Drug Rehab Center

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, MA, CCC
Program Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center

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

Recently, I had a discussion with the clients at our residential treatment center about work. Some fellows said they were at work only because it gave them a paycheque. They didn’t like the job, but they had kids to put through school and a mortgage to pay. Others said that they were near retirement and were just counting down the years: “I’ve got seven years left to retirement, so I just have to suck it up and hang in for a few years more.” Others said they were unhappy at their jobs and so just quit.

Many of the clients who spoke seemed to think they were doomed, victims of their jobs. Many seemed resigned to the “fact” that they just had to suck it up and survive. But making sense of work like this is not very helpful in recovery—or in life, for that matter. There are ways to make work more interesting and satisfying, if you decide to take action.

Sunshine Coast Health Center is sponsoring a major international conference this month in Vancouver on finding meaning in the workplace. The official title of the conference is “Creating a Psychologically Healthy Workplace: Meaning, Spirituality and Engagement in the 21st Century” (visit www.meaning.ca for more information). What this means is that we now have very good research on how to turn a dull job into an interesting one.

Some of the world’s foremost experts will be letting us in on the secrets of transforming your working life, and, if you are a manager, how to create a workplace that will inspire your employees. It’s especially important right now because many people are simply surviving at work. There seems to be a general feeling that we are just hanging in because of layoffs and the downturn in the economy. And lots of our alumni tell us that they are working at jobs simply because of the paycheque and not because they are excited about work.

At Sunshine Coast Health Center, we stress the importance of working at a fulfilling job or of doing something that will allow our clients to reach this job, such as getting training. Each of us spends an enormous amount of time at work, so it’s important that it be a major source of fulfillment and significance.

Why all this is important for your recovery is obvious. Alcoholics Anonymous says that a key to recovery is “To thine own self be true.” And Viktor Frankl, the guru of leading a meaningful life, said that addiction is one response for those whose lives are unfulfilling and unsatisfying, including their working lives.

In this article we’ll take a look at some of the ways to make work more meaningful. As always, remember that you are the author of your life, so finding meaning at work is your job.

Part One – The Job as Meaningful vs Intense

Some clients tell us that they love their job. They go to work everyday, happy to be there. But when we talk to these clients, we discover some very interesting things about this job they love.

A common example is a job that is filled with pressure, such as managing a multimillion dollar project. Or perhaps it is in the financial world, where the client invests millions of dollars each day. Or perhaps it’s a job in at some remote industrial plant where the client has to do some welding while tethered to a safety harness 100 meters above the ground. Or perhaps it’s a job that changes every day and has no real routine.

When we ask our clients what the appeal of the job is, they often tell us, “It’s a rush.” Exciting. Risky. High stakes. Or, as we phrase it at Sunshine Coast, it’s filled with intensity. And addicts love intensity. Counsellors find it interesting that the job itself is often not that appealing—it’s the rush, not the job itself, the client likes. As one client said, who flies around the world first-class on business trips and gets invited to all the best parties, “I could care less whether I’m doing what I do now or whether I’m selling eggs. As long as I get to be a rock star!”

If you recall from previous articles, I talk a lot about the appeal of intensity for addicts. Our main point is that addicts substitute living intensely for living meaningfully. This is one of the most important dynamics to understand addiction. But the key to recovery is to live a life that fills you up, that matches what you truly want out of life. The intense jobs don’t seem to accomplish this goal; but they are intense.

Psychologist Mike Csikszentmihalyi studied people who thrived at work and discovered that the key factor was they loved the work itself (not the paycheque or perks, but the work). This was true of artists and scientists and business people. Pursuing a job because one loves the job itself is a key to finding fulfillment in work. Many artists are content holding down a minimum-wage job so as to ensure they have enough time to work on their craft. Many people donate time in the community to help out organizations or to help their company become a good corporate citizen.

Part Two – The Job as Part of Life, Not the Whole

A few years back, ABC News featured a documentary on the addicted actor Daniel Baldwin. This is the one where ABC News follows Baldwin during his stay at a residential treatment center in California.

In one segment, his psychologist suggests that being a Hollywood actor may not be the best job for Baldwin because it is a life through which Baldwin has used drugs regularly. The ABC interviewer asks Baldwin if he would be willing to change careers, and he replied, without hesitating, that he would never even entertain the idea.

