Drug Rehab Center

“I TOOK A LONG, DEEP BREATH AND WONDERED AS USUAL, WHERE TO START. YOU START WHERE YOU ARE, IS THE SECRET OF LIFE. YOU DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING YOU CAN SEE. THEN THE NEXT.” ~ Anne Lamott

In this fourth and final instalment of this video series, Geoff sums up his talk on moving beyond thinking about recovery and taking action. To use a popular recovery metaphor, it’s about putting the tools in your toolbox to use. In his book, Not God, Ernie Kurtz records the history of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement. This account is not about the theory of addiction but, rather, is a historical account of tangible actions people in the early days of the recovery movement took to stay sober and support one another. What these early pioneers of the AA movement did was what saved them and helped build AA.

However, it is important to remember that action must have a purpose and a direction. Action cannot be a mere distraction, as a trick to keep us from thinking about drugs or alcohol or to make us feel important and useful. If people find themselves incapable of taking action, it is important to remember the advice of Anne Lamott who encourages those who are stuck to, if they don’t know what to do, do the next right thing. Finally, as Irvin Yalom tells us, it is important to make a commitment to action. Once one really commits, everything changes.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said:

Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Naysayers may say that talk like this is a set-up which can end up in failure. Geoff reminds us that in baseball a .333 average can make a ballplayer a very wealthy man, even though they fail 2 out 3 attempts. We learn by our failures.

By Geoff Thompson, Ph.D. (cand.), CCC
Program Director

It’s very interesting that most research in the addiction field—at least, research in the US and Canada, though not so much in other places — ends up with the same conclusion.

Here’s the conclusion: The drug takes over the person, leaving them more or less powerless to control themselves. Some of the bad things about addiction are that it mucks up the chemicals in the thinking part and in the reward part of the brain, it empties bank accounts, it breaks up family, it causes liver damage and other problems, it causes problems at work.

If this is true, then why do people continue to use drugs? The answer: People succumb to drugs because of some defectiveness. In the old days, this was a moral defectiveness. Addicts were sinners and irresponsible lay-a-bouts. More modern interpretations of defectiveness say that addicts have a brain disease or disorder or that they have maladaptive learned behavior.

Here’s an example from a textbook on Abnormal Psychology, by Durand and Barlow. The authors quote an alcoholic explaining why alcoholics drink: “When I drink, I don’t care about anything, as long as I’m drinking. So when I’m not drinking, the problems come back, so you drink again. The problems will always be there. You just don’t realize it when you’re drinking. That’s why people tend to drink a lot.” As the book title suggests, this is an example of those who are not normal.

What is odd about this is that it’s a pretty weak explanation of why millions of people continue to drink and use drugs, and have done so for thousands of years. When we listen to addicts themselves and when we read about addiction in works written by addicts we find a much different story. The famous drug users in Victorian England did not reduce addicts to being defective. They described many of the positive experiences of intoxication. A typical example is Charles Baudelaire, who even wrote a poem about hashish. A more modern example is Eugene O’Neill, the Nobel-prize winning addict-writer. O’Neill provided us with an in-depth understanding of addiction that had nothing to do with being powerless over alcohol or self-medicating some mood disorder or being irresponsible or suffering from a disease. O’Neill explained the reason why he drank was that he could never find a sense of belonging, except when he was drunk.

What Baudelaire and O’Neill and hundreds of others have in common is that they examined drug use at a human level. They did not reduce the addict to having a disease or a defective personality or a bad habit. They saw them as normal human beings who were searching for something to feel whole, feel more energized and vital, make more sense of their lives. Many of them talked about intoxication as a spiritual experience.

And, of course, Bill W., the main force behind the development of Alcoholics Anonymous, was convinced that the thirst of the alcoholic was his thirst to feel whole and find some connection with the universe. Remember that speech he gave in 1948 at the Shrine Auditorium: “An alcoholic is a fellow who is ‘trying to get his religion out of a bottle,’ when what he really wants is unity within himself, unity with God. . . .”

In this blog article, we’ll examine the pervasive idea that addicts are addicts because they are defective. If you or a loved one are struggling with addiction, this idea will help you appreciate the influence that the stigma has had on your or a loved one’s recovery.

Part One: Hollywood Movies & Stigma

Believe it or not, researchers have examined how Hollywood movies have portrayed addiction and its treatment. Curt Hersey, for example, has written on how Hollywood portrays addiction and recovery from addiction. In an article examining 28 Days, Clean & Sober, and When a Man Loves a Woman — which take place mainly in treatment centers — he concluded that the films offered only “one conceptual framework for addiction” and that the portrait of recovery was “unrealistic, when compared with the availability and realities of real-life programs.”

Addicts portrayed by Sandra Bullock in 28 Days and Michael Keaton in Clean & Sober are presented as suffering from defectiveness. This defectiveness means that once the drug enters their brain, they lose control. This is, of course, the disease model of addiction. They are selfish, intolerant, in denial, and so on. It’s not that Sandra Bullock is a horrible person; she’s just got a disease. And Michael Keaton’s lying and manipulating is not because he is evil; he, too, has a disease, and he will do anything to get the drug.

Part Two: Popular Opinion & Stigma

Popular opinion sees the addict, even in treatment, as defective. When treatment centers open in neighborhoods, it is inevitable that the neighbors are against it. The typical excuses for wanting to shut it down are that the center will make property values drop, that it is too close to schools (don’t want all those nasty addicts near vulnerable school kids), that the clients will make the neighborhood “unsafe,” that the clients will get up to all kinds of mischief in the neighborhood, and so on. (FYI. Research studies on these complaints have shown they are not valid.)

Even many of those who agree that addiction is a health issue, often carry with them this idea that addicts are out of control. There is a famous documentary called The Fix: Story of an Addicted City about Vancouver’s notorious downtown eastside. In the film, a non-addicted person said that she believed addiction was a disease and addicts needed help — just not in downtown Vancouver. She suggested they should go to Surrey! (I’ve often wondered what the mayor of Surrey thought when she heard this.)

According to popular opinion, one of the biggest problems with the addict is that he or she appears to be out of control. Many experts have recognized that people in our society are very uncomfortable around others who appear unable to control themselves. We tend to like the John Wayne or Sarah Palin type of person, or someone like Terry Fox, who overcame his struggles. We tend to shy away from people diagnosed with mental disorders or HIV or, even, cancer.

Part Three: Mainstream Research & Stigma

Tens of thousands of research studies seem to confirm that addicts are defective. Studies have shown that those trying to overcome their addiction have high levels of anxiety and depression, low self-confidence, poor image of themselves, have mucked up the thinking part of the brain that controls, for example, not acting on impulses, and so on.

It’s possible to argue that all the studies are simply discovering the “truth” about addiction. They have similar conclusions because all this defectiveness is what addiction is all about. But then how do we make sense of, for example, Eugene O’Neill, that Nobel-prize winner? Even though he won the Nobel Prize, do we simply dismiss him because he suffered from a disease or maladaptive learned behavior? Do we conclude that all his ideas on addiction were just plain wrong? That all his ideas were just excuses to justify his drinking?

