Earlier in 2022, August 27, we discussed “what’s in your concoction or cocktail” and recent motivational emails reminded us at VSN, that living sober is about loving life, not self-destruction and self-deceit! In the course of our active addiction, many of us lost our way in regard to being loving, kind, and respectful toward others. The savageness of feeding a delusional primary need loosened the weave of our moral fiber and weakened our integrity. In response to why we struggle with a war on drugs: it’s two-fold in a sense. One, because active addiction is governed by our animal instincts and not the minds of civil rational beings; and two, because what we put in our bodies is a basic inalienable human right (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness). So, of course our natural instinct is to rise up against any authority attempting to take away our liberty, our freedom, and especially our pursuit of happiness. I mean, this is our ingrained cultural outlook, isn’t it? Has slavery not been abolished? At least in most cases of addiction, we volitionally became enslaved.
Doc LaBranche: Forgive me if I am overly biased here; in the dozen years I’ve spent working with addiction disorders, none developed their condition with criminal intent. None of my encounters involved people wanting to ruin or terminate their loving relations either. Most were simply in pursuit of happiness via uninformed attempts of self-care. Many others were seeking liberty, the freedom to make their own decisions in order to develop autonomy, a naturally occurring component of the human process. Making decisions outside of an oppressive governance, like a controlling parent or guardian, is essential to healthy development of our autonomy. These growing pains are prioritized during adolescence, where teens are not wanting to rebel, more to simply be left to their own devices. In my case, for example, I was attempting to medicate a budding bipolar condition and escape suicidal ideation. I was seeking life! As much as some of my choices became self-defeating, I am still here to write about them!
Acting-out behaviors, like those of little children, are sometimes due to regression. It’s as if some folks with active addiction revert back to childhood methodology for getting the attention they need. This is especially prominent with the unaffirmed during early childhood. Remember being told to clean your room and pick up your dirty laundry? Well, the Affirmation element of the ARMOR Program is similar in that regard. And believe it or not, we have thirty-year-old clients, luxuriously housed, that need to be told it’s time to take a shower. Let’s now return to our Modulation topic of concern and the new toxin being added to the fentanyl/heroin mix for further entrapment of our local opioid use patrons. That phrase is fitting because addicts are primarily customers seeking anti-oppression medication, like opioids and cocaine. This seems to be one of the most challenging concepts VSN attempts to convey. Addiction starts with attempts to sooth or escape an internal state of affairs. The molecular cocktail that incites sadness, depression, doubt, fear, and insecurities of abandonment or rejection exists inside the chemical solutions our neural anatomy. These states require modulation in order to balance-out into the comfort of conforming with our homeostatic compass.
Wading through the waters of puberty, the human process begins to understand that our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and even physiological changes are manifested by our internal chemistry’s regulation. The third point of SMART Recovery’s four-point program delineates the concept well. During adolescence, a little research and development with chemicals like heroin and alcohol teaches our human process that we can take governance (modulate) of our own internal chemistry (at will) in order to sooth and modify ourselves. We can ingest molecules that alter our consciousness, like alcohol for instance, to compromise cognitive functionality and ease symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. We can also build muscle tone with anabolic steroids and some minor weight-lifting behavior. We can manage impotence with sildenafil to improve performance, lol. You get the idea, right?
The list is endless because there’s always another chemist already working in the laboratory to produce our next cure-all feel-good molecular concoction. It’s like adding Xylazine to the snare of Opioid Use Disorders. And we have to ask ourselves, does taking piles of cocaine off the streets call into play substitution drugs like Xylazine? The illegal drug trade provides food and shelter for millions of people. It’s their bread and butter. Remove a bunch of milligrams of one nutrient like wheat (like cocaine) and it will surely be replaced by bringing cornmeal and lard to the shelf (like Xylazine). It’s human survival. Here’s the saddest thing of it all, new addictions are like new viruses, extra challenging to treat and manage and require extra resources. So, not only does waging war on drugs throw away billions of dollars, it also taxes everyone with increased demands for more resources and research to treat new viral addictions resulting from this warring endeavor.
VSN poses this question: why is it ok to deprive people of their inalienable right to consume whatever concoctions they deem helpful? Is this not a violation of our liberty, freedom, and pursuit of happiness? One of the motivational articles sent in last week was from Rick Sobey (2023) regarding legalization of magic mushrooms. Think about this, even our thoughts can modulate our internal chemistry. Buddhists monks demonstrate slowing heart rate via meditation. Doc witnessed the onset of physiological opioid withdrawals, during his client’s abstinence, due to thoughts. She was cued by a graphic public service announcement, just like Pavlov’s dogs started salivating when he heard the bell, she got chills, sweats, and painful stomach cramps. She was curled up in a fetal position bawling her eyes out, when Doc arrived. Her thoughts generated from watching the PSA had influenced her internal chemistry to the point of manifestation of a physiological condition.
In closing, the ARMOR Program’s Modulation element teaches us how to insulate ourselves from lapses and relapses by learning new things during sobriety. With novel experiences, meaning things completely unassociated with previous states of the addicted mind, new memories associated with sobriety form. These can help form wedges between our old lifestyles of drugs and alcohol and our new one of clarity and comfort. As an example, Doc offers the following video clip as part of his ongoing sobriety protocol. Yes, even after twenty-five years of sobriety, Doc too, still maintains a medicinal protocol in order to prevent relapse.
A long-time graduate of the ARMOR Program also offers a demonstration of his novel experience: teaching himself to play piano. A more recent member, thank you Sheryl, contributed a wonderful doodling image (a meditative listening exercise). And yes, the mushrooms too have meaning. Research continues to support medicinal potentials of hallucinogens, and if you’re looking for a novel experience for your own sobriety protocol, it’s been said that no two trips are the same and that your first is definitely going to be novel! So, let’s explore the open-mindedness professed by our twelve-step comrades and see if Bill Wilson was actually tuned into something when he dropped a tab or two of blotter.
Bill’s Thoughts: I think what Doc is trying to convey in this article is that Society is attempting to manage the “Drug Problem” incorrectly. Instead of expending most of our efforts on removing controlled substances from the streets, which has proven to be impossible, let’s spend more of our time and energy with a harm reduction philosophy. If we as a society spent equivalent dollars on programs to assist addicts as we do on trying to prevent drugs from hitting the streets, we may find more success in mitigating the problem. This should include better funded long term addiction recovery facilities within the city.