It is interesting that he refused to spend even five seconds thinking about it a career change. Why? The documentary makes it clear that Daniel Baldwin may have no life without his acting. Perhaps the reason Baldwin cannot conceive of having another career is that any sense of who he is hinges on the career. He talks in that segment that he could be a lawyer or real estate agent if he wanted to (which is very true), but it seems obvious that these jobs would be far too dull for him. No limelight. No excitement. No showing up at the Academy Awards. Being successful according to his own standards of wealth and fame is how he judges a job. He does not talk about being a lawyer because he loves the law and wants to help people. He does not talk about being a real estate agent because the job has intrinsic meaning. He is only interested in winning cases or in making money.

One wonders what would happen to Baldwin if he suffered the same fate as the actor Christopher Reeve, who had to give up acting after breaking his spine. Could Baldwin gain success as Reeve did? Who is Baldwin if he were not famous or wealthy or the life of the party? Perhaps it is the job that allows him to survive, that provides him with his identity, with a sense of who he is as a person. Not a very balanced life.

Part Three – Changing Jobs

According to some research, most heart attacks happen on Monday morning, right after the days off and just before going back to the grind. This should give you some idea of how important work is for your health.

O, Oprah’s magazine, often contains articles on how people transformed their lives by changing jobs. Of course changing jobs is not realistic for everyone. But the articles in Oprah’s magazine are about those who are capable of changing jobs. The only think that prevented them was fear.

One woman wrote about her experience of overcoming fear. She and her husband made six-figure salaries, and both were regarded at work and in their communities as very successful. But what they truly wanted to do was to get out of the business world, buy a sailboat, and sail around the world. No more worries about appointments and the high pace.

But to do this obviously meant quitting their jobs. It meant selling their house to pay for a sailboat. It meant giving up their upper middle-class lifestyle. Their neighbors and colleagues at work thought they were a bit nuts. But sailing around the world was what they truly wanted.

The woman said that it was scary, but she said it was the best thing they had ever done. They realized they didn’t need six-figure salaries to be happy. They didn’t need a big, expensive house to be happy. All they needed to be happy was to be true to themselves (and realistic, of course).

Their willingness to act in spite of fear is a good lesson for those in recovery. Remember that Bill W. and AA tell you, “To thine own self be true.” And, of course, Viktor Frankl would not be the least bit surprised to learn that the couple were much happier sailing about the world.

Part Four — Examples of Meaningful Work

In this article we’ve been examining the ideas of finding meaningful (not intense) work, not allowing work to become your identity, and facing fear of changing careers. Eric Clapton’s autobiography provides a good example of someone who transformed his work into something that provided meaning and purpose. He didn’t change jobs, but he did transform his job into something personally meaningful.

As you know, Clapton suffered from addiction. In active addiction, he became a famous and highly respected musician. He describes this time of his life in his book. There was the joy of music, but equally there was the distraction of drugs, party girls, soap opera life, photographs and television, audiences of screaming fans, hanging out with other famous rock stars, money, and so on. And he describes it as a rather narrow life and also that despite the fact that he was surrounded by people, he didn’t feel all that close to others.

Then, after two stays at a residential treatment center, he found recovery. He now has his work in perspective. It is there, but his family and friends are equally important. What is really remarkable is the way he describes his work (music). Now, clean and sober, he describes the power of his music is to heal those who are suffering. This is a long way from the rock musician in active addiction.

Bill W. offers an example of a different route. He did change jobs. In active addiction, he was a business man. In recovery, he spent his time getting AA on its feet. He was the coach, guru, diplomat, and promoter of AA. He turned from a self-centered alcoholic businessman to a man who followed his passion to help other suffering alcoholics and their families.

In both cases, there are several common factors. Each had to take action. Each had to be creative. Each had to follow his bliss, that is, be true to himself. Each had to look at work as something of substance, rather than as simply a way to money (or in Clapton’s case, fame).

Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses the nature of suffering and how to make sense of bad things happening to good people.

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

One of the beneficial things to do in recovery is occasionally to pause and reflect on how your life is going. Many in recovery are busy, doing this and that, and never take time to think about their progress, how far they have come from where they were.

With this in mind, this article will pause and reflect on the second anniversary that Sunshine Coast has been offering the online support program for its alumni. We’ve mentioned dozens of recovery topics from relapse prevention techniques to dealing with family members to discovering spirituality.

With more than 100 topics covered, what are the major themes that the online program has pursued? What are the most important, according to our alumni and research? Which topics seem to have the greatest impact?  

To be honest, we don’t know for sure. But pooling all the information, here are four. We’re not sure if these are the top four, but they’re close. 