To understand how all these studies come up with the same conclusion, it is necessary to understand how this research is conducted. Basically, the researcher comes up with an idea then designs an experiment to see if the idea is true. What this means in real life is that it is the original idea that is the key, so researchers design studies to discover level of criminal involvement, anger and aggression, antisocial personality traits, and so on. If the researcher thinks that addiction is a disease, he or she will design an experiment that focuses on disease. But what happens if that is not really what is going on? Unfortunately, the method does not allow for other interpretations.

This is one of the reasons why many experts, such as XXXX, have lamented that “the prohibitionist spirit is still strong.”

Part Four: Other Research & Stigma

Another kind of research does not use statistical analyses. This research is interested in understanding the subjective experience of, say, addiction. Usually, the researcher talks to a handful of people to understand their experience of addiction and recovery. The odd thing is that even most of this research focuses on defectiveness.

A typical example was a study of an alcoholic woman by two researchers, Drs. Shinebourne and Smith. The woman talked about how she was a different person when intoxicated and that she did not like this person. At least, that’s what the researchers focused on. But it is interesting that she also talked about the benefits of being intoxicated: “feeling creative, you know, some feelings of like fun and excitement. . . like unlocking some sort of artistic feeling.”

But the researchers didn’t pay attention to these feelings of creativity, fun, and excitement of intoxication. Rather, they dismissed this and focused on the bad stuff. After all, if addiction is bad and the person out of control, then the woman’s comments on fun and excitement and being more creative probably were not all that important.

Conclusion: Stigma as a Barrier to Recovery
In this article we’ve examined remarkable power that “addict = defective” holds on people. This sort of thinking is at the root of the stigma of addiction.

Almost all clients at our residential program, Sunshine Coast Health Center, have internalized the stigma. They call themselves “drug fiends,” “drunks,” and other derogatory labels. Many clients think that they must have a mental disorder because this is the only way they can understand why they keep using substances, even knowing that this behavior was causing them serious problems. And, of course, there’s always the declaration, “Of course I lie and manipulate. I’m an addict. That’s what addicts do.”

But here’s the problem. If you believe in this idea that you are defective, then your recovery will suffer. Several researchers have shown that the stigma of addiction is a problem. Jason Luoma is one such researcher who has written about how the stigma of addiction causes problems for those who want to clean up and actually can weaken their recovery.

By Geoff Thompson, Ph.D. (cand.), CCC
Program Director at Sunshine Coast Health Center

Much of the clinical program at Sunshine Coast Health Center is based on the theory and research of Dr. Paul Wong. Although Dr. Wong began as an experimental psychologist (training rats to be able to withstand more and more stress, etc.), he became very interested in the work of Viktor Frankl. What appealed to him was Frankl’s idea that the fundamental motivation of all human beings was to live a personally meaningful life. But Frankl did not have a lot of psychology to back up his ideas. Dr. Wong has spent much of his career putting a psychological research basis to Frankl’s ideas.

Dr. Wong’s new book will be published soon. It is the second edition of The Human Quest for Meaning, and it has a lot of chapters from some of the finest psychologists on what it takes to live a personally meaningful life. By the way, the number of chapters and authors should tell you that all this meaning stuff is actually quite complicated. Different authors each provide a piece to the meaning puzzle, providing all sorts of knowledge on big meanings and little meanings, how the stories we tell ourselves can be positive or detrimental, why searching for happiness may backfire when a major problem in life arises (such as trauma), how meaningful living may shift as one gets older, how struggles in life can add to meaningful living, and so on.

In this blog article, we’ll examine five major themes in Dr. Wong’s book. These five themes will help you if you or a loved one is in recovery. Viktor Frankl was convinced that addiction was a response that some people used to deal with a life that had little personal meaning. The symptoms of such a life are typically being bored, not feeling you are in control of your destiny, not having any real direction in your life, feeling different than others, not really being able to make sense of your life, feeling that you don’t belong, and so on. Addiction allows you to exist in such a life.

Many Sunshine Coast clients report that intoxication gets rid of the worries and pressures of the world leaving them with a sense of freedom, feeling stronger and in control, being able to make sense of things…at least temporarily. But as sobriety returns, all the guilt, hurt, loss, confusion, and self-consciousness return. Dr. Wong’s books provides research-based approaches to help people feel this way without drugs.

Part One: Threats to Meaning

Many people with addictions recognize that there are a number of threats to living a meaningful life. Addiction is a common one because the dynamic of addiction serves to take away any meaning the person might once have possessed.

Some of the threats to meaning that clients have told us are reflected in Dr. Wong’s book, which has chapters on trauma, sickness, aging, and death. Some threats, such as trauma, shatter how one makes sense of the world and their place in it. An inability to make sense of traumatic experience is, essentially, the problem of posttraumatic stress disorder. Serious illness often catalyzes the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, but it can also trigger a desperate search for meaning. Many Sunshine Coast clients have had real-life evidence of how fragile we really are. Aging is a common threat to meaning and has resulted in the so-called mid-life crisis. Many in the addiction field are hardly surprised that the average age of clients is mid to late 30s; even Bill Wilson sobered up at age 39. And death is universally recognized as the greatest source of anxiety; people are the only species who are aware that they will die. This puts great pressure on people on figuring out how to live life to the fullest.

Part Two: PURE

Dr. Wong has a chapter on his PURE model. PURE stands for Purpose, Understanding, Responsibility, and Evaluation/Enjoyment. These four components provide an appreciation for how meaning functions in life. They are so important that if any one of them is missing, then you will not live as good a life as you could be.

Purpose refers to why you are living your life as you are. As you know, the purpose of life for an addict is to get the drugs and get high. But Wong points out that such a purpose won’t lead to happiness, at least not according to his research. Happy people have a more positive purpose than intoxication. They have some higher purpose, which goes beyond themselves, such as being a good father or a member of a community.

Understanding refers to self-awareness and making sense of the world in a way that matches what is actually going on.

Responsibility refers to recognizing that the decisions you make affect the kind of life you live. This includes, of course, the decision to be a victim to life. It’s the idea that you are the author of your life.

Evaluation/Enjoyment refers to two ideas. First, it is important to reflect on your life: Are you happy? What would you have to do to make your life better? And so on. The Enjoyment part is the reason why you live a meaningful life. Meaning and purpose give you a reason to be excited about your life, to feel comfortable, and so on.

Part Three: Subjective and Objective Meaning

Lots of self-help books tell us to be true to ourselves. This is meaning that each of us pursues in life. The only problem with this way of living a meaningful life is that there is a danger of self-centeredness. A purely subjective way of approaching life seems to lead to a conclusion that one could live a meaningful life by being a pedophile or robbing banks or killing people who interfere with personal goals.

