Good afternoon,
As I mentioned in some past posts, I fell (some would say jumped) off the wagon this last winter, and started drinking pretty heavily again. There were many reasons for it, and even more excuses, but thankfully I was able to get help involving the detox, and I've been Lean & Clean again for about 2.5 months.
The reason is that addiction is exists as both a physical disease and a mental illness. This is one of the areas where the body and mind overlap more than most. Humans usually begin engaging in addictive behaviour as a means of coping with some unresolved trauma often suffered in their youth, but sometimes as an adult. While most people only think of addiction in relation to substance abuse (beer, cigarettes, hard drugs) it can manifest in many different ways.
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I suffer from chronic addiction myself. What this means is that I will -always- find something to be addicted to, whether beer, marijuana, video-games, sex, social media, anything. And it is all an attempt to reduce anxiety brought on in relation to past traumas. These traumas can never be erased, and anxiety is simply a part of every day life, therefore I can never truly be cured of Addictive Behaviour itself. It's just a part of who I am.
I first quit drinking in 2012, and was clean as a whistle for 5.5 years. It took ALOT to get me drinking again, but when the final straw hit, it bore the weight of 27 years. I'll elaborate on that in a future post, but for now; the lesson to take away is that addiction can lay dormant for years, and be fully controlled, but if there is a shock great enough, it can come roaring back to life. That was in 2017. I managed to clamp down on it after just one night, but...
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The relapse I just got over though, didn't really start until December of 2018. I suffered another shock, one that can't easily be put into words. And that one seemed neverending. Obviously, the drinking made the entire situation worse, because that's what addiction does. It makes things worse. What becomes difficult, but manageable, becomes seemingly impossible.
Now that I'm clean again, I'm still facing difficulties, and still dealing with alot of grief, but things are improving. I've channel the addictive behaviour into more constructive activities, such as exercise, reading, music, aka "Things that are good for me. " And as I've done this, my need to use alcohol has decreased. I have to limit my time online but I've been using that to post on support forums, and build skills to help me cope with life's worries.
Photo by Shashank Shekhar on Unsplash
Ultimately, addiction cannot be cured, just rerouted into a non-destructive activity. It may be necessary to make major changes in a persons life (in my case, changing my career, leaving an abusive ex, abandoning my former bong-buddies, moving towns, changing diet, leaving most social media...) you get the point.
But if the addict wants Happiness instead of Convenience, recovery is possible.
Love to the Loving,
Silas Danois