We know that addicts suffer horribly because their do things in their lives that do not match what they truly value and what they truly believe. What has been controlling them is the substance. And we often find that those in early recovery are still being controlled by outside forces: family, financial crises, and so on. The secret to this dilemma is written on the AA chip: “To thine own self be true.”

Of course, being true to yourself doesn’t mean that you get to do anything that you feel like doing. You live in a world over which you have little control. This is our second topic: How do you take control of your life in a world that dictates everything from how fast you can drive your car to the fact that you will die. No matter how much you may want to play basketball in the NBA, if you’re 5’2” it’s not going to happen. That’s just the way the world is.

Our third topic reminds you that the key to happiness is to live a personally meaningful life. If you are living a personally meaningful life, then the byproduct will be that you are happy. You don’t even have to work at being happy; it just comes naturally.

The fourth topic is about suffering. Sadly, many people think that living the good life means not suffering. All those advertisements telling you that suffering is not necessary and can be avoided are wrong. If happiness depended on lack of suffering, then no one would be happy. Everybody suffers. So what’s the trick to dealing with suffering?

The fifth topic is on putting it all together.

Theme One—You are the author of your life

You are the author of your life. This is also backed up by research on recovery. In fact, it is likely the most important factor in your recovery, although in psychology we use terms such as “intrinsic motivation” or “internal locus of control.” Basically, being the author of your life means that it’s your job to figure out how to live your life.

You have one life to live, so how do you want to live it? That’s the bottom-line question that faces every human being. There will be no thunder-bolts coming down from the heavens to save you; you have to make choices.

You have lots of options. You can, for instance, become one of the crowd. There’s great benefit in this. You’ll be accepted, and you’ll have less conflict in life. But, of course, you likely won’t feel very good. In previous articles, we talked about the great psychologist, Rollo May, who said being one of the crowd was the single greatest reason why people suffered in the 20th century. People agreed to be part of the “herd” because they had such a desperate need to feel ‘part of’ that they were willing to give up what they valued and believed. Eugene O’Neill called them the “spiritual middle-class: how petty their dreams must have been.”

Similarly, you can live your life by avoiding things that make you uncomfortable. If you’re worried about being hurt by someone close to you, then you don’t have to get close to anyone. If you’re filled with worries about finances, you can choose to stay at your job even if you really don’t like it. If being around family makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to deal with them.

Another option: You can choose to be a victim of life. ‘If only I hadn’t had such a lousy upbringing….’ Or ‘My family should stop treating me as a kid’. Or ‘It’s unfair that I got this disease….’

The choice is yours.

Theme Two: Ask Life what it demands of you

Viktor Frankl told us that unhappy people go about the universe demanding that others or things be a certain way. ‘My parents should be fully supportive of me in my recovery’. ‘My life would be so much better if my boss weren’t such a jerk’. ‘I’d fall in love if only I could meet a rich supermodel who would adore me’. ‘I’d be happy if only I had a million dollars’. And so on…

The problem with this approach is that people and things just do what they do, regardless of what you want. The only thing that gets accomplished by demanding things from life is that you get isolated and miserable. Studies of people with cancer, for instance, have shown that those who do not accept the reality of their illness will suffer more than those who do. As strange as this may seem to you, many people who have learned they are HIV+ have said that the diagnosis shocked them into realizing how precious life is.

Bill W. said that a key to recovery was to “Live life on life’s terms.” Frankl’s version of this was “Ask life what it demands of you.” This is the opposite of demanding that others or things be a certain way.

Here’s just one small example:Many clients at Sunshine Coast tell us they have problems making decisions because they don’t want to lose out. “I’ll have a couple of lovers around; that way, if one dumps me, I have a backup.” “I don’t know what to do because I’m afraid of making a bad choice.” People who operate like this have not yet figured out reality. It’s simply part of the rules of life that whatever choice you make, you will lose out. If you choose one lover over another, you lose one. If you choose school over work, you lose the paycheque. If you work on Saturdays, you may miss your son’s soccer game. This is reality.

(BTW, not making a choice is a choice. When you don’t take control and choose, reality eventually steps in and makes the choice for you.)

Theme Three: Happiness means living a personally meaningful life

This is, of course, Viktor Frankl’s theory of human happiness. As we mentioned last month, psychology is torn between whether the key is to live a hedonistic life (do what makes you feel good) or to live a meaningful life. At Sunshine Coast, we go with Frankl.