It’s important that we understand the time-honored ways of living a meaningful life—the kinds of things we learn from artists, philosophers, and psychological researchers. These thinkers have helped us understand that there are general principles we can follow, or what Dr. Wong calls “objective” meaning.

Combining the subjective and objective meaning is important. This was one of Viktor Frankl’s big points. Frankl was a great believer in the time-honored values that people followed to live a meaningful life. Some examples of such objective meanings are: attach one’s life to something greater than oneself, act virtuously, when in doubt just do the next right thing, use anger positively to help yourself and the world, recognize that to suffer is natural, care for others, and so on.

Part Four: Self-Determination

Several chapters in Dr. Wong’s book describe Self-Determination Theory (SDT). It is obviously important for anyone to feel that he or she is the one making decisions for their lives.

Doctors Edward L. Ryan and Richard M. Deci are generally recognized as the leaders in SDT. According to them, “the meaning-making process is intrinsic to our natures, and responsible for helping individuals create . . a coherent life course . . . As we take in new experiences and make sense of them for ourselves, we experience greater harmony, purpose, and wholeness.” You can see from this quotation that to be self-determining is to live a personally meaningful life.

Of course, being self-determining requires that you discover who you really are. What is valuable and important to you? Two of the things that we’ve discovered in psychology is that people seem to need to connect with others and feel competent. But there are many more.

Part Five: Relationships

December is generally a time we surround ourselves with friends and families. For other cultures, this may be a different time, such as January for Asian peoples, but in Canada and the United States we generally look to December. This is a time for connecting with others, for celebrating with others, for thinking of others and how they have enriched our lives.

Aron and Aron’s chapter in Dr. Wong’s book emphasizes the importance of other people in living a meaningful life. Relationships allow one to expand one’s life by transcending it through other people.

According to Aron and Aron, “caring for others is central to meaning.” At one level, forming positive relationships with others seems is a form of survival. “Social units, whether family or businesses, small towns or whole countries…, tend to survive better if they emphasize cooperation, altruism, sharing, and the general sense that the group is more important than the individual.”

At another level, being connected with something greater than the self seems essential for meaningful living. For some people, this may be a connection with God; for some, it is the AA group; for some, it is a sense of being part of a family or community.

By Geoff Thompson, Ph.D.(cand.), CCC
Program Director at Sunshine Coast Health Center

We can learn a lot about addiction and recovery from our current fare of drug prevention programs.

Here are some statistics: According to a 2007 published survey by the Government of Canada, most Canadian youth, aged 15 to 24, reported that they used illicit drugs. Only 39.7% said they have never used, 38% said they used only cannabis, and 23.7% said they used an illicit drug other than cannabis. Almost all youth reported using alcohol, and 82.9% in the last 12 months. Of past year drinkers, 13.8% reported getting drunk weekly and 40.6% at least monthly. (By the way, if there is such a thing as a ‘gateway drug’, then these numbers tell us that it’s alcohol.)

To combat these numbers, communities, schools, and parents spend a lot of energy trying to keep youth away from drugs and alcohol. Most prevention programs are simply local efforts, which have no basis in psychology research or practice. But both the US and Canadian governments tell us that many programs have been studied and have “scientific evidence” that they work. These programs generally use some basic psychology principles to help people learn how to ‘just say no‘, how to deal with peer pressure, how to deal with stress, how to deal with anxiety and depression, and so on.

The key to all these programs is that they point out that drugs are a poor way to deal with what makes us uncomfortable in life. And there are lots of things that make us uncomfortable. Booze is great if you’re going to a dance. It helps you get over shyness. Being intoxicated is a great way of dealing with boredom. Getting high is a great way of dealing with loneliness.

The problem with using drugs for this kind of uncomfortableness is that they can backfire. Having to rely on drugs every time you go dancing, for instance—and having to use more as time goes on because of tolerance—can lead to disaster.

Pointing out the risks involved seems entirely reasonable. But here’s the problem: Regardless of what program designers and governments tell us, top-of-the-line research has shown that our current prevention programs don’t work very well.

It’s important to remember that Bill W., the driving force behind the development of the 12 steps, also understood the benefits of using. He said that intoxication is a substitute for satisfying the urge for wholeness and connection with God. In 1943 at the Shrine Auditorium in LA he told the audience that the alcoholic was a person who was looking for religion in a bottle. But, of course, seeking fulfillment through intoxication always backfires, leading to great suffering.

In this blog article we’ll explore prevention programs to see why they are not very successful. Knowing this can help you understand the power of drugs and, if you are struggling with drugs or alcohol, what you will likely have to do to recover from addiction.

Part One — Our Current Approach to Prevention: “Drugs are bad”

Drug prevention programs operate according to the principle that “Drugs are bad, so don’t use them.” Typically, they tell us that using drugs will inevitably cause any number of problems. Studies of the effects of drugs on the brain, physical deterioration of the body, lost jobs, depleted finances, broken families, risk of arrest and incarceration, and so on are marshaled up to convince people to abstain. And many programs invite recovering addicts to tell their story to young people about how drugs destroyed their lives.

It all seems like a good way to keep young people away from drugs. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work very well.

Many big-shot researchers have studied the “evidence” of programs that claim to be successful—the ones that the US and Canadian governments have said were scientifically proven to be effective. The researchers discovered that the “evidence” was not very good.

For example, four of the most famous prevention programs are Strengthening Families, Life Skills Training, Project ALERT, and DARE. Researchers examining the evidence for Strengthening Families and Life Skills Training wrote: “Far from supporting the evaluators’ claims concerning the rigour of the findings and their generalisability and public health significance, the results were very fragile, of little practical significance and quite possibly analysis-dependent.” What this means is that the so-called “evidence” that the program worked did not meet basic research standards. Other researchers studied the evidence behind Project ALERT and DARE and found that these programs were of little or no value.

Part Two — Problems with the “Drugs are Bad” Approach

It seems so reasonable to try to stop people from using drugs by telling them all the dangers. And the dangers are not little: lost families, major health problems, lost jobs, mucking up the brain chemistry. And there is the real possibility of death.

But there are a growing number of experts in the field, who are showing why this “drugs are bad” approach is not very effective in preventing drug use. Here are some of their reasons.

Prohibition doesn’t work—The idea that drugs are bad is based on, as one researcher said, “the persistence of prohibition as an ideological force.” What this means is that trying to scare people into abstaining is based on ideas of the prohibition movement that helped make drinking illegal in the United States in 1920 and in Canada in 1918. You probably know that prohibition did not work. It was based on a moral stance and not on any scientific understanding of human nature.

People don’t believe the message—Surveys of school kids exposed to the “drugs are bad” message have shown that they don’t believe it. They know kids who have used crystal methamphetamine and who didn’t end up in the emergency ward of the hospital. They know kids who use substances and are straight-A students. They know athletes who smoke marijuana. They know kids who get drunk at parties, and the most they seem to be affected is a hangover the next day.

