The claim that addiction is a disease has been greatly boosted by evidence coming from the world of neuroscience. There are even scans to show that addicts can develop physical changes to the structure of their brain – apparently this is enough to earn the title of a brain disease.

The fact that there are now scientists interested enough to investigate addiction is a wonderful thing. We need new solutions because addiction problems are on the rise, and too many people are dying because of it. I have to say though, the claim that addiction is a brain disease that will be cured by neuroscience doesn’t sound very convincing to me. It completely ignores the fact that people have motivations for turning to alcohol in the first place. My concerns have been summed up nicely recently in a post by Wray Herbert for the Huffington Post called – The Heart and Mind of Addiction

Herbert writes:

“…the official view of the National Institute on Drug Abuse that addiction is a “chronic and relapsing brain disease.” What’s more, this disease model today has the gloss of neuroscience to legitimize it, complete with colorful fMRI images of addicted brains. This dogma dispenses with questions about will and morality and reduces all addictions to “hijacked” brain circuits involved in reward and pleasure.

Satel and Lilienfeld effectively debunk this reductionist view. They show that many addicts continue to have large periods of calm in their daily lives, during which they make the usual decisions about jobs and children’s schools and so forth. What’s more, most quit. Indeed, quitting is the rule rather than the exception. This would not be true if were an unrelenting and permanent brain affliction.”

This post by Wray Herbert’s was inspired by a new book called Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel, and Scott O. Lilenfield. I’m going to put this on my reading list because there is a whole chapter devoted to addiction. I do think that the claims for neuroscience are greatly exaggerated, and it will be interesting to hear what the experts think – or at least people who are more clued-in about neuroscience than me.

I fell into alcoholism because it seemed to be offering an easy path through life. I gave up alcohol almost twenty years later because I become convinced that there was a better way of life for me. I had been been in and out of addiction treatment programs since my late teens, but it was only when I gave up on the idea that I had a disease that I got better. I don’t see how any of this had anything to do with changes to the structure of my brain.

I came across a recent article in the Guardian Newspaper titled 12-step recovery programmes are best for addicts. It is based on an interview with Mark Gilman who is apparently some type of strategic advisor for addiction recovery with Public Health Department in England. The article opens with the news:

Mark Gilman is a man with a mission. In his role as England’s addiction recovery champion, it’s his aim for the country’s addiction treatment services to tap into what he sees as an underused resource: mutual aid groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

This doesn’t sound like a very original idea to me. It is more like something that would have been suggested fifty years ago. Gilman is quoted as saying:

“We’ve got something like 300,000 heroin and crack cocaine users in England. Over time we’ve probably had the vast majority in treatment, around 200,000. I’d like every one of them to have some exposure to [12-step fellowships].”

I spent most of my alcoholic life in England and enjoyed plenty of exposure to the 12 Step Groups, but I remained an addict. I went to rehabs in the eighties and nineties, and while there I was expected to attend these meetings – so what is being suggesting is nothing new. Mark Gilman seems to be under the impression that the problem is that people are not getting enough exposure to these fellowships, but is that really the case? People kept telling me that AA was my only option, and it was only when I found that this wasn’t true that I could make real progress.

I doubt that there are many addicts in England who have not heard of the 12 Step Groups. They are already heavily promoted. Gilman wants addicts to ‘have some exposure’ to these fellowships. Is he suggested that people should be forced to attend? This more or less already happens in many rehabs, and it is no obvious magical cure – it can make people even resistant to these groups.

The 12 Step fellowships have been around for decades already. It is obvious that this solution only works for some people – I’m glad it is there for the people who need it. There are also dangers associated with the AA program. It seems to me that these fellowships already get enough attention, and it is time to promote other options. What do you think?

This is the final part in a series that provides a template for people who wish to build their own addiction recovery program. You will find the earlier posts in this series here:

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 1

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 2

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 3

How to Use Your Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery

We have been using an analogy of a life-raft to describe this self-directed recovery program, and in order to make this to work you will need to treat it with this level of seriousness. There is not going be much benefit in creating your own blueprint for recovery, and then filing it away in a drawer somewhere. This program is useless until you actually use it as a basis for creating your new life. Here are a few suggestions for how you can do that:

- You need to have a copy of your program that you take with you wherever you go. You can write everything down in a notebook or create a document on a mobile device such as an iPad.

