Real Recovery From Someone Who Knows

               As many of you know, my son Robert is in a substance rehab facility in Southern California and has been there for almost 29 months.  He has stayed clean and sober those 29 months, a great accomplishment, and I am hopeful that he finally understands the "whys" of his addiction and has taken actions to turn that understanding into changed behavior and thinking.  I believe that he has done so based upon the monthly conversations he has with Ann and me once a month when he is allowed to contact us.  

               Some months ago, I asked him to write down what he was telling us--both for his own benefit and for mine.  Obviously, since I work in the addiction world as a therapist, I am always looking for articles and ideas that I can share with some of my clients.  He finally has produced the following.  He acknowledges that many of the ideas he presents are not necessarily his own (he got many from the AA Big Book and the AA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) but they have been filtered and enlarged upon as he makes his way on the road to addiction recovery.  I thought that it was worthwhile to share with the world.  Maybe it can help you or someone you know!

Brains: Masking Pain through Adrenaline

            One of the functions of the brain is to protect a person from pain. This is accomplished through adrenaline. Adrenaline is a powerful anesthetic for both physical and emotional pain. The injuries of a fight, either physical or emotional, are often not felt until after the conflict is over, and the adrenaline is wearing off. Because of the powerful effects of adrenaline, we are all addicted to it.

Adrenaline can be had in many different ways. You can get adrenaline from positive and negative sources. Sports are an example of a positive source of adrenaline. Negative sources of adrenaline can be had from behaviors such as intimidation, sarcasm, wallowing in self-pity, fantasizing, verbal abuse, etc. Some sources can be negative or positive, depending on what it’s being used for. An example would be getting lost in the fantasy of a movie. There is adrenaline attached to the fantasy of a movie. However, it becomes a negative source if, for example, at work you get yelled at by your boss, and rather than deal and process the effects of the altercation, you watch a movie for the fantasy as an escape from dealing with the emotional effects of the encounter with the boss.

From a very young age, our brains learn to use adrenaline to mask pain. In fact, most people’s first memory is of an event or activity where they experienced some adrenaline. When it comes to trauma experienced during the developmental stages of life, the more painful the experience, the more adrenaline is needed to mask the pain. In the brain’s efforts to cope and protect the person from the debilitating pain of trauma, behaviors are learned to effectively get adrenaline to mask the pain. In an environment where trauma isn’t processed in a healthy way, the child is left with coming up with their own behaviors. These behaviors which provide the necessary adrenaline fix to mask pain become the answers to the problems for how they feel. These answers work, at least for a time.

The behaviors adults use that are unhealthy are the learned answers for adrenaline developed as a child in response to traumas. When a child reaches puberty, the onset of these changes with the influx of hormonal changes and combined with the social stresses, forces the teenager to increase the adrenaline they’re seeking to mask the increased pain of puberty. This could mean more frequently engaging in activities that provide adrenaline, or picking up new answers that provide a higher dose. Many teenagers at the onset of puberty will start bullying, setting fires, torturing animals, molesting, breaking the law, and experimenting with sex and drugs. These activities all have super high levels of adrenaline attached to them.

But when an adult is still using childhood answers and is also an addict, it causes a whole set of difficult problems. The result is the unmanageability of life described in the second half of the First Step. These childhood answers reinforce and increase the selfishness and self-centeredness of the addict, inflicting pain on all who get caught up in their inability to cope with life while simultaneously exacerbating the problems created from addiction.

In recovery, the addict learns new answers that are healthy in an effort to replace the unhealthy adrenaline-seeking answers developed as a child. This process takes time for it is only by trial and error through repetition that these new answers become part of their character, which is the goal. These new answers are spiritual in nature, and incorporate the principles of the Steps like honesty, willingness, justice, discipline, courage, etc. Finally, childhood answers are directly connected to the calamity of when what is God-given in every child is twisted and buried beneath the pain of trauma.

Twisted Instincts

We are all born with instincts. They are God-given and therefore good. They keep us alive, and drive us to do the activities necessary for survival. They can be categorized into the three different instincts: social, security, and sexual. The social instinct is the drive for humans to be accepted and feel a part of a social organization greater than themselves, like family, friends, and community. The security instinct is our need for shelter, food, clothing, and other material needs for our day to day existence. The sexual instinct is the drive for a mate and to reproduce.

