It’s important to know why addiction treatments fail. So let’s look at some.
Many treatment centres, specialists, and therapists gloss over failed treatments. To talk about it in the industry is uncomfortable because such dialogue is thought to damage business, but only by examining those failure can we learn what works (1).
The reality, however, is that many addicts do not engage with therapy or the therapy they receive does not demand enough of the patient.
As a therapist I am often known as a straightforward talker. I will tell you like it is with no fluffy cotton wool. Over my lifetime I’ve seen so many people die or ruin their lives due to addiction. I don’t want my patients to be one of them.
A patient recently wrote to me and said, “Bang and no punches pulled, just the way I like it.” My job is also to be honest with you as well as kind, but I can’t be kind without being honest.
Why people become addicts
In my book Stop Drugs & Alcohol Addiction: A Guide for Clinical Hypnotherapists (2018), I talk about how how my research found (2) and I teach students that there are five reasons people become addicts:
1. Modelling is when you copy other people’s behaviour. You might have parents, relatives or friends that are or were addicts, and you learn to do what they did. What you saw over time became your automatic behaviour.
We know from research that as a child of an addict you are far more likely to become an addict or develop a substance abuse disorder.
2. Peer pressure is when you’re giving into peer pressure, doing what others are doing, trying not to stand out. Like a lemming, you are jumping off the cliff simply because others do it. You don’t want to be embarrassed by being the odd one out.
Peer pressure is much stronger when you are a child, and particularly in your teenage years.
3. Thrill seeking/exploration is when you want to go where others dare not. You become addicted due to high-risk behaviours and these may include other areas of your life.
You perceive ordinary or normal as boring, unexciting, and unfulfilling.
4. Social defiance is when you want to do everything you are not supposed to do or are advised not to do. You want to rage against the rest of your family, society, and the world.
You see yourself as a maverick on a mission to upset the applecart.
You think it’s cool and fashionable.
5. Withdrawing from the world as a defensive mechanism. You just can’t handle the everyday world the rest of us live in. You haven’t learnt to manoeuvre the world so you run away into addiction.
The need to be honest in addiction recovery
The very first step to recovery from any addiction is honesty.
If you lie to yourself and tell yourself you’re not really an addict, you’re not facing reality. Without your full acceptance that you are an addict, recovery will always fail.
In recovery you need to accept that you will always be an addict. Perhaps the addiction may shift to another substance or behaviour, but you are always in danger of addictive behaviour. Therefore, you must learn to constantly self-monitor.
Lying to your therapist or not telling your therapist something important is like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. It will hurt you and damage you.
Hiding from others that you’re an addict is pointless. If they don’t know this, they may take drugs or alcohol around you, which is not the right environment for you to be in. You’re setting them up to hurt you if you lie or don’t disclose that you’re an addict.
Addiction is a delusion
There is an action in psychology we call ‘reality testing’ (3). It means you have attuned a good ability to judge the noise in the next room, the distance from a wall, temperature, whether a smell is noxious, or can taste whether your food is safe to eat.
To manoeuvre the world well and keep yourself and others safe, you must develop good reality testing. All addicts have poor reality testing. As an addict you cannot tell when you are in danger and when you are not.
Not only do you not know where the danger line is in your behaviour, but you also shift and pretend it’s somewhere else. You create a delusion that you are in control when you are not and are not doing reality testing.
Steve came to see me. He was taking GHB three or four times every week to attend chem parties (sex on drugs parties). Just recently after having taken too many drugs, he had been pronounced dead and taken off to hospital to be resuscitated twice … and he still wanted to do drugs.
Not only do you not know where the danger line is in your behaviour as an addict, but you lie to yourself and others about danger. You create that delusion and are not doing reality testing.
Taking responsibility
It’s your life. You are responsible for your choices. It’s your addiction. You are responsible for making recovery happen.
As a specialist I am here to help you, point you in the right direction and help you on your way. However, I am never here to stop the addiction for you. That’s your responsibility.
When you are asked to complete tasks by addiction specialists, that is what you need to do. You do it when I ask, how often I ask, and in the way I ask.
I’ve seen over 10,000 addiction patients. I know what works and what does not work. If I give you instructions I do that for very precise reasons to help you recover. When you think those things are optional, remember that they are not.
