Addiction recovery
The process of recovery from addiction is a difficult and life long
struggle where the recovering addict will have to surmount various
overwhelming obstacles, such as shame, dishonesty, ignorance and personal
exception.
It would be doing the addict a disservice to assume that these obstacles
are not extremely challenging and require outstanding and continuous
application of willpower and dedication.
Informed medical opinion on the subject of addiction is the way to brush
aside the simple ignorance which plagues many people when it comes to the
causes, characteristics and effects of addiction. Addiction Recovery is
enhanced and assisted by exposure to precise, coherent and understandable
medical information on the topic of addiction. It is highly unfortunate
that the related obstacles of shame and dishonesty tinge the Addiction
Recovery process and can often serve to restrain the willingness and
ability of the addict to comprehend the characteristics of their personal
condition.
Research and experience has shown that dishonesty combined with
evasiveness is a basic and irrevocable part of the addict's psychological
profile. When these factors are mixed in with the ignorance of the facts
behind addiction and the innovative and proven effective techniques that
can be administered to facilitate Addiction Recovery, as well as the
addict's shame with regards to their own addictive behaviour, it results
in a very powerful challenge to the highly skilled professionals in the
clinical, medical, social and psychological field who have dedicated their
careers to assisting addicts fight free of the manacles of their
particular addictive substance.
Personal exception acts as a strong deterrent to the successful progress
of Addiction Recovery. This feeling that the addict is outside the
stereotype of addiction and that the rules which apply to society in
general do not apply to them, allows them to brush aside the indisputable
facts and considerations of ethics and morality which under normal
circumstances would be effective in diminishing their addiction or halting
it outright.
Addicts have a powerful belief matrix which informs them that they are not
at all like other people and that they represent a very special case which
does not adhere to the standards and restrictions of the general masses.
In this manner, the addict is convinced that any form of behaviour can be
justified and rationalized, even those extreme forms which seriously
violate the addict's and society's ethics, laws, values and beliefs.
There is a very painful price to be paid for the exercise of this personal
exceptionalism. The addict most often is forced to confront these
paradoxes when confronted with the completely irrefutable statistics and
details of their personal case, and when they themselves experience
intense humiliation and shame as a direct result of the behaviour patterns
they have carried out due to the deleterious effects of their particular
addictive substance.
The addict who believes that they form some type of personal exception to
the standard, proven and universally acknowledged rules of addiction is
unable to rationalize their own personal grandeur with the shameful
humiliations that they may be undergoing. This makes it exceedingly
difficult for the addict to seek assistance for their case, or to accept
assistance when it is offered or even imposed. The submission to the
conventional standard of Addiction Recovery would deflate the addict's
personal grandeur and undermine the entire structure the addict has
constructed in their mind that they are unique, special and above the
rabble.
It is very difficult to come down from the plinth of personal grandeur to
the acknowledgement that the addict is just another individual with a very
common problem who has to submit to the conventional therapeutic
treatments which not only do not adhere to the modern preferences of
immediate gratification and resolution, but require a life time of
continuous and dedicated effort to conquer and overcome.
For the ever escalating harmful and irrational addictive effects to keep
from derailing the entire Addiction Recovery process, it is important for
the addict to construct an entirely artificial universe of constantly
shifting and morphing rationalizations, reasons for why loopholes should
apply to them, justifications for all the exceptions and special
considerations that they themselves are worthy of. All of this complex and
convoluted process is necessary to explain what otherwise would confront
the addict as an inexplicable situation: the basic query which the addict
is constantly being confronted with from family, friends, co-workers and
loved ones. "Why can't you stop doing it?"
No addict can possibly concoct a rational or even remotely convincing
answer, regardless of the addict's personal psychological mastery of
excuses, explanations, rationalizations and justifications for their
deleterious, irrational and harmful behaviour towards themselves and
towards the people in their families and communities.
The rationalizations and justifications are usually centered on the
minimization, discounting or outright denial of the overwhelmingly
negative consequences of the behaviour patterns imposed on the addict
through the effects of their particular addictive substance. The addict
thus starts to point fingers everywhere except where they should be
pointed, at themselves. They feel that they are mistreated by mean and
vindictive people, and that their destiny has caused them to be
misunderstood and criticized unfairly.
This self-pity combined with the resentment of family and community
members leads to a determination of entitlement to the particular
addictive substance, providing a justification for even more irrational
addictive behaviour since the addict is being treated so badly anyway that
they may as well indulge in their particular addictive substance all they
want as no one will care either way.
Addiction Recovery can be interpreted and defined as the recovery of the
true self of the individual addict and the return to a healthy, tenable
and balanced position within the family, the workplace, the community,
society as a whole, but most importantly within themselves. Only in this
way can it be construed that the process of Addiction Recovery has been
successful and that the addict poses an insignificant risk of future
relapse.
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