see past that moment. I think she has lived her life feeling like she was drowning and that temporary escape was like an air bubble, a breath of air as she went under again. She’s been in and out of rehab so I have often said she had a chance that she just didn’t take, but if the focus of treatment is just on the addiction, people are set up to fail. I don’t know what she’s been offered but I’m sure if she knew she could survive her pain and heal through it, she would. People don’t use because they use….people use because it’s the only way they know to handle the pain they are in and they end up in a loop. I have shame and hurt so I use, which causes more shame, so I use more, which causes more shame…
So many models of addiction treatment are based on relapse prevention, avoiding triggers, surrounding yourself with new people, counting the days…but if you never heal from the pain that led you to lose in the first place…you will always find something that helps you to escape and avoid (drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, sleep, working, adrenaline rushes, self harm, video games, …). I don’t believe my cousin has ever really known how to heal, she’s been shown sobriety, but that is just one very small step. I think she’s terrified to face her trauma (who isn’t?) and so over the years she has had to do more and more to escape it.
We avoid our trauma because that’s what we are taught to do (it isn’t that bad, you have no reason to feel that, others have it worse, we don’t talk about our personal family business with others, it’s your own fault, you just need to be strong, leave the past in the past…). Then because we avoid our trauma, it consumes us (see https://healing-through-connection.com/how-do-we-feel-what-we-feel/), and then because it consumes us, we avoid it, and round and round we go.
The person with the addiction is not choosing their addiction over anyone or anything, they are choosing to survive in the only way they know will work. My person’s battle was not between drinking and her daughter, it was between trusting herself to survive her pain(which she is just now learning to do) or surviving her pain through the temporary escape that her brain now defaults to. There is a saying in brain science that the neurons that fire together, wire together. Each time we use a connection, it strengthens and becomes that much easier for us to use again. So if I’m hurting and I drink leading to me not feeling my pain for that while, I will likely try that again because it worked. The more I use that neural network, the quicker I will default to it, often without even thinking.
I talked to my person today that there is a 6 lane highway in her brain between pain and use, and a dirt path between pain and reaching out/healing. The more she can avoid the highway, the smaller it will get, and the more we walk the dirt path, the more it will turn into a road itself. Each time she wins the battle, it will get easier to use the path of healing
At the end of the day…addiction isn’t about addiction…it’s about pain and a lack of belief in our ability or right to heal.