We often ask questions to Sunshine Coast clients to help them begin the process of figuring out what is meaningful to them. Why would you bother going through the irritation of cleaning up? What is it about your life that you are willing to fight for it? What makes you want to get up in the morning with energy and passion? Of course, most clients struggle with these questions, but they are fundamental to recovery.

As we’ve mentioned many times to our clients, happiness is what recovery is really about — which means that living a meaningful life is what recovery is all about. So many people run into trouble because they believe that the goal of recovery is abstinence or going to three AA meetings each week or eating right, and so on. These goals hardly equal living a meaningful life. You have to keep your eye on what makes you feel fulfilled, contented, alive. The big picture in your life. 

Theme Four: The problem of suffering

Suffering is one of those things that people have been trying to make sense of for millennia, and we’ve touched on this idea in several online programs. At Sunshine Coast, we help clients find ways to eliminate unnecessary suffering due to their addictions, but we also try to help them make sense of their suffering in a new way.

Shifting how you look at suffering is important for recovery. Modern research is showing that your life will improve if you can find meaning in suffering. It is through suffering that people often transform and discover how to live a fulfilling and vital life. In fact, it is usually because of suffering that we change how we live.

The first part of transforming suffering is to accept it. One of those truisms in life is that sh*t happens. Remember that old saying (about 2100 years old, actually): It’s not about what happens to you, it’s about how you deal with it. For the rest of your life, there will be lots of things happening to you that are not so pleasant or unexpected and really irritating. You may be hurt by a lover, find yourself in a ridiculous lawsuit because of a disgruntled person, be the victim of a scam, break your leg while skiing, find that someone has broken a promise to you, realize that someone lied to you, and on and on.

The second part of transforming suffering is to rise above it. Psychologist Paul Wong who developed the therapy model we use at Sunshine Coast, and who is suffering from cancer, told us last summer: “I’m thankful that I’ve suffered so much in my life.” Suffering had taught him to stick to his values regardless of outside pressure. It taught him how beautiful life could be. It taught him that he could be a role model for others who suffered but who did not know how to handle suffering. And so on. Paul has not avoided suffering—he’s risen above it.

Theme Five—Living the good life

Here’s just one of all the fellows who went through Sunshine Coast: After his fourth time hitting bottom, Harry (not his real name) decided that he had to do something with his life. In his first time at Sunshine Coast (third treatment center), Harry, a senior citizen whose wife passed away recently, was in rough physical shape. He learned how not to live his life. After treatment, he went to AA but found it boring and had no feeling that he really belonged there. He lived along and didn’t have much contact with his kids. The only real contact was with his alcoholic neighbor. Six months later, he relapsed.

When he came back to Sunshine Coast for his second time, he figured out that he needed a reason not to quit drinking. So he put together an impressive plan for how to live a full life, in spite of his physical ailments, age, and loss of his wife. We hear from Harry every once in a while—he now has a couple of years of sobriety and tells us that he is doing well.

What had happened? I would suggest that Harry finally realized that if he wanted any sort of life, he’d have to make it happen for himself. He had to fight for his life, which meant that he had to believe that he was worth fighting for. He used his creative intelligence to figure out how he could live in a way that made him feel satisfied, and he put all the pieces together. He returned to AA, but this time found a home group where he felt he fit in. He started to volunteer at a place that he felt he could contribute his talents. He made a schedule to meet with his kids. 

Not that everything was easy or worked out for Harry. When he screwed up, he learned from it. He fought through the cravings, knowing that he was quite capable of this. He didn’t say ‘F-it’ and give up when he was having a bad day. He didn’t blame others or his health or for his misery. He had a mission to live a better life.

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

If you are in early recovery, you may be familiar with the social pressure that comes along whenever we see others drinking or partying. This could be at a wedding, during the Grey Cup or Super Bowl, or the Christmas season. Sadly, some people in recovery talk themselves into joining the party. They seem to forget what they learned in treatment or at a 12-step program.

But we know from psychology it’s not really a matter of forgetting or ‘being an addict’ or ‘stinkin’ thinkin’’. In psychology we call this “confirmation bias.” A few years back, there was a shift in psychology known as the “cognitive revolution.” What this meant was that we began to get quite good at figuring out how individuals process information—how your brain works. One of the things that we discovered is that the brain is not like a computer.