- Look over this document at least a couple of times a day – preferably first thing in the morning and last thing at night. During the first few weeks of your recovery, you will probably be looking at your program multiple times during the day.

- If there is a part of your program that is not working, you should remove this. If necessary, replace what you have removed with something better.

- Keep chipping away at unnecessary words in your document and clarify

- If you are faced with an unexpected challenge, you will need to create a new strategy for dealing with this.

The Benefits of Repetition

Anyone who has ever attended an AA meeting will soon get used to hearing the same things being said over and over again. This will not only include slogans but also readings from the approved literature. I haven’t been near one of these meetings in fifteen years, but I can still recite whole sections from the Big Book. This repetition did cause me to really absorb the program at the time. AA members sometimes referred to it as a positive type of brainwashing—that sounds about right.

I think that we can adapt this tool of repetition to help us fully absorb our own program. Just writing the information down is unlikely to be enough, we need to train our mind so that it automatically hits upon the right answers – so if we are faced with a challenging situation, we will right away implement one of our strategies for dealing with it. We can enjoy this form of self-brainwashing by frequently thinking about our program throughout the day and repeatedly reading what we’ve written about it. It might even be helpful to reach a stage where we can recite the whole program off by heart.

How to Develop the Motivation to Quit

As we’ve already said, you will need a strong motivation to break away from addiction. By now you will have hopefully begun thinking hard about what this motivation will be. Once you have decided upon this, you then need to charge your motive up – in other words, you need to give it some power. The way you do this is by thinking about your motive as much as possible, and you can deliberately make yourself feel excited about it – imagine how great it is going to be to achieve your goal and how much better your life will be as a result. Keep focusing your attention on this motive until you feel charged-up enough to quit, and then continue to focus on it to power you through the early days of your new life.

A Program for Living

This self-directed program for recovery is just the start. Once you become settled into your new life, you will want to keep things moving in a positive direction. A great way to do this is to create your own program for living. This will be the blueprint that will guide you through the rest of your life. The days of being an addict will be behind you, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from having an organised approach to living. This is a program that you can spend the rest of your life modifying, so that you end up with something that eradicates all fear and allows you to deal with anything that comes your way.

Final Words for Now

I’ve tried to spell out this program as best I can here, but this is still very much a work in progress. I know that this approach works (at least for me), and I want to provide the clearest possible description. I will be providing more details about the program in future posts, and I also intend to create a longer document that fully outlines this approach (possibly an eBook if I can find he time). If there is anything that is unclear, please leave a comment. If you have any questions, please leave a comment. If you have any criticisms, please leave a comment.

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 3

This is part three in a series that provides a template for self-directed addiction recovery. You will find the earlier posts in this series here;

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 1
A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 2

Strategies and Destination

We’ve been trying to build a recovery life-raft and so far we’ve examined two elements of this craft; motive and principles. We are now going to think about your destination in recovery and your strategies for getting there.

Deciding on Your Destination

It is a good idea to have some type of overall goal for your new life. This is the general direction in which you want things to move. The destination does not need to be set in stone, as your ideas about what you want out of life are likely to change over time. It is important that this initial goal is both desirable and within your power to reach. It is likely that your motive and destination are going to be closely related, and you certainly don’t want to choose a destination that will undermine your motive for getting sober.

One of the benefits of setting a goal at this stage is that it will give you something against which to judge your progress. There will almost certainly be many positive changes occurring right from the start of your break from addiction, but it can be easy for you to miss this evidence of your progress. The nice thing about setting a goal is that you should be able to see if you are moving closer towards it, and that will give you a definite sign that your life is going in the right direction.

Let’s look at an example of a suitable destination. My motive for quitting addiction was to develop a real sense of inner-peace and contentment without the need to use alcohol or any mind-altering chemical. This meant that my destination in recovery was to experience increasing inner-peace and contentment. I wasn’t expecting that there would be constant upward movement towards this goal – I knew there to be ups and downs along the way – but I did expect that there would be evidence of some progress when I looked back on my experiences over a reasonable time period.

One of the problems with setting this goal at the start of your new life is that you may not be completely clear about what you want. Addiction can make us have a very low opinion of what is possible or it can push us into the world of delusional aspirations. Don’t worry about this too much now, you will be able to change your destination to something more suitable later on. The main thing is that you have something to aim for from the beginning.

