This is the most difficult time of year for many, and an especially dangerous one for those who suffer from addiction.
For me, it’s the end of a hard year that started with the end of a promising young relationship, my first in many years; then a drugging and assault; and then the death in March of my mother.
These are my first holidays without her.
People I love recently fell into relapse. I have to fight that undertow as well.
So in this mid-month blog I share some things I learned the hard way these past 14 years, through many years of struggle followed by more success the last four. Perhaps it will help others seeking to maintain sobriety and emotional health through the challenging holiday season. When tempted, I try to remember these things.
BEFORE USING, I ALWAYS MINIMIZED WHAT WOULD BE LOST
It was always more, and often things I did not expect could be lost, like close friends.
“I’ll be out a day or two.” It was always longer, both in active using and in dealing with the effects. I would lose a week at least, and never catch up. Life went on without me.
“I don’t have to work until Monday,” or “I will just call out one day.” Then I was making excuses, too shaky and looking too bad to be seen in public much less perform my job.
Jobs were lost, friends were lost, health was lost, self-respect was lost, strength to deal with stress was lost. And soon the urges became more pressing, and it happened again.
Relapse
USING AGAIN SETS UP A CYCLE. IT IS RARELY “ONE AND DONE”
The brain has been given permission to expect it to happen again. It will find opportunities and reasons. “I have an unexpected day off.” Or, “my friend relapsed, I might as well relapse too.” The addict brain works subconsciously, often through things that seem innocuous but form a chain that ends with relapse.
INTERMITTENT USE IS A DIFFICULT ADDICTION TO OVERCOME
It took a long time for my brain to quit anticipating there would be another dopamine high. A famous experiment with rats and cocaine water demonstrated that intermittent reinforcement (cocaine was in the water intermittently) had the rats even more addicted than when it was in the water every time.
It’s the same effect in gambling, when the slot machine gives me just enough wins to keep me sitting there, putting more money in.
Or in a “come here/go away” love affair with a love avoidant, who gives me just what I most want, then pulls away when the intimacy scares him, then moves back toward me when I drift away.
THERE IS NO SAFE LEVEL OF METHAMPHETAMINE USE
Meth is the most powerful central nervous system stimulant ever invented.
Its effects on brain chemistry are profound; its effects on the heart and cardiovascular system are profound. But these are not always obvious in the short-term.
I used to feel sort of ok after a week, and much better after three weeks.
But the brain recovery can take up to 24 months, and the brain may never return to baseline. Rates of Parkinson’s disease are higher in former meth users. The human brain may be “the most complex thing in the universe,” and meth is a sledgehammer to it.
The heart damage is cumulative. Stimulant users tend to develop an enlarged left ventricle, with thickened, less flexible walls and reduced chamber volume. As the heart enlarges, or “remodels,” it becomes distorted and the valves don’t close as well. It works harder but can’t efficiently fill or pump. As efficiency falls below the normal 50-70% range (amount of blood pushed out with each beat), below 40%, one goes into heart failure. The remodeling process, beyond a certain point, is not reversible, even with abstinence and medication.
Meth kills many long after they quit using.
ADDICTION IS PROGRESSIVE, EVEN IF I AM NOT USING. WHEN I USE AGAIN AFTER A PERIOD OF ABSTINENCE, THE ADDICTION RESUMES NOT WHERE I STOPPED, BUT WHERE IT WOULD BE HAD I NEVER STOPPED
I had to learn and relearn and relearn this. I wanted to make up for “lost time.” I wanted to use at the levels I used to use, and more. The obsession was off the charts, every time I relapsed.
IT’S EASIER TO STAY STOPPED THAN TO QUIT AGAIN
It’s hard to quit the first time. But for all the reasons stated above, I was never able to quit again after a relapse without severe consequences and a return to treatment.
And every time I gave myself permission to use, it happened all over again.
IF YOU ARE IN RELAPSE, OR FEEL ON SHAKY GROUND FOR ANY REASON, GET TREATMENT. DON’T WAIT
I was assaulted in January, by a hookup who was using. But I knew he was using when I let him come to my hotel room. Nothing after the first minutes was consensual or went as I might have imagined, but looking back, I had put myself in danger by seeking a casual hookup and was in relapse mode. I had been destabilized by the abrupt relationship end and remained destabilized as I dealt with the assault aftermath and my mother’s death.
