The Monkey On Your Back
Thinking about the wide variety of addictions and wondering what the differences and similarities are between them? Take gambling addiction and drug addiction, or sex addiction v's a shop lifting addiction. All of them offer an escape from reality, a high, an escape from having to connect with oneself and feel one’s emotions. They are all a means of trying to fill a void within oneself, as the person feels something within them, or their reality isn't adequate.
I believe addictions are all creative adjustments which the person has unknowingly created to assist them to cope with something, that otherwise they think they do not have the self-support or environmental support to deal with. Pretty smart really. Smart but painful. As the addiction will never deal with the underlying problem. It will never permanently ease ones pain or troubles. It is ALWAYS going to return once the high from the last big win wears off, or the drug starts to wear off, hence the horrific cycle of addiction. Until someone is prepared to take a look inside oneself at the 'problem' or 'pain' or whatever it may be, develop a different set of coping skills and learn how to self-support and gain support from one's environment, addiction will never be a cure. It will continue to destroy and ravage the person’s life, as that is the nature of addiction.
Thankfully there is another way. It may seem so scary and almost undo-able but it’s actually nothing compared to how scary and painful the cycle of addiction is.
I remember hearing a story about a little girl who was being badly abused by her mother. She was beaten and was burnt with cigarettes. When the police and social services came to take the little girl away someone took a photo of the little girl being carried away by a social worker. The little girl was in tears reaching over the social workers shoulder reaching out and screaming for her mum. For that little girl even terrible pain is preferable to the unknown. The unknown can be terrifying. But I can guarantee it's nowhere near as bad as active addiction.
Seeing clients sit with the unknown and growing emotionally and learn more about themselves is one of the best rewards a therapist can experience. There is something about watching the journey a client goes through from when they first come into therapy and when they are transitioning out of it. Like watching a ship thats so overladen with cargo it can't sail with the weight. It's on the verge of sinking, and each week in therapy, the client is unloading their cargo bit by bit. At the end of the therapeutic journey, still with some cargo, they leave sailing on the ocean, lighter and with more skills to handle the weight of the cargo of life, and the skills to throw it overboard if it gets too much or no longer suits them.