Strategies for Recovery

When you first break away from addiction, there will be a period of adjustment. Things may get a bit bumpy for awhile, and if you are not prepared for what lies ahead it will be difficult to stay afloat. It is unlikely that you will be able to prepare for all the challenges you might face, but you can certainly prepare for the ones that you are most likely to run into.

Your goal here is to develop as many strategies as you can so that you can face this new life with confidence. The aim of these strategies is to help you reach your destination (see above), and this means being able to overcome any problem you are likely to face. It is sort of like setting out for an expedition to climb Mount Everest, you don’t want to weigh yourself down with unnecessary junk, but you also want to have all the items you are likely to need to reach the summit. You will be able to develop new strategies along the way, but it is best if you do not have to do this too much– remember what we said earlier about how our best thinking might not be available to us in the middle of a crisis.

The way to develop strategies is to write down the problem clearly, and then figure out the solution that will allow you to overcome this problem. This isn’t about writing things down that sound sensible or wise – you only want solutions that you feel confident are going to work for you. So let’s look at an example:

Problem: I may have cravings to use alcohol or drugs.
Solution: I will remind myself that relapse isn’t an option, and I’ll use a mindfulness technique (objectively examine my thoughts) to see how this craving can’t harm me.

If you are worried that your solution might not be enough to work every time, you can add additional solutions as a back-up plan.

Putting Together Your Recovery Program

Now that we’ve examined the different elements of your recovery program, it is time to begin putting it all together. The way you do this is similar to how you might put together a jigsaw puzzle. The different elements feed into each other. The first thing you will want to do is find your motive for quitting. This will then provide you with your first couple of principles. Let’s see how this works in practice:

If my motivation is, ‘I am going to give up alcohol forever so that I can enjoy inner-peace and contentment’. This will provide me with my first two principles –

- I can give up alcohol forever
- If I give up alcohol forever, it will mean that I can begin working towards finding inner-peace and contentment.

I will have to check to make sure that each of these principles are solid enough to be used. I do this by asking the three questions we talked about in the last post (Is it necessary? Is it reasonable? Is it clear?). I also need to make certain that it doesn’t contradict any of the principles that are already there. Once I begin adding my strategies, this will mean that I’ll have to create additional principles to cover these – remember, unless you have adopted it as a principle, it doesn’t exist in your program.

As you put your program together, you have to make sure that everything fits nicely together. There should be no contradictions between one part of your program and another part. This requirement is nothing to do with being fussy – it is all to do with encouraging you to be as clear as possible. You need to keep working away at your program until you feel satisfied that it will get you through early recovery. Remember though, you only need something basic for now. The clock is ticking and you want to get your life-craft into the waters of your new life as soon as possible.

In part 4 of these series we will look more closely at how you can use this self-directed template for recovery.

This is a continuation from A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 1

In the last post we talked about how this program for breaking away from addiction would involve four elements:

- Principles
- Motive
- Strategies
- Destination

In part 2 of this series we will focus on principles and motive.

Principles of Recovery

The Principles of Your Recovery

The principles of your recovery refer to a number of assumptions that you are going to need to make in order to get the ball rolling. They are like the rules of the game, and they need to be treated as such. It is best not to think of these assumptions as being carved in stone, and you are likely going to need to make adjustment to these over time.

There are a number of questions that you should always ask before adding any principle to your recovery program:

- Is it necessary?
- Is it reasonable?
- Is it clear?

If the principle does not meet these three criteria, it will be best to not use it.

In order to use your principles effectively, you will need to start with a clean sheet. This means that you need to forget about everything you have ever heard about addiction recovery – at least for the moment. You may decide later on to reintroduce some these ideas as principles, but from now on it is best to only deal with assumptions that you have decided deserve to be in your program. You will also want to make sure that any of these old ideas that you want to add to your principles do not conflict with any other principle and that they meet the 3 criteria mentioned above.

From now own, it is best to ignore any ideas about recovery unless you have decided to add them to your principles. This is not to say that you will not be interested in these ideas – by ignore I mean that you will not allow them to impact your approach to this new life. Remember, if this idea does not have enough value to you to be added to your principles, you don’t need it at all. You are trying to create a program that is as minimal as possible, so there is no room for fluff.