Information goes into your brain and gets processed. That’s true. But we learned that the brain is not particularly logical. You have a natural tendency to pay more attention to and overvalue things that confirm how you make sense of the world, and you tend to dismiss or undervalue those things that contradict it. This is ‘confirmation bias’.

Here are two examples of confirmation bias that might affect you. Maybe a family member picked up on one single thing you did—such as miss an AA meeting or have a slip—and then let you know that your recovery is all a sham. They see the single incident as confirming what they already think about how well you are doing. Another example: Perhaps in recovery you got angry at your family for an incident when you felt they were trying to control you, just as you thought they did when you were in active addiction. They may have treated you as the author of your life 50 times in a row, but you jumped all over that one incident because it seemed to confirm how you make sense of their attitude toward you.

Confirmation bias works both ways because all human beings do it. And it can lead us into all sorts of difficulties. One of the more public examples that psychologists have pointed out is the decision to invade Iraq after 9/11. Although it later became obvious that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, because of confirmation bias many in the Bush Administration pursued information that seemed to confirm their preconceived ideas and discounted evidence that there were no weapons…

The real trick to deal with confirmation bias is to see it in yourself. That’s a lot tougher than seeing it in others. But since everyone has it—it’s a human thing—then you have it, too.

Confirmation bias is complicated, but two of its dynamics are known as ‘defensive motivation’ and ‘accuracy motivation’. Defensive motivation means that the person becomes very skeptical of information that contradicts his attitude, beliefs, or actions. This is usually because the information threatens him in some way. Let’s say that you are skeptical of information that says if you hang out in bars they you will likely be lured back into addiction. You might dismiss the idea of keeping out of a bar or away from a drinking party because you believe it’s the holidays and that’s where all the fun is; in fact, if you don’t go to the bar or drinking party, then you will miss out.

Accuracy motivation means that a person sees some value in the information. As one researcher described it, the person has a tendency to process information in an “objective, open-minded fashion that fosters uncovering the truth.” You may believe that the bar is a dangerous place, because you get caught up in the music, sexual interests, and camaraderie. If you believe this is dangerous for you, then you will pay more attention to information that tells you that you are right. You don’t need to drink to be in the festive spirit at a social gathering.

In this article we’ll look at confirmation bias and your recovery. With the wedding season and summer holidays coming, this topic is very important. So we’ll provide a few things you can do to deal with it.

Part One: Defensive motivation: Wrestling with your addiction

Cognitive psychology—the psychology of how we process information—has taught us that confirmation bias appears when we confront information that is threatening to us. We tend to take a defensive stand, becoming more skeptical. In psychology, we call this “defensive motivation.”

In a typical experiment, psychologists ask participants to write down what they are passionate about. A normal topic is capital punishment. Then the experimenters present studies for and against the idea that capital punishment deters criminal behavior. Inevitably, the participants are skeptical about the study that disagree with their stance but fully endorse the study that agrees with them.

Here’s an example of defensive motivation from the world of drug use. Although there are many reasons why those in early recovery wrestle with their recovery, a common reason is that they try to pin their addiction to their drug of choice. If you believe that it’s okay to have a couple of beers because your drug of choice was cocaine, then you will likely be skeptical of any information that says a drug is a drug is a drug. Or you will likely remember information about someone’s uncle who was an alcoholic but who now drinks with no ill effects on his life. If you are an alumni of Sunshine Coast, all that scientific information you learned at the Drugs & Your Brain workshop won’t make much of an impression on you, because of confirmation bias.

Logically, of course if you pin your addiction to your drug of choice, then you fly in the face of all those scientists. If you were being very logical, you’d have to say, ‘I’m right, and all those research scientists at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities are wrong’. But people are not particularly logical, so they pretend the science doesn’t exist or, at least, doesn’t apply to them.

On the other hand, if you are firmly convinced that all drugs will hurt an addict, then you will likely pay more attention to articles and narratives that promote this; and you will likely shake your head and smile when someone says that it’s okay to drink because their drug of choice was cocaine.

Part Two: A solution to wrestling with your addiction

If you are debating with yourself on whether to join in the drinking festivities or be one of the sober ones, then here are some ideas that might help you choose the latter. These tactics are merely tricks to disrupt confirmation bias—the tendency to grasp hold of information that confirms your preconceived ideas.

Tip #1 – Get involved with a recovery support group – AA and NA have many activities throughout the year, particularly during the holiday season. In larger cities, they run meetings 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They usually provide Christmas dinners at the local Alano club or recovery center. Many groups have service activities that you can join, such as helping out those less fortunate. Most recovery centers have dances and music and other social events.