When humans are exposed to traumas and accompanying unhealthy energies which are absorbed in their developing stages of life, these instincts become twisted. For example, our social and security instincts are to be met and directed by our parents. But when a child experiences abandonment from a parent, the child experiences a mental imprint, and a deficiency in their social instinct not being met is created.

The need for this instinct to be satisfied results in behavior that attempts to satisfy this instinct. It is the behavior people engage in to satisfy unmet instincts that characterize twisted instincts, for we are attempting to get more satisfaction for our instincts than God intended us to. In the example of a child whose social instinct was threatened by abandonment, the child will try to satisfy this instinct in a variety of unhealthy behaviors which could include being codependent, pretending to be someone they’re not for friendship, people-pleasing, making unfair demands for attention, and requiring validation from people, etc. All of the overreaching to satisfy twisted instincts is selfish in nature, sinful, and is the cause of all emotional problems and conflicts in relationships.

An important purpose of the Fourth Step is for the addict to look at how their instincts got twisted. The events surrounding the traumas an addict experiences in the developing stages of life is referred to in AA literature as “causes and conditions”. The Fourth Step confronts the causes and conditions where the instincts were twisted by traumas, and illuminates how this twisting of instincts resulted in the development of coping behaviors which are unhealthy and selfish. These coping behaviors or “answers” that are the products of twisted instincts are the reason why a person turns to drugs in the first place. As stated in AA literature, “alcohol is but a symptom” of the problem.

Indeed, drugs are but one of many unhealthy solutions to the problem of pain experienced from trauma resulting in twisted instincts. As previously stated, these unhealthy answers that are adrenaline-fueled help us to deal with self, which is our true problem. Our twisted instincts seek to keep us "in self," cut off from God and others. The further we indulge in the activities that attempt to satisfy our twisted instincts, the more we come into conflict with others. That creates the need for more selfish attempts to satisfy our twisted instincts. This self destructive cycle keeps us miserable, and for an addict, takes us to the point of suicide. Our answers no longer work, and everyone has been effectively driven away by our selfishness, achieving the disease's goal for the isolation from everyone who cares about us. To the extent we indulge in satisfying our twisted instincts, we are cut off from the grace of God and from a faith that works.  

A Channel for God’s Will

So how does all this affect our relationship with Heavenly Father? We are on this planet to serve His will, to bring Him glory. The questions we must ask and face are: what keeps us from being a better servant? What keeps us from being in God's will more? What percentage of the day is spent "in self," and what percent is spent "out of self," which will always be God's will for us. The fact is that the closer we are to being our true selves, the person Heavenly Father sent us to be, the more effectively we can serve His will.

However, the childhood traumas we experience move us away from our true selves, and the unhealthy answers we develop as a result of our twisted instincts effectively moves us farther and farther away from our "soul purpose".  By healing these traumas, giving them to God so that through Jesus Christ we can be made whole, we can start to establish a connection with God where we can intuitively serve His will.

As the Big Book states, we "intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.” We are faced with situations every day where we can choose self will or God's will. If we are stuck "in self" due to sinful behavior as a result of reacting to a twisted instinct, we won't have the connection needed in the moment to clearly see what God's will is for us, and we will be cut off from the power which can be given through the Holy Ghost needed to make the right decision. The more stuff we clear away from our past and heal from that cuts us off from God, the more often we can intuitively make the right decision that falls in line with God's will for us.

This is how we come to have a faith that works in any condition, for when we are connected and aligned with God's will, we are insulated from the temptations of the adversary. When we heal our traumas that effectively keep us creating conditions where we are stuck in self, and practice keeping the commandments and live by spiritual principles, we stay "out of self," and God's love and power can flow through us always, resulting in saying what He wants us to say, doing what He wants us to do, and fulfilling our callings on this Earth. When we stay out of the way, and let Heavenly Father work through us, we know true happiness. There is no doubt that our prayers will be answered. We can be of maximum service to our fellow men, for our "crap" is not affecting or clouding God's ability to work through us.