Before you judge addicts, read this

I’ve been an alcohol/drug counselor for the past 18 years. Recently, I’ve become concerned about the lack of understanding expressed in letters to the editor regarding addiction and addicts.

First of all, I understand the fear of a parent of a young child who finds a hypodermic needle on the ground or the anger of someone who’s been robbed or beaten by an addict to support their habit, or the exasperation of a parent whose son or daughter can’t stop drinking or using, or the burden of a grandparent or family member taking care of a child after their son or daughter lost their parental rights due to substance addiction. Through the years I’ve worked with many clients whose addiction caused that kind of pain and suffering. The hurt they’ve caused others, especially their kids, is their biggest source of shame and guilt. So why can’t they just stop? And how did it get to this point?

Let’s start with a myth: addiction is a choice. It is not. No one ever chooses the pain addiction inflicts on themselves or others. What’s at work is much more powerful, and deeply ingrained, than a conscious choice. That something is emotional pain, born primarily in childhood trauma (physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, exposure to violence or major losses in early life). That fact was established in the renowned Adverse Childhood Experiences study, and duplicated in many other studies. See www.cdc.gov > Injury Center.

Addicts can’t stop because their drug of no choice (including alcohol) soothes that deep emotional pain, at least temporarily. Imagine, for example, the guilt of a little girl (or boy) who is unable to stop her drunken father from repeatedly beating her mother. If you understand that shooting heroin was the only way she found that relieved that searing pain of guilt, you can begin to understand the power of addiction. And why admonitions like “Just Say No” don’t work. If they did we wouldn’t have had a five-fold increase in heroin use in the past 10 years and a tragic opioid epidemic.

Addiction is also not genetic. Genes are turned on and off by the environment. While having an alcoholic or addicted parent, aunt, uncle or grandparent can pre-dispose you to having a higher risk of addiction, pre-disposition is not pre-determination. What gets passed on, instead, is the parent’s poor impulse control, an inability to deal with stress, regulate their own emotions and deal with pain. Children can’t get what their parents can’t give them.

This is not about blaming parents. I think all parents love their children. But due to their own stresses growing up, addicted parents couldn’t give their children the attuned attention, non-stressed and consistently available parenting environment they needed for optimal brain development. The absence of consistent parental contact in infancy makes the child more vulnerable to “needing” drugs later on to supplement what the brain is lacking.

So what works with addicts or alcoholics? From a counseling standpoint, I try to provide them with a sense of safety, a developing trust, and compassion. Not sympathy, but an interest in what happened to them (addicts are rarely aware of the connection between their addiction and childhood trauma). Compassion means, literally, “to suffer with another.” Compassion fosters understanding, which helps to eliminate the addict’s deep sense of shame and develop a greater responsibility for his/her own life.

I’m not writing this to justify, or excuse, what addicts or alcoholics have done to others; there is no justification or excuse for it. However, it is my hope that a greater understanding of addiction will help a parent understand what their son or daughter is going through, or help an addict get the compassionate help they need to be able to not only stop, but have a much better life in recovery.

If you want to know more, I highly recommend In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Dr. Gabor Maté, a now retired doctor who speaks nationally and internationally. For 12 years he was the medical doctor for the highest concentration of addicts and alcoholics in North America: the downtown east side of Vancouver, B.C. Dr. Maté has many YouTube videos as well.

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Bill Irving is a resident of Coeur d’Alene.