It is your job to find the principles that are going to work for you. Here are some of the assumptions that I would suggest you start with:

- You have the ability to create your own recovery program
- You know better than anyone else about what is good for you
- You have the power to end your addiction forever
- If you break away from addiction your life will improve
- You can go it alone in recovery if you need to
- You have the right to try to build the type of life that will satisfy you
- Challenges in life are a test and a chance to grow

Rules of the Game in Recovery

The principles are like the rules of the game. They set the parameters for your program, and you can look to them for guidance when planning your escape. So if one of your assumptions is that you have the ability to build your own recovery program, it gives you permission to do just that. The only assumptions that you should use are the ones that feel right to you – if they stop feeling right then you just get rid of them. The important thing is that you treat these principles as true until you have good reason not to.

The one thing you want to try to avoid is messing around with these principles during the first few months of your recovery. This is why it is so vital that the assumptions you choose now are solid enough to hold you over until you feel settled in your new life. I would recommend that you only set sail on this journey once you feel confident that these principles are going to keep you afloat.

Another way to look at your assumptions is that these will provide you with the tools to help you achieve your purpose in recovery. If these assumptions interfere with your ability to achieve this purpose then you will need to fix that. Not only do you need a valid reason to quit, but you have to be confident that you will be able to achieve this goal. So if your purpose is to live a life of constant bliss and one of your assumptions is that challenges in life will help you grow there will obviously be a problem.

Motive for Recovery

The next important element of your new life will be your motivation. This is arguably the most important of all of these elements.

Most humans struggle to make major changes in their life, so this is not just a problem for people who have fallen into addiction. Undergoing any type of major change is always going to involve a good deal work so you are only likely to go through all of this if they feel they have a good reason to. No matter how bad your life has become as a result of alcohol or drugs, it is almost certain that you will have plenty of good reasons not to change – even if it is just the lame belief that it is better the devil you know.

So long as you hold onto the idea that alcohol or drugs can be a positive force in your life, it will be extremely difficult for you will be able to quit these substances. Why would you even want to quit? You must have a strong reason for breaking away from addiction, and it needs to be compelling enough that you will be willing to commit 100% to this new way of living. This motivation for quitting has to to be solid enough that there is no danger of it wavering in response to any challenges that may arise. Your motivation for quitting needs to be so strong, that you will be willing to do anything to make it a reality.

I can’t tell you why you should quit alcohol or drugs. If the reasons of your loved ones and the addiction experts are not enough to convince you to change your life I doubt that mine will fare any better. The reasons for why other people think you should change are not going to be worth much – the only thing that really matters here are your own reasons. You need to find a motivation that is really going to get your juices going, and if you can’t do that you are kind of screwed.

It is vital that you spend some time thinking about why you want to quit drinking. In fact, you shouldn’t stop thinking about it (except for toilet breaks) until you can come up with the most powerful reason possible. This is the first step of this journey to a new life, and if you mess this up the chances are that it will be the cause of your later undoing. I’m not going to tell you what your reason for quitting should be, but there are some things that I want you to consider when deciding what this should be:

Your reason for giving up alcohol and drugs needs to be clear and precise. You do not want some type of rambling statement that is full of words but doesn’t really say anything. It is best that you get your reasons down to a couple of sentences – or even better one sentence. Avoid any unnecessary words and remove any type of vagueness.

Do not use the word ‘should’ anywhere in your mission statement – in fact, it would be even better if you could remove it from your vocabulary altogether. “Should” is a weasel word, and when people say that they ‘should’ do something, it is the same as them saying they are not going to do it.

The reason for why you want to quit your addiction has to be positive in order of it to remain powerful. At the end of my addiction, I would have been happy just for the pain to stop, but there is a problem with this type of reason for quitting addiction – it doesn’t work for long. There is a good deal of truth in the statement that ‘time heals all wounds’, and this means that once we begin to feel better we are no longer so easily satisfied with just having the pain stop. We can then begin to downplay the seriousness of our former problems and before we know it we are right back where we started.

Our reason for stopping should not be conditional – for example, it is not a good idea to use “getting my girlfriend back” as our reason for quitting. Your life is going to improve as a result of breaking away from addiction, but if you try to micromanage things too much it is going to blow up in your face. The problem is that we don’t really know what is best for us, but if we stick with our plan for a sober life we can end up with far better than we ever imagined.

The best motivation for giving up an addiction can be the reason for why you developed this problem in the first place. I talked about this before in an older post – The Best Reason to Quit Addiction is the Reason You Fell into Addiction

There is a video and podcast dealing with the material in this post at this link – Motivation and Principles of Addiction Recovery

I often get emails from readers who are looking for advice on how to overcome their addiction problems. These tend to be people who are struggling to escape from alcohol or drugs using the more popular recovery options like the 12 Steps or therapy. A high proportion of the individuals who contact me want to go it alone – they are looking to hear about my experiences with self-directed recovery (aka going solo in recovery).

