Hill Recovery

  Defining addiction is not difficult but ask twenty people and the answers will vary from “somebody who has to use all day” to “when alcohol or drugs keep you from working”.

            The truth is that addiction to substances or other addictive behaviors has nothing to do with frequency, quantity or the ability to stop.Addiction is easily recognized and defined by two simple questions.   Does the use of the substance (or other addictive behavior) cause problems in life functioning (or pain) and does the individual return to the use (behavior) again despite the negative consequences.  If the answer is yes, then that is addiction.
Denial will usually rear its head to argue forcefully and cogently that it couldn’t be addiction because (pick one):

1. I can quit anytime I want.
2. If you had the stressors in your life, you would need to use like I do.
3. When I get as bad as (fill in the blank) then I’ll know I have a problem.
4. Addicts are people who lack willpower (or morality) and I am far too intelligent and in control of my life to ever let anything control me!

          If you want to know if there is addiction in a family – ask the kids if mom or dad’s use of alcohol, marijuana etc. ever bothers them.  If the answer is affirmative, you usually don’t need to go any further.   It is not normal to return to a behavior if it is causing problems for us and yet, with addiction we see, bright, resourceful, creative people return to their substance use, despite horrendous accidents and / or traumatic domestic disturbance. Behaviors completely contrary to the individuals values and, ultimately, to the detriment of the people they love the most in this world.
         Addiction is powerful enough to turn anyone into a monster.  We are only now learning the whys through science.  However, the whats have been available since the advent of Alcoholic Anonymous.  People do recover from this disease and their recovery holds a beacon of hope to those still lost in its mind numbing haze.  Causes and new cures will be covered in future articles.

In 1982, I listened intently to a 28 year old man sincerely explain to me why he simply couldn’t be an alcoholic because he only drank beer.  I had been asked to convince him that he was, in fact, an alcoholic and that the hospital’s treatment program was available to help him get sober.  Being only a few months over a year sober myself, I could only tell him of my own addiction, desperation, transformation and sobriety.

            Medically he was not in great shape.  He was in kidney failure and his liver and stomach lining were equally impaired.

            I watched as his family tearfully begged him to enter the treatment program and I thought of the looks in my own family’s eyes when I came home “loaded” again.   Why could we all see the obvious and he couldn’t (or wouldn’t)?

Denial is based in not having any other answer for the feeling of emptiness, loneliness and inadequacy, that alcohol so readily and consistently eliminates.  I knew why he didn’t want to admit the obvious…he didn’t have a solution to this dilemma.  Paradoxically, until he would quit the alcohol and surrender to another course of emotional relief, he was doomed.  Just another “hopeless” alcoholic.

            Four days later he died.  A friend had snuck some beer into his hospital room.  His family was now absent their beloved husband, father, brother and son.

Certainly, denial is influenced by shame, control and other factors, but, ultimately, the alcoholic/addict just doesn’t have any other vehicle available to get them from point A to Point B, discomfort to comfort.

             I still can’t help but wonder what the outcome would have been if he had joined me (and so many others) in pursuit of a fulfilling, complete, immersion in the promises that recovery offers.

            Life (and death) twist so delicately on those moments of decision.

DELAY IS THE WORST FORM OF DENIAL.