If what you are seeking is a nice counsellor who’s going to agree with what you say and feel sorry for you, this will not help.
You have to change who you are
Addiction is a problem with who you are and what you do. In recovery you can’t be the same person because that was the person who became an addict.
You can’t leave treatment being the same person and just not doing the addiction. It doesn’t work that way.
Unfortunately, many rehabs are just expensive holidays for 28 days and up to six months. They don’t challenge you, so you don’t change who you are. You don’t grow as a person.
This means at some stage you end up back in rehab. You left the same person, with the same problems and the same life. You either conned yourself or the rehab conned you.
Doing whatever it takes
Never complain about what you have to do to recover from the addictive behaviour. Whingeing won’t bring you success. If you try to cheat on what you need to do, you will sabotage your treatment.
Phrases like, “But it was my birthday”, “Well it was a wedding”, “My best friends were drinking” or “It was just the once”, are just excuses.
They are excuses for not behaving like a responsible addict in recovery. And most of all, you try to fool yourself.
Yes – you must do a lot of work to become a happy addict in recovery. That’s a fact. But to get into and remain in recovery you must work at it and continue to do so for life.
Accepting what recovery is and is not
I started this article by talking about accepting you are an addict. What is equally important is accepting you can no longer live like an ordinary people do.
You’re an addict, you can never behave like most of the people around you. Where they may partake in addictive behaviours you can’t – ever.
Recovery is living a good and even exceptional life without doing the addiction, but you will still always remain a non-using addict.
If you ever pretend you are not really an addict, you will likely relapse fast.
There is no quarter or half recovery. It is living your whole life without doing addictive behaviours.
Why we use hypnotherapy for addiction
Counselling, psychoanalysis, or cognitive behaviour alone is just not enough to break addiction effectively.
They are what we call taking therapies and operate at a mainly conscious level, which is only 5% of your mind.
Your unconscious is about 95% of your mind. It is where your behaviour programming lives, so that is where the major change needs to take place.
Hypnotherapy allows us to activate your behavioural changes deep within your mind. It’s a faster, smarter. and more effective kind of treatment.
We don’t believe in replacing drugs or substances with other drugs or substances because that’s just another kind of addiction. With hypnosis we are also able to change your body’s functional systems to make recovery more physically comfortable too.
Choosing professional help
It is confusing about the many kinds of help that is out there. I understand you sometimes don’t know where to turn.
Of course, there are those who will promise you the earth and take $100,000 from you. It is not necessarily true that the more you pay, the better the help you get.
Also don’t expect everyone else to pay for your treatment. If a relative lends you money for addiction treatment, in my clinic, part of our agreement is that you must pay it back.
It’s your addiction, no one else’s. If you are smart, you value what you work for.
Choose professional help with someone who is highly qualified with a good track record. Choose professionals who are truly invested in addiction recovery. They live and breathe recovery.
References:
1. Bergmark A., Hübner L. (2016). The limits of evidence-based practice in the pursuit of specific treatment efficacy. In Kolind T., Thom B., Hunt G. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of drug and alcohol studies: Social Science approaches, 614–627. London, UK & Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. https://sk.sagepub.com/Reference/the-s.ge-handbook-of-drug-alcohol-studies-v1/i4746.xml
2. O’Keefe, T. (2017). Recovering From The Lost Years: Four Cases of Instant Cessation of Drug Addiction Utilising the Clinical Hypnotherapy Stop Drugs and Alcohol 6 Step Program. The Australian Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Hypnosis, 39(1). https://tracieokeefe.com/recovering-from-the-lost-years-four-cases-of-instant-cessation-of-drug-addiction-utilising-the-clinical-hypnotherapy-stop-drugs-and-alcohol-6-step-program/
3. Kantrowitz, J., Katz, A.. Paolitto, F., Sashin, J., & Solomon, L. (1987). The Role of Reality Testing in Psychoanalysis: Followup of 22 Cases. American Psychoanalytic Association, 35 (2). https://doi.org/10.1177/000306518703500204
Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH, BHSc, ND is an addiction specialist and published author. You can consult her in the office or by Zoom from anywhere in the world.
Call our central booking for your FREE telephone consultation with Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH. Phone 0403 398 808. Health funds.
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