Phone: 616-217-9489 | eMail: jude@midlifetoolsforliving.com
JD's Midlife Tools For Living Practices, LLC
Ever wonder if your (or your loved ones) use of alcohol or drugs is getting in your way? If you think it possibly is you are not alone. It’s estimated that 27.1 million American’s, about one in 10, misuse substances.
Not everyone who drinks alcohol or uses drugs will become addicted. Everyone’s bodies and brains are different, so our reactions to alcohol and drugs also are different. Some people may become addicted quickly, for others it may happen over time. Some people never become addicted. Whether or not someone becomes addicted depends on many factors. They include genetic, environmental, and developmental factors.
-Have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking or drug use?
-Do you need to use more and more drugs or alcohol to attain the same effects on your mood or outlook?
-Have you tried to cut back, but couldn’t?
-Do you lie about how much or how often you drink or use drugs?
-Are you going through prescription medication at a faster-than-expected rate?
-Have your friends or family members expressed concern about your alcohol or drug use?
-Do you ever feel bad, guilty, or ashamed about your drinking or drug use?
-Have you done or said things while drunk or high that you later regretted?
-Has your alcohol or drug use caused problems at work, school, or in your relationships?
-Has your alcohol or drug use gotten you into trouble with the law?
The more “yes” answers you have, the more likely your drinking or drug use has become a problem.
There’s a fine line between substance use, abuse and addiction. It’s difficult to recognize when you’ve crossed that line too. How often or how much you use does not necessarily constitute abuse or addiction, but can often be indicators of substance related problems.
If the substance you are using fulfills a valuable need, you may find yourself relying more and more on it. You may use a substance to calm or energize yourself or help to make you more confident. You may start abusing prescription drugs for reasons like to relieve pain, cope with panic attacks, or improve concentration at school or work.
If you are using substances to fill a void in your life, it puts you more at risk of crossing the line from casual use to abuse and addiction. To have a healthy balance in your life, it’s important that you have positive experiences and feel good about your life without using any substances.
Abusing substances often starts as a way to socialize and connect. People often try a substance for the first time in a social situation with friends and acquaintances. A strong desire to fit in can make it seem like doing substances with them is the only way to do just that.
Problems can sometimes sneak up on you, as your substance use gradually increases over time. Smoking a joint with friends over the weekend, or having a drink on Friday after work, or taking ecstasy at a party, or painkillers when your back aches, for example, can change from using a substance a couple of days a week to using them every day. Gradually using the substance becomes more and more important to you.
As abuse of a substance takes hold, you may miss or frequently be late for work or school, your job performance may progressively deteriorate, and you may start to neglect social or family responsibilities. Your ability to stop using is eventually compromised. What began as a voluntary choice has turned into a physical and psychological need!
Eventually abusing a substance consumes your life, and your social and intellectual development stops. And you end up feeling isolated.
Addiction to substances is a chronic brain disease. It causes a person to repeatedly use a substance, despite the harm it causes. Repeated substance use can change the brain and lead to addiction.
Overcoming addiction isn’t simply a matter of willpower. Prolonged exposure to alcohol and drugs alters the brain in ways that result in powerful cravings and a compulsion to use. These brain changes make it extremely difficult to quit by sheer force of will.
The brain changes from addiction can be lasting. Substance addiction is considered a “relapsing” disease. This means that people in recovery are at risk for taking substances again, even after years of not taking them.
Recovery from addiction is a life-long process that often involves setbacks. Relapse doesn’t mean that treatment or person has failed or that sobriety is a lost cause. Rather, it’s a signal to get back on track. Going back to treatment or making life adjustments so you can get back on track is needed.
Treatment for alcohol and drug addiction includes counseling, medicines, or both. Research shows that combining medicines with counseling gives most people the best chance of success.
Counseling can be individual, involve your family, and/or be in group therapy.
With treatment you can:
-Come to understand why you got addicted
-Begin to see more clearly how your use has changed your behavior and your life
-Learn how to handle problems so you don’t use alcohol or drugs to cope
-Learn to avoid places, people, and situations where you might be tempted to use alcohol or drugs
There are medicines can help with the symptoms of withdrawal. For addiction to alcohol and certain drugs, there are also medicines that can help you re-establish normal brain function and decrease your cravings.
You may be struggling with alcohol, marijuana, opiates, psychedelics or any of the many mind-altering substances that exist. Therapy can help you break from the hold drugs and alcohol have on your life.
But sadly, only one in ten people with substance use problems seek treatment for their use. While substance use problems affect more Americans than heart conditions, diabetes, or cancer!
Together when you begin therapy we’ll look at your history of use, determine when your struggle began, identify any potential unhealthy patterns. You will learn tools to help you begin the process of recovery. Over time, we will work to uncover your values and goals so you can align your behavior and choices with them. We will explore your relationships and you will learn effective ways to communicate. Importantly, we will walk together as you come to find self-forgiveness, self-compassion and trust.
You are the expert of your life, I am here to walk alongside you as you take the journey towards recovery and tear down that road block that is in your way!
When you love someone with a substance use problem it means you also suffer with pain and lots of it. Substance use problems affect everyone in the family.
Trying to deal with a loved one’s abuse of a substance is like trying to save someone drowning in deep water. A drowning person lashes out, struggles against anyone trying to save them and without meaning to, pulls the rescuer down with them.
Family members rush in to help and the substance abuser says, “leave me alone” and labels the concerned person a “nag”. This push away increases the anxiety of family members. Anxiety becomes a normal everyday feeling.
Having a loved one in the family with a substance use problem compromises the health and wellbeing of everyone. There is a constant underlying level of tension with everyone wondering when the next crisis will occur.
Years of being emotionally attached to a person who abuses substances creates an incredible drain on your energy and can distort your perspective on what your life is and can be.
Over time everyone in the family adjusts and adapts to profound psychological, emotional and spiritual losses and the family becomes organized around the addiction.
The person who abuses substances life becomes centered around their drug of choice to the exclusion of coming home on time for dinner, helping with chores, getting ample rest for work, going to family gatherings, attending children’s school programs. Their life becomes very narrow and their drug of choice becomes their best friend or lover. Essentially #1.
They don’t see or hear the concerned love of family members. Instead, they interpret it as manipulation, trickery or being forced to quit and will distance even further from the family.
As family members “pursue the substance abuser” spending more and more time, energy and resources focusing on their loved one, they set aside their own needs in an effort to stay connected.
Family members protect themselves by avoiding or minimizing the problems that the substance use brings. They even wear blinders…because to accurately see all the problems that the substance use has created is very very painful.
In attempts to fix the problem family members will try to control their loved one. The more their fear intensifies the more they attempt to control and this pushes their loved one further away.
It’s common for family members to put so much of their time and energy into helping their loved one that their own life begins to shrink and at times aspects of it may disappear altogether—friendships fall by the wayside, medical appointments are missed, vacations don’t happen. Family members lose sight of their own needs and interests. Fixing the substance abusers problem becomes #1.
If so it may be time for you to reach out for treatment for yourself. You can begin the healing process to love yourself and your loved one in healthier ways. With treatment you can learn to communicate in ways your loved one can hear, build boundaries that will strengthen you and your relationship, learn to accept that you cannot change your loved one’s behaviors. You can rebuild your life and take better care of yourself again!