Tip #2 – Be grateful – If you were a client at Sunshine Coast during the past year, you will remember the power of being grateful. Psychology has confirmed that being grateful for what you have—your sobriety—will help you feel better. The 12-step program has a saying that those who are grateful do not relapse. The reason for this saying is that those who recover through AA or NA tend to think that their sobriety was a gift from their higher power.

Tip #3 – Make a decision to not drink for the holidays – This is a remarkably powerful tactic because it takes the pressure off.

Tip #4 – Remember the racehorse – This is psychologist Paul Wong’s saying: “Everyone has a racehorse and a donkey. If you don’t pay attention to the racehorse, you’re stuck with the donkey.” If you don’t pay attention to your goals and dreams, then the little things (immediate boredom, immediate loneliness) will take on a power that they don’t have in reality.

Part Three: Accuracy motivation: Remembering what you want

One of the interesting dynamics of confirmation bias is that people are more open to reality if they see some positive outcome in the information, even if it disagrees with them. During the holidays, it’s important to remember what you want in life.

Clients come to Sunshine Coast because the lives they have been living are not working out for them.

If you were a client in the new program, you learned that your suffering was due to the fact that your addiction did not allow you to be true to yourself, disconnected you from family and friends, and disconnected you from any sense of meaning and purpose. If you were a client under the old program, you discovered that the suffering from addiction came from the addict’s self-centeredness.

In either case, you were hardly living a live that was full and vital and satisfying. Your life was likely, as NA says, “meaningless, monotonous and boring.” In fact, people come into recovery because they begin questioning how they make sense of their lives.

So, they might be more willing to listen to Drugs & Your Brain, Medical Aspects, Relapse Prevention, and other workshops. They might be less skeptical when they hear that Viktor Frankl defines addiction as a response to living a life that has little personal meaning.

They might be willing to take Frankl’s advice that means “that being human is always directed, and pointing, to something or someone other than oneself: to a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter, a cause to serve or a person to love. Only to the extent that someone is living out this self-transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self.”

Part Four: Accuracy motivation: Overcoming barriers to the truth

Most people in early recovery have barriers that get in the way of allowing them to take an objective look at the facts. In 12-step programs, these barriers have been called “stinkin’ thinkin’” or “old behaviors” or “character defects” and so on. In psychology we assign them different names: “unhealthy coping skills” or “ego-driven life” and a bunch more.

It is fundamentally important for those in early recovery to deal with personal barriers to their recovery. We have lots of information from researchers and from those who have good recovery on what the individual has to do to recover. And we know that when a person is selective about what his recovery will demand, he usually runs into trouble. As we’ve remarked many times, one of the most common things we hear from alumni who have slipped is that they did not follow their aftercare plans. They decided, against all evidence, that they really didn’t need a support network or that they could go back to their old environment, and so on.

There are lots of barriers to being objective about information. Some examples: playing the victim of others (I can’t be the author of my life because my family won’t let me), living life lamenting the past (“what if” or “if only”), wallowing in self-pity (I don’t deserve a good life, so none of the scientific research applies to me), I can’t handle cravings (I have no self-control), I can still drink because cocaine was my drug of choice (neuroscience doesn’t apply to me), I can’t handle curveballs in life because that’s just who I am (even though the information tells me that this is a learned coping skill, in my case it’s my personality), and so on and so on.

Addiction physician Dr. Donald Hedges believes that fear is the primary motivator of addictive behavior and the greatest barrier in recovery. Many agree with him: fear of financial insecurity, fear of success, fear of responsibility, and so on. At Sunshine Coast we would say that the greatest fear of someone in early recovery is the fear of change. If you are motivated by fear, then you will likely be skeptical of information that might truly help you.

Conclusion

Confirmation bias, confirming preconceived ideas and discounting accurate information that goes against those beliefs, is powerful. This is because change is difficult. And, if you are a Sunshine Coast alumni, you learned that changing the way you make sense of yourself and how you fit in the world around you is very difficult. But recovery demands change.

Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health, talks about “P.I.L.T.” or the “Purpose in Life Test” and why finding your prupose in life is a very personal decision.

Goeff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses psychologist Dr. Paul Wong’s belief that happiness is a result of positive relationships with others.

Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses one of the keys to spirituality being a sense of hope which goes hand in hand with the importance of hope in addiction recovery.

Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses having courage when facing your own fears, and why this may result in a happier life.