UNDERSTANDING ADDICTION, RECOVERY, & WELLNESS: POWERLESSNESS (Part 8)

As the addicted individual goes through the stages of the disease certain traits are developed to protect the sick relationship with the addiction. It helps for those who are close to an addicted person to understand the relationship of these traits to the disease. The dependent’s sense of powerlessness is often central to addiction.

Pleasure Stage

The addict in this early stage starts to experience problems in his life related to his/her addiction.  It depends on the life style of the dependent.  If married, the spouse may start complaining about the drug or alcohol use.  Sometimes the dependent could be arrested multiple times for impaired driving.  If a student, less time is used to study.  The point is that the loss of control over the addictive behavior is evident even in the early stage of the disease.

Relief stage

In this stage the addict is using to gain relief from varieties of pains both emotional and physical. The addict is concerned that the use is becoming more often and at greater quantities which the dependent does not want. The sense of loss of control becomes more intense.

Friends and family are often concerned. Sometimes friends and family will enable the addiction to continue because the dependent is easier to get along with or is more productive when having their fix. It is looked at as medication by the addict and their family in some cases. Often the dependent will make promises to change his behavior but breaks these promises regularly. This causes great strain among family and friends and sometimes employers.

Maintenance Stage

In this stage the addict needs to use to function as normal. It is a physical reaction in large part, if he/she does not have the addictive substance in the body the addict may not be able to work, drive a car or do a wide variety of activities in daily life without suffering from withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms can vary from severe to mild. From the point of Powerlessness there is very little control left. It is harder for the addict to deny that he/she is out of control. Some will seek treatment at this point in the disease.

Escape Stage

In this last stage of the disease the addict is not concerned about the lack of control or powerlessness.  The addict has lost just about everything and now wants to escape into his/her own reality.  This includes using his/her addiction of choice regularly.

Other Traits

The same process is developing with a wide variety of personality traits and are not the same for all addicts. Some of the common traits to look for and will help in your understanding of the addicted are low esteem, delusions, denial and rationalization regarding problems related to the addiction. One must remember it is all related to protecting the sick relationship to the addiction. The whole person is going through the process in stages of the addiction. Certainly, there is some going back and forth in the stages, but it is spiraling down for the most part.

Religion

The authors of “The Essential of Chemical Dependency”  place a lot of faith in accepting God as the recovering power in the addicts’ life. In my practice with working with thousands of addicted people over the years just about all of them had strong accepting beliefs about God. I think it is misleading to imply that most addicts need to get right with God to have a successful recovery.

In some cases, the strong religious beliefs interfere with recovery.  They think that all they need to do is become more religious by going to church and pray to get better. This is often a reaction early in treatment even for the non- religious. In other cases, the faith of an addicted client does help.  It established a strong sense of right and wrong which continues through recovery. Even with this concern, I strongly support the work of Robert and Mary McAuliffe and urge people to read The Essentials of Chemical Dependency.

Next

The next post will start to explain the damaging effects of addiction on families.

QUESTIONS

Do you have a specific question related to addiction and recovery?  Please send your comments and questions to eaglekenj@gmail.com and I will cover it in a future blog post. Also, stay tuned for details regarding my online program, “Addiction, Recovery, Wellness.”

Kenneth J. Orlich, LMSW, LMFT, CAADC, ACSW is a clinical social worker, family and marriage therapist, and addiction specialist with over 35 years of experience working as a clinician with the addicted.

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