Canada Drug Rehab

Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, talks about 3 common barriers to discovering your life’s purpose.

Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, shares Victor Frankl’s 3 steps to finding spirituality and meaning in life: Attitude, Experience & Creativity.

When people with addictions quit drugs or alcohol, they are usually left with a huge hole in their lives. They often feel lost. What do you do on a Sunday afternoon when no one is about and you have to entertain yourself? In active addiction, the answer was easy. But in recovery, it is a lot more challenging.

This posting offers some useful tools to overcome boredom. A famous psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee), developed a theory that he calls “Flow.” The basic idea of ‘flow’ is that when we are in the flow we are totally absorbed in whatever activity we are doing. In fact, being in the flow is much more than simply giving you something to occupy your time with. It’s much more than simply cutting the grass or watching TV. It is necessary for contentment, accomplishment, and creativity. In short, being in the flow makes life worth living.

To give you a sense of how powerful flow is, one psychologist has described flow this way: “Flow reminds us that the truest approach to making ourselves feel and function better is to look within.” Another said that flow is a “prescription for happiness in our indifferent universe.” We are at our best when we are totally absorbed in something: listening to music, working on a challenging problem, learning how to fly, dancing, making love, and on and on.

Addiction as being in the flow

Csikszentmihalyi, himself, said that flow is what gives meaning to an individual’s life. But here’s an interesting thing: when we’re high on alcohol or drugs, we are also in the ‘flow’; in fact, being in the flow is the very power of drugs. Lots of things become fascinating when we’re high: addicts can play video games for hours, think about life, become one with a motorcycle when riding, enter a trance-like state while dancing, make love at the level of ecstasy, discover music that makes the hairs on the back of your head stand up, and so on.

The idea of flow was developed by studying how contented, creative people live their lives. Csikszentmihalyi noted that flow has eight components. One example is that the experience is intrinsically interesting (what he calls “autotelic”). Another is that our perception of time changes.

Remember back to being high. Likely, you had the feeling of being totally absorbed in the drug high, the passage of time might have slowed down or sped up, the experience of doing something seemed to be interesting for its own sake. For example, chores that might bore you when you’re sober can seem fascinating when you’re high.

But there’s one component necessary for flow that is missing in addiction. Csikszentmihalyi emphasized that the activity must have meaning and purpose every step of the way. Because addiction lacks any meaning and purpose (we go against our values and beliefs when in active addiction), all the effort getting and using drugs accomplishes little more than make us suffer in the end.

Living Creatively in Recovery

Now that you’re clean and sober, it’s important to make your world come alive. And this demands that you be creative. Being in the flow is essential for creativity. In fact, to help us find this creativity through flow, Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book called Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

Creativity is what makes us human. It is what separates us from animals. science, art, religion, and so on are the work of creative people throughout the ages. Culture is creative effort. All this creativity is the product of individuals being in the flow.

You don’t have to paint or play music or discover a cure for cancer to be creative, although talented artists and scientists experience flow all the time. You can be creative, says Csikszentmihalyi, even while brushing your teeth or organizing a party. Being creative provides a sense of accomplishment, a sense of having spent time in a worthwhile activity. If you learn to play the guitar, you will take great pride in your achievement, and others will be impressed. If you learn another language, you will find great satisfaction as you progress. If you learn to fly a plane, you will find that you feel better about yourself. If you can make dull activities more interesting, such as brushing your teeth, you will feel better.

Tip One: Live Each Day with Childlike Wonder

The first thing you have to do is to reawaken a sense of wonder at the world. Children are much better than adults at this. Kids seem fascinated by all sorts of things: watching an insect crawl, the wrapping on a birthday present, a tool in Dad’s toolbox. Many adults have lost that sense of childlike wonder.

It’s important for you to regain this sense of wonder, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to open yourself up to new experiences.

“Try to be surprised by something every day,” is one bit of Czikszentmihalyi’s advice. This is an attitude that you have to practice because most people assume that they already know about things. When you look at an unusual car, examine why it appears unusual to you. How is it different from other cars? When you go to a restaurant, order something new. Or order the same dish at two different restaurants: how are they different? Examine the color scheme at a fast-food restaurant; why did the interior designer choose these colors?

Tip Two: Plan to Accomplish Something Each Day

Figure out one thing you’d like to accomplish each day. Most people don’t do this, yet every person is quite capable of finding something. Think about meeting someone new, buying something that interests you, googling a new recipe and picking up the ingredients at the grocery store.

One more trick is to realize that to maintain interest, an activity must get more complex. If it doesn’t, you’ll get bored of it. So if you’re doing something you enjoy, make it more complicated. For example, if you like to watch movies, start watching the interviews with the director and actors on the DVD, and then watch the movie. Or start watching the camera angles: why did the director choose the angles that he did?

Tip Three: Experiment with new “Internal States”

By ‘internal states’, Csikszentmihalyi means certain personality traits that you have developed. Most people develop personality traits in their early years: shy or outgoing, quiet or talkative, intellectual or intuitive, safe or reckless. We hold on to these traits because they provide safety and predictability in our lives. Changing an internal state doesn’t mean that you lose your current internal states; what it means is that you become more than simply what you currently are.

Changing internal states takes courage and time; we have to be aware of our unique internal states and then challenge ourselves to change. Think about yourself. On a piece of paper, write down words or phrases that describe you. If you are struggling to do this, think about what makes you different from someone you know well.

Once you are aware of some of your internal states (shy, quiet, loud, and so on), then choose one trait and make a deliberate effort to do the opposite. For example, if you are normally quiet and shy at parties, then at the next party, go out of your way to tell a joke. If you are normally shy at an AA meeting, make a deliberate effort to speak up at the next meeting.

About the Author

Geoff Thompson, MA, is the Program Director at Sunshine Coast Health Center, a private addiction treatment facility for adult men. His book, A Long Night’s Journey into Day, explores Eugene O’Neill’s life to uncover the truth of addiction and recovery.