Kids like to take risks—One of the pleasures of teenagers is to take risks, including doing things that are illegal (small things, mainly). There’s an excitement involved. A drug prevention program that displays illegal drugs is likely to inspire more curiosity than fear. Interestingly, when addicted famous people talked to kids about drugs, the kids usually thought they could do drugs and then clean up—just as these celebrities did. (By the way, when researchers discovered this, they stopped asking famous people to talk to kids about drugs.)

These are just a few examples; there are many more. But they show that perhaps our current drug prevention programs are wrong-headed.

Part Three — New Research on Prevention

A handful of researchers, knowing that current prevention programs do not work very well, have said that we need to re-think the logic that we use to try to prevent drug use.

Most of these researchers are in England, but a growing number are in Canada and the United States. For example, British researchers have been studying why young people in Britain use ecstasy and ketamine. They have discovered that many young people find positive benefits from intoxication.

The idea that intoxication has rewards is not new. You may recall your time at Sunshine Coast when we talked about the great psychologist and philosopher William James (the guy who impressed Bill W. so much). James was convinced that being drunk or stoned helped the user connect with the universe, find insight into perplexing problems, and generally feel more energized and alive. And, of course, some of the great addict-writers, such as Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William S. Burroughs, Eugene O’Neill, and Jack Kerouac said more or less the same thing.

Young people we’ve studied have told us that using ecstasy and ketamine at dance clubs has helped them connect with others in a positive way. They even tell us that they have found long-term benefits of being more empathic (the ability to appreciate what others are feeling).

The second thing they tell us is that intoxication allows them to connect with something greater than they are. In previous articles, I have talked about how addicts often get high in order to feel a sense of belonging. Researchers in the United States have studied 18 to 24 year olds who experience the benefit of ecstasy as “transforming the everyday.” The researchers concluded that ecstasy highlights “the extraordinary or transcendental nature of the experience.”

Part Four—Drug Prevention has to Account for the Benefits of Drugs

Modern drug researchers have come up with a “new” idea. As one researcher put it, “Research has failed to explore a significant and integral feature of drug use, primarily the reasons why people use and the benefits they receive.”

People use because they find some rewards for getting intoxicated. Researchers have concluded that we need to understand these benefits if we are to design drug prevention programs that work. In fact, one researcher has pointed out the obvious: The reason why our current drug prevention programs don’t work is precisely because the benefits that users tell us they get from being intoxicated make them resistant to programs that are based on the approach that “drugs are bad.”

Here are some of the rewards that users have told us about substances. Alcohol is great for dealing with shyness. Ecstasy can make users feel closer to others. Heroin users tell us that the whole world can be exploding and everything’s still okay. Young users of dextromethorphan tell us that it aids in creating a trans-personal experience. This trans-personal experience means that that intoxication moves the user beyond paying attention to himself and puts him in a state that is beyond time and space.

So, this is good information for you to know as part of how to stay away from drugs and alcohol. If the benefits of intoxication are this feeling of community and this trans-personal experience, then it makes sense that you will have to figure out how to find a sense of belonging and how to finding something in life that makes you feel alive.

This is, of course, the entire purpose of the 12-step program. And it is one of the main themes of your treatment at Sunshine Coast.

By Geoff Thompson, Ph.D.(cand.), CCC
Program Director at Sunshine Coast Health Center

When we ask clients what an addiction is, they provide any number of answers: “It’s a disease”; “It’s not a disease, I just made bad choices”; “It’s a bad habit”; “I was irresponsible”; and so on. Everyone seems is a bit baffled. Of course, the experts are just as baffled. William R. Miller, a world-renowned addiction expert, told us in 2006, “Addiction is not well understood.”

In previous blog articles, we’ve provided you with lots of different interpretations of addiction. Here are three we’ve looked at:
1. Psychologist Jeff Singer says addiction is a response some people use when they really don’t know who they are or how they fit in the world.
2. Neuroscientist Nora Volkow says addiction is a “brain disease.”
3. Nobel-Prize winning economist Gary Becker says addiction can be understood in terms of rational economic theory.

In a sense, all of them are right. It depends on what perspective you take. For example, if you believe that everything about you can be reduced to chemicals interacting in your brain, then you would likely agree with Nora Volkow. But if you believe that you are more than chemicals interacting in your brain, then you might think that addiction is something other than a disease.

If you adhere to the philosophy of the 12-step program, then you likely think that addiction is a “spiritual disease.” Bill W., the driving force behind Alcoholics Anonymous, said that this spiritual disease had caused alcoholics to become disconnected with themselves, with others, and with a higher power.

Of course, at Sunshine Coast we interpret addiction in line with the great psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who said that addiction is a response to living a life that has little personal meaning. In real life, this means that those at risk for addiction are the people who find daily life dull, boring, lonely, uncomfortable and perhaps feel that they are different or don’t fit in. And once the addiction sets in, then, as Narcotics Anonymous says, life becomes “meaningless, monotonous, and boring.”

All this is important because, generally, you will do things for your recovery based on what you think your addiction was caused by and how it affected you. Those who follow a 12-step program for their recovery (at least as Bill W. had interpreted the problem) see addiction as a spiritual problem; therefore, recovery demands a spiritual solution. Those who interpret addiction as only a matter of excessive use of substances often focus on relapse prevention techniques. Those who interpret addiction as a disease follow any program (usually a 12-step program) that will help them keep away from the drug; since there is no cure, they need to learn to live with the problem and get support to do it.

(There are some clients who really don’t care what the addiction is; all they know is that they’ve got a problem with substances and they just want to know how to get over it. This is also a good tactic. After all, in real life, who really cares where it came from? The key is to get over it. But even if you don’t care what caused it, you still have to figure out a way to overcome it.)

But we know this because we often talk to alumni on how well their recovery is going. A lot of the alumni give us reports that they’re beginning to live the life they wanted to live. There may have been a few surprises when they left Sunshine Coast, cleaning up some of the wreckage of the past, but they are doing well.

Others tell us that they are struggling. (Just to remind everyone that we like to hear from you even if you are struggling.) It’s interesting that most of the fellows who are struggling have told us that life in recovery surprised them. They were taken off guard that the way they thought recovery would go didn’t actually work out that way.

In this blog article, we’ll look at some of the surprises that those alumni who have been struggling have told us about. You can learn a lot by what didn’t work for others.

Part One: Just say no

At any given time at Sunshine Coast, we find several clients have decided that their recovery will consist of just saying no to the drink or drug. Some of the ways the clients say: “Drinking is just not an option for me” or “I know that I can use anymore” or “If I just don’t use coke, I’ll be fine.” This seems like a good idea; after all, Nancy Reagan told us that the solution to addiction was “Just say no.”