So I had two weeks of residential treatment in August, at Seeking Integrity Los Angeles, where I had gone in 2019. This was one of the best decisions I have made. It helped restore me to a better place, able to manage the challenges yet to come. And they continue to come.
I am grateful for every single day free from active addiction.
SEEK TREATMENT FOR YOUR TRAUMA
I have yet to meet an addict who did not suffer significant childhood trauma or attachment injury (they did not get their emotional needs met in early life).
This is tricky, as trauma work can be very destabilizing. But it is also necessary to have any opportunity to live an emotionally fulfilling life and sustain healthy relationships. I sought professional help and, with time, have experienced healing and emotional growth.
I will never be the person I might have been, had my early-life emotional needs been met. I needed those things then, as part of what should have been a “normal” or healthy childhood developmental process. I will never get back the lost decades.
But I can learn to recognize unhealthy and distorted urges, perceptions and actions that come out of my early trauma and attachment injury. I can compensate and live a healthier, happier emotional life today.
What it was Like (Look Back, but Don’t Stare)
I DON’T TAKE MY RECOVERY FOR GRANTED
I have the most powerful addiction one can have, the fusion of sex with methamphetamine use. I have the addiction with the highest dopamine (pleasure) levels and the lowest success in longterm recovery.
There are things other people can do that I cannot.
I cannot: go on a hookup app; have casual sex; watch porn; go to a bathhouse or sauna; linger in chemsex fantasy. The chemsex thoughts come, but I can’t cling to them. I try to acknowledge them and let them go.
I can’t allow myself to linger in emotional pain, to “tough it out” without reaching out to my support network. I can’t let my expectations for anything or anyone get too high. I have to be careful with dating and especially dating apps, where I am likely to feel rejected.
THERE ARE THINGS I CAN DO TO STAY SOBER
Connect with others who want to be sober. Get in the middle of the recovery herd and be active in my recovery community.
But avoid frequent relapsers. Love them from a distance until they change their behavior. “They will get you drunk before you get them sober,” said a wise former Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor.
I have a tendency to codependency, to becoming emotionally close to people who may not yet have found their way in life or recovery. Sometimes the best thing for me and for them is to step away, to let them have their own experience. I can and do love them from a distance, knowing this is best for both of us. But it’s incredibly painful to walk away from someone I love when they are struggling.
Find things worth living for. I have writing, music, art, flying, and a wide range of friends all over the world. I can’t enjoy my interests or friends if I am in active addiction. These are mutually incompatible.
Have multiple peer groups, not just recovery friends. Helping and connecting with other people, in a variety of civic activities and personal relationships, helps me get outside myself, and my self-pity, when life becomes difficult.
Do the work. I see cognitive behavioral therapy, Buddhist practice and 12-Step work as different ways to understand my psychology, the cognitive distortions that drive my perceptions and behavior. They allow me to live in conscious awareness.
Steps 4-5 (creating and sharing inventories of my resentments, fears and relationship/sexual history) took away the power of the people who abused me (the most potent abuse being the withholding of what I desperately needed as a little boy, from the caregivers who should have provided it). It exposed hidden anger I had turned inward and allowed me to release it and the self-destructive impulses it caused.
Is there anyone more trapped than a person rebelling against the pain of their childhood?
Steps 6-7 (identifying and asking God to remove defects of character) have nothing to do with “god” for me. It’s about awareness when I am acting out a “character defect”, which one could call a “maladaptive coping mechanism” or, from a Buddhist perspective, the “conditioned self”. With that awareness I begin to have some agency and control. I have choices in my behavior.
As Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.”
All this work is, for me, an effort to live in present-time awareness.
What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? What pain is behind this urge in this moment to escape with meth and sex? Why am I in so much pain? What very old wound has been opened up in the present moment, and why?
And, where is it in the body; can I observe it? Can I sit for a time with it? Can I see it change?
If I can, in about 15 minutes, it’s gone or greatly shifted.
These are my experiences.
I hope they help others.
May you have safe holidays this year, one day at a time.
