Trying Again and Again to Change

The Tragedy of Addiction

When you’re around drug addicts, whether because your family members struggle with addiction, you’re an addict yourself, or you work with addicts professionally, you will eventually see people die from their addiction. Young people mostly die from accidents, such as car crashes, overdoses, or violence. A heroin addict still using in her fifties or sixties generally succumbs to years of neglect, infections, and the effects of homelessness.

Drugs, especially substances like meth or alcohol, damage our brains, making rational thought difficult. It’s hard enough for someone to admit he needs to stop drinking when his mind still functions reasonably well. Years of alcohol abuse can damage a person’s brain so badly, he no longer has the capacity to understand what he’s doing to himself. At that point, unless he gets placed in a protected environment, like a nursing home, he’ll probably drink himself to death.

Yet even when people do stop drinking, there’s no guarantee they won’t die from their addiction. If they wait until late in life to quit, their organs can still fail, killing them.

This is one way in which drug addiction can be so tragic. Like other diseases, it sometimes kills people. It’s not just drug addiction that is so devastating, though. Gambling and sex addictions traumatize people and occasionally lead to death from disease. Addictions to work or power can cause death from heart attacks or violence.

Who Stops and Who Doesn’t?

I suspect most people who die from their addiction tried, at least once, to get clean and sober. Probably their family members tried more than once to help them. Why do some people commit to sobriety and never go back, while others try twenty times before they figure it out, and still others can’t stay sober no matter how often they try to quit?

There are many theories. How much trauma a person has experienced clearly plays a role, as does the amount and kind of community a person has around her. Upbringing is important, as well. Was the person shamed or accepted? Did her parents provide good role models, consistent values, and kind discipline? Did they beat and molest her or expect mindless obedience? How much education did she have? Did she attend church or temple? What genetic influences shaped her? What peer group accepted her?

So much goes into making us who we are. Luck, fate, God, community all make a difference. At this point, we don’t seem to agree on what factor is most important, nor do we know how to heal people so they can embrace recovery without having try and try again.

 

Trying and Trying Again

Whether struggling with drugs, criminal behavior, sugar, or other addictions, most of us have tried, over and over, to change. Some people go to treatment twenty or more times before they stop using. The ones who finally make it simply didn’t give up.

This can be inspiring. For instance, it can inspire us to know that Thomas Edison tried out 6,000 different types of filament before he found one that would successfully light a bulb for long enough it would be marketable. Not only did he try different kinds of materials, but he had to send someone to Japan to get a specific type of bamboo that grew only in that country, because that was the material that worked best. His persistence reminds us that failure can be a necessary step toward success. [1]

Except that Edison didn’t think of his unsuccessful experiments as failures. He saw them as steps that showed him what didn’t work, bringing him that much closer to figuring out what would. [2]

To get sober, we usually need to try many different techniques before we figure out what will work for us. Maybe cognitive behavioral therapy helped our friend, but narrative therapy works better for us. Or maybe what will make the difference for us is prayer, or recovery support meetings, or co-dependency groups, or martial arts, or yoga, or Suboxone maintenance, or a combination of strategies. To complicate things further, sometimes we think we figured out what we need, only to relapse a few years later.

Can we see these relapses, not as failures, but as steps that show us what doesn’t work? Might each one bring us that much closer to sustained recovery?

Figuring Our What Works for Us

It’s not a bad idea. Certainly it’s easier to keep trying again and again if we think of our attempts as steps on the way to success.

Unfortunately, human beings are more complex than light bulbs. Edison was able to methodically conduct his experiments over and over because he was working with materials like paper and bamboo. One month from now, they will respond the same. They won’t burn longer because the color’s a little different or because you use a match instead of a flint to light them.

People, on the other hand, do respond differently depending on their moods, their age, how well they get along with their counselor, or which twelve-step group they attend. How do we know if we need something other than counseling or church or AA or if we just need to try a different one? Figuring out solutions for human beings is far more complex than figuring out solutions for light bulbs.

Yet unless we believe in ourselves enough to try in the first place, it doesn’t really matter.