For these fellows, addiction equals using drugs or alcohol; therefore the solution to addiction is abstinence. It seems reasonable; this is certainly how most family members and the public interpret addiction. But we have experience seeing what happens to those who believe this, and lots of research to confirm what we see. The idea that recovery means putting a cork in the bottle or just saying no seems to be a recipe for relapse. In fact, clients who follow this as their main strategy for recovery seem to be the ones who relapse quickly. Thankfully, most of the clients at Sunshine Coast who believe this change their minds in a week or two here.

When someone says, “Drinking is just not an option for me,” it often quickly becomes an option. So, what happened? Was this person lying to us? We don’t think so. Most of the fellows seem genuinely honest; they don’t want to use anymore. Usually, drinking becomes an option for the alumnus because he doesn’t actually understand his addiction. He blames the using, forgetting to look at what it is about himself that makes intoxication appealing. So, this is a good lesson. If your strategy for recovery is to just say no, then you’ll likely be very surprised when you discover it isn’t enough.

Part Two: Life sucks

Here’s a common story we hear from alumni: “I don’t get it. I haven’t used. My family is thrilled that I’m clean and sober. My boss is thrilled that I haven’t missed work. My parents tell me they’re so proud of me for kicking the drugs. Everyone seems happy about my recovery … except me. I think my life sucks.”

Although everyone who tells us this is unique, there is a common theme we find in these sorts of stories. We often find that they are not being true to themselves. You know that on the AA chip it says, “To thine own self be true.” We generally discover that the alumni who tell us that their life sucks have not paid attention to themselves, have not been true to themselves. They have usually been doing what other people tell them to do.

This really isn’t a big surprise. If you attended Sunshine Coast, you probably discovered from listening to various life stories of your peers at Sunshine Coast, few have insight into themselves. If you don’t know who you are, then how can you be true to yourself? This is why we use Viktor Frankl’s eulogy exercise at Sunshine Coast. It’s a good way to learn what is really important to you. (The eulogy exercise is the one where you pretend that you’ve lived a good life and then passed away. The exercise is to write down what you want someone to say about you at the funeral service.)

This is why we incorporated mindfulness meditation into the program. It is a proven way of helping you to be self-aware—what’s going on for you right now. And this is why we asked you what you were feeling; how aware are you of your feelings at that moment. Most clients are so dissociated from themselves that they have lost this sort of self-awareness. It takes practice to get it back. (Watch infants. They have no problem letting you know how they are feeling right now.) We don’t expect you to discover who you are at Sunshine Coast, but we hope that you will begin the process of discovering it.

Part Three: I just have to go to meetings

It is one of the more baffling things in recovery that many people in 12-step programs think that recovery consists only of going to meetings. You probably remember from the 12-step workshops at Sunshine Coast that meetings are not very important in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. We reminded you that, according to 12-step programs, the key to recovery is doing the steps.

In fact, research has shown that those who only attend meetings don’t do all that well in staying away from the booze or drugs. Researchers have concluded that “involvement” in the 12-step program is the key. If the person is actively involved—has a sponsor, does the steps, focuses on the speakers at meetings, does 12-step volunteer work, spends time socializing before and after the meeting—then he succeeds.

If you think about it, how can going to meetings help you achieve what Bill W. and the Big Book said are essential for recovery? Can going to meetings give you “an entire psychic change”? How often does going to a meeting help you achieve a “spiritual awakening”? How does going to a meeting promote the idea of “To thine own self be true”?

Some experts have suggested that those who only attend meetings—and don’t do the steps—let themselves off easy. If all you do is attend meetings, then you don’t have to take any real action, such as making amends or challenging yourself to change behaviors or taking risks to be true to yourself.

Part Four: I just have to keep from being stressed out

Here’s a common comment we hear from an alumnus who has had a slip: “I had a lousy week, and I was so stressed that I just had to have a drink.”

Thinking that the key to your recovery is to protect yourself from getting stressed out is always a bad strategy—simply because the odds are overwhelming that you’re going to have a bad day or bad week or bad month and be really stressed out. If your recovery depends on lack of stress, you’re pretty much doomed.

At Sunshine Coast, we give clients a test to see how stressed out they are. Clients mark off all the items that applied to them, and then added up the scores to see how stressed they were. However, we point out to clients out that lots of people who are happy in recovery face many things that are stressful. A marriage may end, they may have contracted a serious disease, they may have lost a job, they may have been in a car accident, they may have trouble with their family. But they don’t need the drug to deal with these stressors.

So why do we get an alumnus who tells us he “just had to have a drink,” when other alumni didn’t seem to need it? Usually, it’s because the life he is living in recovery is missing something. To borrow an idea from Alcoholics Anonymous, he isn’t being true to himself. Those in recovery who have a slip because of some stressful event are usually living lives that are primed for relapse. The stressful time is often just the last straw.

It’s interesting that when we talk to those in recovery who decided to get loaded that the actual drug use was the last thing on the road to relapse. All sorts of things were going on for them days and even weeks before the actual drug use. Although everyone is unique, the common theme is that what they were doing in recovery did not make them feel alive and vital and energized. Some typical things we hear from these alumni are “I was putting in a lot of hours at work” or “I was bored with everything” or “my family was on my back all the time” or “I just sat on the couch all day.”

By Daniel Jordan
Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center

“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. . . . He became as good a friend . . . and as good a person, as the good old city knew. . . . Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh. . . . His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”

Excerpt from A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

INTRODUCTION

It’s obviously a huge understatement to describe A Christmas Carol as a popular holiday story. To many of us, the novel’s main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is as synonomous with Christmas as Santa Claus and Jesus Christ (Wikipedia has a long list of A Christmas Carol adaptations). So how to account for it’s popularity?

Maybe it is the generosity exemplified by Mr. Scrooge toward the tale’s conclusion. After all, Christmas reminds us that while we fret over buying the perfect gifts for friends and family, many people in our communities are happy just to get a hot meal. Perhaps A Christmas Carol is popular because it reminds us that Christmas is much more than just a time to shop – we enjoy the uplifting story of man being charitable to his fellow man.

On the darker side, another possible explanation for the enduring popularity of A Christmas Carol is how justice is served to people of privilege and power when they take advantage of their position in society; millions watched as ‘sweet revenge’ and humiliation were exacted on modern-day Scrooges like Bernie Madoff and Conrad Black.

I would, however, like to suggest that the real fascination with Ebenezer Scrooge is his overnight transformation from a lonely miser to a beloved pillar of the community. It is human nature to wish that we could wake up one morning forever changed (and author Charles Dickens assures the reader with the quote above that the change in Mr. Scrooge was permanent). While A Christmas Carol is not the only story involving transformation it is one of the few stories of intrinsic change as opposed to the external variety such as sudden wealth, fame (A Star is Born), prestige (Cinderella) or beauty (The Ugly Duckling).

ADDICTION TREATMENT AS A TRANSFORMATIONAL EXPERIENCE

At Sunshine Coast Health Center, we believe that it is not enough simply to treat the ‘addiction’. Instead, a client’s experience with us facilitates ongoing personal transformation,the goal being healthy, thoughtful men who are inspired to live with a renewed sense of vitality and purpose. That’s straight out of our brochure.