I always try to offer the best advice that I can, but the problem is that up until recently, I haven’t thought too much about why my path works – I just know that it does. This means that in the past, the answers I gave could be a bit vague. A few months ago, I decided to write down my approach to recovery in more detail, and this has all led to this series where I will outline a self-directed approach to addiction recovery. I’m not suggesting that this is some type of miracle cure, but it may work for some people. So far, I only know that this path works for me.

How to Build Your Recovery Life Raft

In order for this program to work you are going to need to build a life-raft. You will then use this to launch yourself into this new sober way of living. Once you get further along in your journey, you will be able to build a more impressive type of craft, but for the moment you just want something a bit basic. If you tried to create a craft that was too fancy right away, it might be difficult for you to manage so lets keeps things simple.

This life raft is going to have to see you through the early adjustment period of your new life, There may be some rough waves ahead, and you certainly do not want to take to the high seas unless that you feel certain that this craft is going to take you where you want to go. You need to have 100% confidence in your raft because if you go out in a vessel that is not ready it will be likely to sink, and this will damage your confidence. On the day that you are ready to launch, you want to feel as confident as possible that your raft will be up to the task.

OK, let’s dump the life-raft analogy for now and get directly to the point. The first thing that you need to do to break free of addiction is to create the right mental attitude. You will also need to develop some strategies to help you cope with the challenges that are going to lie ahead. To achieve all of this, you are going to need to do some writing.

Write Your Way Out of Addiction

I have talked on here before about how you can write your way out of addiction. This self-directed approach to recovery basically requires that you create your own recovery book- it does not matter if you do this on paper or if you do this on the computer. My guess is that you might have some reservations about writing this stuff down. Here are some things to consider:

- This is going to be your recovery manual and nobody else will ever need to see it.

- Your spelling and grammar does not matter one bit so long as you can read what has been written.

- It does not matter how messy your handwriting is – the only important thing is that you can read what is written.

- There is no busy-work involved in any of this – there is no need to write things down just for the sake of writing them down. You are completely in charge here and you write down what you want to write down.

- Don’t be concerned if your initial attempts at writing are a complete mess – that’s perfectly normal. Over time you will keep on refining what you have written, and your writing will become clearer as your thinking becomes clearer.

- You do not need to have any talent as a writer. In fact, you don’t have to even like writing – think of this as a type of medicine.

I would not suggest that you do this work unless I believed that it was important. I’ve no interest in wasting your time, and I’m not trying to help you become a better writer. I’m convinced that writing things down is crucial for a number of reasons including:

- The shit that is most damaging to us is the stuff that is rolling around inside our heads unchecked. By writing things down, you get this shit out of your head and into the light where you can deal with it.

- When we try to plan things inside our own heads, it will tend to be all muddled and vague – this is no good for the business we have set for ourselves. In order to break free of our addiction we must have clarity of purpose.

- One of the most important reasons for why this written work is important is that it gives us access to our best thinking on those days when our thinking is all fucked up. The problem is that when we need clear thinking the most, it tends not to be there. This is why we can start off our quit with the best of intentions, but we still fail because our best thinking goes AWOL when we need it most. By writing this stuff down, your best thinking will be there when you need it.

How to Build a Life Raft

OK, lets get back to the life raft analogy. In order to build this craft that is going to help you break into this new life you will need four things::

- You need a sail so that you can use the wind to propel your boat forward. This is your motive for quitting.

- You need planks of wood on which will be the part of the life raft that will keep you afloat. This is going to be the principles of your recovery.

- You are also going to need some type of rudder device so that you can steer your raft. This will be your strategy for dealing with early recovery.

- You will also need a destination. If you don’t have at least some type of basic idea about where you want to go, you could end up just going nowhere.

Ok, as you have probably guessed already, I know nothing about building lift-rafts, so please allow your imagination to stretch in order to accommodate my feeble account.

In the next article in the series, I will be start looking at each aspect of your recovery raft in much more detail.

I also talked about this approach in a recent video/podcast

Click on the link to read the next post in this series – A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 2

I would be grateful for any comments you might have so don’t be shy.