Addicts, as well as many others, believe that being in control is how to achieve success and happiness in life. People who follow this rule use it as a survival skill, having usually learned it in childhood. As long as they make the rules, no one can back them into a corner with their feelings.…
Details
First, let’s look at the addict who is in his or her active disease and in denial about his or her addictive thinking. At the heart of that thinking is the need for problems. As long as there is a problem, there is a reason or excuse to use. Also central to addictive thinking is…
DetailsHumility is a term not frequently heard early in the addiction recovery process. Seeing the reality of how we view ourselves from a self-esteem standpoint is often difficult. Humility—allowing ourselves to be just one among others—means not only letting go of an increased ego, but also learning to believe that you are just as deserving…
Details
By: James L. Fenley, Jr., MD Addiction is a disease with many potential faces, including, but not limited to, alcohol and other drugs. Also, once someone is addicted to alcohol or other drugs—whether they are in recovery or not—their addiction can generalize to other areas, such as gambling, eating, or sex. When one form of…
Details
The power of addiction is a force built on denial. This power is so dominant in active addiction that addicts can neither see nor hear the devastation and losses occurring around them as a result of their disease. Sometimes, maybe years down the road, some crisis occurs that causes them to “come up for air”…
Details
We live in a world with a multitude of words that signify feelings that are negative in connotation—words such as embarrassed, guilty, ashamed, frustrated, anxious, nervous, desperate, depressed, self-pitying, humiliated, annoyed, and many more. What’s interesting is that we are not born with any of these feelings. We are taught these words as we grow…
Details
The Mind of an Addict One of the most prominent characteristic of typical addictive thinking is to externalize problems, to blame things on other people or situations. This tendency to play the role of victim and/or to be bitter about what life has “done to” him or her is totally unconscious on the part of…
Details
To admit one’s disease, his or her addiction, and to look clearly at the devastation it has caused, is also to feel long-repressed emotional pain. Surrendering to one’s addiction is always a painful process. It means addressing the emotional pain of the disease. In effect, the addict has been medicating his or her feelings for…
DetailsOne of the most common reasons for wanting to leave treatment, especially among female clients, is “I miss my children; I want to be with them, and they need me.” Her desire to be home with her children is what she wants, but what they need is a clean and sober mother, and that means…
DetailsContrary to popular misconception, relapse doesn’t begin with a return to using; using is the culmination of the relapse process, a process that usually starts long before the resumption of the actual use of substances or other manifestations of addiction. The seeds for a return to using are sown during a gradual return to the…
Details