So, does that mean that every client leaves Sunshine Coast transformed? No, but that’s what we’re shooting for. We believe that is better to aim high and fall short than to aim low and not be disappointed. We find solace in the famous quote by German Playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.”

In the following video, Viktor Frankl makes a similar point:

Another disclaimer I might add at this point concerns predicting which client will have a transformational experience. The truth is we have no idea but it is obvious to all when it has occurred. There is a new sense of enthusiasm for life and an energy similar to that of Mr. Scrooge.

BILL WILSON’S “HOT FLASH” TRANSFORMATION

According to AA lore, founder Bill Wilson had a transformational experience while undergoing alcoholism treatment in 1934. While lying in bed depressed and despairing, he [Bill Wilson] cried out, “I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!” Legend has it that, from that point forward, Bill Wilson never drank again.

But does never drinking again equate to transformation? Bill Wilson continued to struggle with depression, was a chain smoker and, according to AA biographer Francis Hartigan, had several romantic affairs during his marriage to Lois Wilson (see Temptation and Reports of Infidelity, Wikipedia). In spite of his personal shortcomings, however, it could be said that noone has done more to help addicts than Bill Wilson. So, perhaps, Bill Wilson did have a transformational experience after all.

CONCLUSION

The gravesite of Charles Dickens located at Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner in London reads: “He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering,and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England’s greatest writers is lost to the world.”

It appears from all historical accounts of Charles Dickens, creator of  Ebenezer Scrooge, that he knew true transformation required having meaning and purpose in life and a generous spirit. According to Wikipedia: “At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and disadvantaged … his fiction probably demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing public opinion in regard to class inequalities.”

As we go about our Christmas festivities this year, it is perhaps through our kindness to others that we can best exemplify the true spirit of transformation!

By Geoff Thompson – MA, CCC
Program Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center

Geoff Thompson discusses the commonly held belief that just going to AA or NA meetings is enough for a fulfilling recovery. Geoff argues, however, that the real power in meetings is to get involved, get connected with others, work the steps, etc. So, simply showing up is not enough. You must work at your recovery when going to meetings.

By Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC
Program Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center

When we ask clients what an addiction is, they provide any number of answers: “It’s a disease”; “It’s not a disease, I just made bad choices”; “It’s a bad habit”; “I was irresponsible”; and so on. Everyone, it seems, is a bit baffled. Of course, the experts are just as baffled. William R. Miller, a world-renowned addiction expert, told us in 2006, “Addiction is not well understood.”

In previous blog articles, we’ve provided lots of different interpretations of addiction. Here are three we’ve looked at:
• Psychologist Jeff Singer says addiction is a response some people use when they really don’t know who they are or how they fit in the world.
• Neuroscientist Nora Volkow says addiction is a “brain disease.”
• Nobel-Prize winning economist Gary Becker says addiction can be understood in terms of rational economic theory.

In a sense, all of them are right. It depends on what perspective you take. For example, if you believe that everything about you can be reduced to chemicals interacting in your brain, then you would likely agree with Nora Volkow. But if you believe that you are more than chemicals interacting in your brain, then you might think that addiction is something other than a disease.

If you adhere to the philosophy of the 12-step program, then you likely think that addiction is a “spiritual disease.” Bill W., the driving force behind Alcoholics Anonymous, said that this spiritual disease had caused alcoholics to become disconnected with themselves, with others, and with a higher power.

At Sunshine Coast Health Center we interpret addiction in line with the great psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who said that addiction is a response to living a life that has little personal meaning. In real life, this means that those at risk for addiction are the people who find daily life dull, boring, lonely, uncomfortable and perhaps feel that they are different or don’t fit in. And once the addiction sets in, then, as Narcotics Anonymous says, life becomes “meaningless, monotonous, and boring.”

All this is important because, generally, people with addictions will do things for their recovery based on what they think their addiction was caused by and how it affected them. Those who follow a 12-step program for their recovery (at least as Bill W. had interpreted the problem) see addiction as a spiritual problem; therefore, recovery demands a spiritual solution. Those who interpret addiction as only a matter of excessive use of substances often focus on relapse prevention techniques. Those who interpret addiction as a disease follow any program (usually a 12-step program) that will help them keep away from the drug; since there is no cure, they need to learn to live with the problem and get support to do it.

(There are some clients who really don’t care what the addiction is; all they know is that they’ve got a problem with substances and they just want to know how to get over it. This is also a good tactic. After all, in real life, who really cares where it came from? The key is to get over it. But even if you don’t care what caused it, you still have to figure out a way to overcome it.)

But we know this because we often talk to alumni on how well their recovery is going. A lot of the alumni give us reports that they’re beginning to live the life they wanted to live. There may have been a few surprises when they left Sunshine Coast, cleaning up some of the wreckage of the past, but they are doing well.

Others tell us that they are struggling. It’s interesting that most of the fellows who are struggling have told us that life in recovery surprised them. They were taken off guard that the way they thought recovery would go didn’t actually work out that way.

In this blog article we’ll look at some of the surprises that those alumni who have been struggling have told us about. People in recovery can learn a lot by what didn’t work for others.

Comment #1: ‘Just Say No’

At any given time at Sunshine Coast, we find several clients have decided that their recovery will consist of just saying no to the drink or drug. Some of the ways the clients say: “Drinking is just not an option for me” or “I know that I can use anymore” or “If I just don’t use coke, I’ll be fine.” This seems like a good idea; after all, former first lady Nancy Reagan told us that the solution to addiction was “Just say no.”

For these fellows, addiction equals using drugs or alcohol; therefore the solution to addiction is abstinence. It seems reasonable; this is certainly how most family members and the public interpret addiction. But we have experience seeing what happens to those who believe this, and lots of research to confirm what we see. The idea that recovery means putting a cork in the bottle or just saying no seems to be a recipe for relapse. In fact, clients who follow this as their main strategy for recovery seem to be the ones who relapse quickly. Thankfully, most of the clients at Sunshine Coast who believe this change their minds in a week or two of being here.

When someone says, “Drinking is just not an option for me,” it often quickly becomes an option. So, what happened? Was this person lying to us? We don’t think so. Most of the fellows seem genuinely honest; they don’t want to use anymore. Usually, drinking becomes an option for the alumnus because he doesn’t actually understand his addiction. He blames the using, forgetting to look at what it is about himself that makes intoxication appealing.

So, this is a good lesson. If your strategy for recovery is to just say no, then you’ll likely be very surprised when you discover it isn’t enough.

Comment #2: ‘I Just Have To Go To Meetings’

It is one of the more baffling things in recovery that many people in 12-step programs think that recovery consists only of going to meetings. Clients attending Sunshine Coast are taught that, while going to meetings is important and a good place to build social connection, according to 12-step programs, the real key to recovery is doing the steps.

In fact, research has shown that those who only attend meetings don’t do all that well in staying away from the booze or drugs. Researchers have concluded that “involvement” in the 12-step program is the key. If the person is actively involved—has a sponsor, does the steps, focuses on the speakers at meetings, does 12-step volunteer work, spends time socializing before and after the meeting—then he succeeds.

If you think about it, how can going to meetings help addicts and alcoholics achieve what Bill W. and the Big Book said are essential for recovery? Can going to meetings give you “an entire psychic change”? How often does going to a meeting help you achieve a “spiritual awakening”? How does going to a meeting promote the idea of “To thine own self be true”?

Some experts have suggested that those who only attend meetings—and don’t do the steps—let themselves off easy. If all people do is attend meetings, then they don’t have to take any real action, such as making amends or challenging themselves to change behaviors or taking risks to be true to themselves.

Comment #3: ‘I Just Have to Keep from Being Stressed Out’

Here’s a common comment we hear from an alumnus who has had a slip: “I had a lousy week, and I was so stressed that I just had to have a drink.”

Thinking that the key to recovery is to protect oneself from getting stressed out is always a bad strategy — simply because the odds are overwhelming that there’s inevitably going to be a bad day or bad week or bad month somewhere down the line. If recovery depends on lack of stress, then addicts are pretty much doomed.

During treatment, clients at Sunshine Coast are given a test to see how stressed out they are. During the test, all the items that apply are marked off and then added up to determine the level of stress. But we pointed out that lots of people who are happy in recovery face many things that are stressful. A marriage may end, they may have contracted a serious disease, they may have lost a job, they may have been in a car accident, they may have trouble with their family. But they don’t need the drug to deal with these stressors.

So why does the alumnus who tells us he “just had to have a drink,” when other alumni didn’t seem to need it? Usually, it’s because the life he is living in recovery is missing something. To borrow an idea from Alcoholics Anonymous, he isn’t being true to himself. Those in recovery who have a slip because of some stressful event are usually living lives that are primed for relapse. The stressful time is often just the last straw.

It’s interesting that when we talk to those in recovery who decided to get loaded that the actual drug use was the last thing on the road to relapse. All sorts of things were going on for them days and even weeks before the actual drug use. Although everyone is unique, the common theme is that what they were doing in recovery did not make them feel alive and vital and energized. Some typical things we hear from these alumni are “I was putting in a lot of hours at work” or “I was bored with everything” or “my family was on my back all the time” or “I just sat on the couch all day.”

Comment #4: ‘Life Sucks’

Here’s a common story we hear from alumni: “I don’t get it. I haven’t used. My family is thrilled that I’m clean and sober. My boss is thrilled that I haven’t missed work. My parents tell me they’re so proud of me for kicking the drugs. Everyone seems happy about my recovery … except me. I think my life sucks.”

Although everyone who tells us this is unique, there is a common theme we find in these sorts of stories. We often find that they are not being true to themselves. You know that on the AA chip it says, “To thine own self be true.” We generally discover that the alumni who tell us that their life sucks have not paid attention to themselves, have not been true to themselves. They have usually been doing what other people tell them to do.

This really isn’t a big surprise. We have discovered from listening to various life stories of clients at Sunshine Coast, few have insight into themselves. If they don’t know who they are, then how can they be true to themselves? This is why we use Viktor Frankl’s eulogy exercise at Sunshine Coast. It’s a good way for clients to learn what is really important. (The eulogy exercise is the one where you pretend that you’ve lived a good life and then passed away. The exercise is to write down what you want someone to say about you at the funeral service.)

This is why we incorporated mindfulness meditation into the program. It is a proven way of helping clients to be self-aware — what’s going on for them right now. And this is why we ask clients what they are feeling; how aware are they of their feelings at that moment. Most clients are so dissociated from themselves that they have lost this sort of self-awareness. It takes practice to get it back. (Watch infants. They have no problem letting you know how they are feeling right now.)

We don’t expect clients to discover who they are at Sunshine Coast, but we hope that they will begin the process of discovering it.

A Bad Attitude Doesn't Explain Why Addicts Struggle With Showing Up on Time

By Geoff Thompson, MA
Program Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center

Introduction

Weird as it may sound, researchers are beginning to take a long look at how people with addictions interpret time.

One reason for this interest is to better understand a very common phenomenon that all addiction counsellors face. Anyone who has ever worked or been a client at a treatment center knows that it’s almost impossible to get everyone together at a workshop at 9am or have people consistently show up to appointments on time.

Mainstream addiction counsellors often pull their hair out with the lateness and the missed appointments. Interestingly, they make sense of this situation by blaming the addict as irresponsible or, perhaps, passive-aggressive. They think that the self-centered addict is so wrapped up in his own life that he doesn’t care about another person’s schedule. Or they say that addicts’ lives are chaotic (which is why the need a structured program). Or they make sense of the lateness as a typical symptom of those who are trying to assert control over their lives — an unspoken statement that sends the message “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Most addiction treatment programs create structures that leave little opportunity for choice. The argument is that addicts need structure to deal with their chaotic life. Of course, since it’s difficult to get everyone in the same place at the same time, the usual tactic to deal with lateness and missed appointments is, at least in residential treatment programs, to threaten clients: “If you don’t show up on time for programming, then we will discharge you.” But making sense of lateness by suggesting that addicts’ lives are chaotic may not be all that accurate. A growing number of addiction experts tell us that lateness may be more a factor of how addicts make sense of time.

When you think about it, time is actually weird. Of course, we all know that a minute is a minute. It’s 60 seconds regardless of whether it is a minute in the middle of the night or middle of the afternoon, whether it’s a minute in Hong Kong or a minute in Vancouver. (Of course, Albert Einstein said this isn’t true, but for everyday purposes, it’s the same.)

Regardless of this factual knowledge of time, people usually have a different perception of it. For example, you know that time slows down when you are bored. On the other hand, time speeds up when you are absorbed in some activity. Younger people often complain that time moves too slowly; older people often complain that time moves too quickly.

Add to this that we are a very time-oriented society. Almost everyone wears a watch and owns a calendar. It is considered rude to be late for appointments, suppers, and so on. People complain that someone might be “wasting my time.” And there’s the old saying, “Time is money.” It’s almost as if time can be good, bad, or neutral. In fact, we say that we had a “good time” or “bad time.” And “Time management” is very important in our society.

For the nonaddict, time flows from the past to the present and then into the future. But for the addict, only present time is truly important. The present, the now, has the priority. In this month’s online program, we’ll look at the way those in active addiction and those in recovery look at time. Surprising as this may seem, it actually will help you in your recovery. Research is showing that how the recovering person interprets time is linked closely to how well they do in recovery.

Part One – Addicts Want Things NOW

Ryan Kemp, a researcher in the UK, who is interested in how addicts interpret time quotes a passage from the famous artist, Jean Cocteau:
Everything one does in life, even love,
Occurs in an express train racing towards death,
To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving

Time, for most people in active addiction, is ‘present’ time. What is important is ‘right now’, this moment. “Drugs,” says Kemp, “call out to the addict to be used, and to be used now!” Drugs have no future. How many times have you bought more of the substance that you planned to use—to save some for the future—only to use it all up as soon as possible. Kemp talks about the desire that addicts have to have “now” linger on. They want the present state of being high to linger.

On the other hand, the addict thinks that any state of discomfort will go on forever. If they have to wait to get high, then this is an unendurable wait and seems to go on forever. Drugs can end that miserable state of not being high. The waiting feels like a vacuum—what Sunshine Coast clients have described as feeling a “void” or “hollow.”

Studies on addicts have shown that they will choose a small reward right now, rather than delay gratification for a larger reward later. This is, in part, why many addiction experts say that addicts are impulsive. Similarly, almost everyone in active addiction grabs the immediate reward of using the drug, even though they know it will cause them problems in the future. Getting drunk the night before having to work, getting loaded before having to write a school test, using before the big family supper, getting money out of the bank for the drug even though they know they will have to answer to the family later, and so on are typical behaviours.

The past is not very meaningful for addicts—other than as a source of good stories about how they got away with something or some dumb, but funny, thing they did. For many in active addiction the past is filled with guilt, so they actively work to avoid thinking about it. In any case, it’s not useful for using drugs right now to spend time thinking about the past.

Similarly, the future has little meaning for addicts. Any competent addict knows that it would be useless to think about the future if they wanted to use drugs right now. If they started thinking about the future, then they would think about consequences of their actions, the withdrawal, the guilt, the money spent, and so on.

Part Two — The Problem of the Future for Addicts

Problems with the future give the addict more pressure to live in the present, in the now.

The first problem with the future is that if you live for the future, then you have to have some goal or mission. To really pay attention to the future, you have to be doing something, achieving something, working toward some goal. For example, if you want to learn how to play the guitar—a goal for the future—you have to put in all those hours and months of practice to achieve more competence. Or if you want to get a degree in forestry, you have to put in all those years of study. Addicts have little interest in working to achieve a future goal. They want a state of feeling that is immediate. Now.

Another problem with the future for those in active addiction is that it is not guaranteed. Things may not happen as the addict wants them to happen. The future is uncertain. And one thing that people in active addiction do not like is uncertainty. That’s why we say (affectionately, of course) at Sunshine Coast that all addicts are control freaks. They want to control life, but it’s impossible to control the future. Given that, there is little reason for paying attention to the future.

Part Three — Therapies that Do Not Help with Recovery

There are many types of therapy that are used to help people recover. Every few years, William Miller, a world-renowned addiction expert, ranks how well about 50 official therapies work for addicts in recovery. You may have heard of some of them: solution-focused therapy, motivational therapy (this is Miller’s), cognitive-behavioral therapy, community reinforcement therapy, relapse prevention therapy, and so on.

We have a good idea of types of therapies that just don’t seem to work for addicts. One of the most famous examples of a therapy that does not work is psychoanalysis, the type of therapy developed by Sigmund Freud. This therapy analyzes the person’s childhood experiences to help them understand that their problems are actually rooted in the past.

There’s a lesson here. Therapies that focus on the addict’s past have little success helping the person to recovery. At first, this may seem very odd. It seems reasonable that if the addict could figure out his past and how it left him with poor coping skills or whatever, then this would be useful for recovery. Add to this that these therapies often work well with people other than addicts.

But research is showing that the addict’s perception of time screws up the process. The past is really not the addict’s focus, so focusing on it is likely not that useful. And we’re discovering that any therapy that focuses on the past is not very successful: psychoanalysis, family of origin therapies, and so on.

Part Four — Therapies that Improve Recovery

So we mentioned that any therapy that focuses on the addict’s past will likely not help him very much. Research is showing that therapies that focus on the future are likely to offer much better help.

One of the most famous therapies in the addiction field is motivational therapy, developed mainly by William Miller and Stephen Rollnick. This therapy deals with the present but has a big focus on the future. It helps clients figure out what they truly want out of life and then supports them in achieving their goals.

Another successful program is the 12-step program. If you take a close look at the steps you will notice that they are aimed at the present and the future. This makes sense. Bill W., the driving force behind the 12-step program wanted you to go on and live a great life. He wanted you to feel alive right now, today, the present. The steps that deal with the past are merely there because you need to overcome jealousy and guilt and anything else that would be a barrier to feeling alive each day. But he also reminded you of the future. That’s one of the reasons why the last three steps are called the “maintenance” steps. He knew that you had a life to be lived.

Part Five — Live in the Present but Keep an Eye on the Future

It is interesting that everything we’ve been talking about this month says that recovery demands that the addict make sense of time in a new way.

In active addiction, the addict is concerned only with present time, the now. The past and future have no positive meaning. The past is mainly a source of guilt, and, in any case, it does not help him get and use drugs. Living with an eye on the future demands that the addict accomplish something, follow a plan, live for some future goal. This is not a useful strategy for addicts to keep using drugs. Perhaps worse, the future is unpredictable, and so it can be dangerous. What if things don’t work out? There are no guarantees with the future.

In recovery, on the other hand, the addict needs to live in the now, but be oriented toward the future. For example, he has to work through cravings, which means giving up immediate relief for the goal of abstinence. He might have to put off some immediate reward by going back to school for training, for the goal of getting a new job. He might have to work to take risks and be uncomfortable in the moment, for the goal of meeting someone to love.

If you remember some of the wise people we have talked about in other online blog articles, you’ll recognize how important it is for recovery to keep an eye on the future. The great psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said that each of us has some mission to fulfill, some goal or goals to accomplish in this life. If the person does not achieve this mission or this goal, then they suffer. Joseph Campbell, the famous expert on mythology, said that the recipe for the good life is to “Follow your bliss.” There is a future that awaits you. And, of course, the AA chip says on one side: “To thine own self be true.” You have some life that awaits you if you follow what you truly want out of being alive.

But to find the good life means that you have to live more than in just the moment. You have to keep an eye on the future. This is very difficult for most people in early recovery (and pretty much impossible for anyone in active addiction). But it offers hope. It all depends on whether you choose to pay attention to the future.

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses why it is so important to find work that is satisfying and gives a sense of achievement and how to do it even in such uncertain times. Bill Wilson is profiled as someone who switched from being a stock promoter to co-founding Alcoholics Anonymous with Dr. Bob Smith. In doing so, Bill W. discovered a life of meaning, a sense of achievement, and helped ease the suffering of many thousands of people.

When Geoff has asked clients what they like about work, many respond that they like the excitement or danger of the job, or the fact that it’s always changing. These clients often also use drugs or drink while on the job. Geoff asserts that these people often mistake intensity for meaning and do not necessarily having a sense of personal fulfillment.