Believing In Ourselves

Edison’s mother believed in him. As a child, he had an inquisitive mind. He liked to explore and test things. At school, however, he was expected to memorize and recite, which he did not do well. His teacher often ridiculed him in front of his classmates. One day, the schoolmaster told him he was “addled” and there was no point in keeping him at school.

His feelings hurt, he ran home crying and told his mother what the schoolmaster had said. Furious, his mother marched her son back to the school, reamed out the master, and decided then and there to homeschool the boy. She knew he was smart, and she was willing to let him explore and examine the world his way. She let him dive into topics that interested him. Most important, she let him experiment and make mistakes. [3]

If he had stayed in public school, where he was shamed and ridiculed, he might never have developed the confidence or the knowledge to pursue his inventions, the light bulb being only one of many. He would probably have learned to fear failure.

Instead, he was blessed to have a mother who supported him. She encouraged him to test the world. No one expected him to get it right the first time.

Without Support, It’s Hard to Change

Too few of us grow up in such supportive families. We learn to fear making mistakes. When strict, angry, impatient adults take out their own shame and fear on us, we internalize their shame as ours. Although most parents are thrilled when babies start walking and encourage their efforts no matter how many times they fall down, when children get older, it seems we only reward success.

Why do we withdraw support from older children? Why do we yell when they spill the flour as they stir the batter or drop the baseball when it’s thrown to them? What keeps us from being patient and delighted with these older efforts? Is it because the older child impacts us when she fumbles? We have to clean up the mess, or maybe the dropped ball is the last straw and we lose the game.

That could be why we can’t keep supporting the addict who fails over and over. Their continued relapses tear at us. Like frustrated parents, we scold and belittle our loved ones because we feel so hurt. Eventually we turn away to protect ourselves.

In response to chastisement, the child stops cooking or playing ball. When he grows up, the addict stops trying to get well. When we are shamed for making mistakes, failure doesn’t lead to eventual success, it leads to pain.

Healing the Shame

Before we can risk trying again and again, we must heal that underlying shame. The best way to help people recover from a sense of unworthiness is to love and accept them.

Writer and educator, Auburn Sandstrom, tells a moving story of a time when the despair of her addiction drove her, finally, to ask for help. In the middle of the night, she called a counselor her mother had referred her to. Amazingly, the man answered, and he listened, loved her, and accepted her unconditionally.

It turned out that she’d dialed the wrong number, but that stranger was there for her, anyway, and it made all the difference. Sandstrom felt that grace had pierced the darkness of her night. Because of this, she sought help the very next day. Eventually she got clean and stayed that way. [4]

Never Giving Up

We all have trouble changing things about ourselves, and we relapse on just about everything. Gabor Maté, an addiction professional in Canada, talks about his obsession with compact discs. In one week he spent $8,000 on music he didn’t need. He lied to his wife, missed work, and ignored his children because of his addiction. [5]

It doesn’t matter what we do that takes us out of ourselves, what we do that we wish we wouldn’t. Perhaps our addiction won’t kill us the way a heroin addiction can, but remembering that we have the same kinds of fears and pains as the worst addict might help us feel more compassion and understanding for her. It might help us keep trying again and again and again to heal our own wounds and be supportive of others.

It’s important to accept the addict where she is, to honor and love and listen to her pain. At the same time, whenever there’s an opening, ask questions or point out the ways she is suffering. As Howard Forman says about addicts in his article on never giving up, we need to “help them find what would motivate them to do the hard work of creating change.” [6]

Trying Again and Again

As a professional, it’s easy for me to say that. I don’t take my patients home with me.

As family members, we need extra support to help our loved ones. We might need to take a break, set boundaries. Certainly, we need to grieve. Support groups can help us deal with our grief and can help us address the ways that our focus on our loved one’s illness takes us away from focusing on ourselves. Just as Maté was obsessed with music, we become obsessed with the addict.

So we don’t just need to support the one with an active addiction. We also need to support those who care about them. One way to provide support is to encourage family members and friends to remember that focusing on their own change is more important than focusing on the other person’s. This is true for all of us.

If we want our loved ones to keep trying, to experiment with different approaches, to go back to treatment and counseling, to take up yoga and prayer, we need to be willing to do this, as well. We need to be willing to try and try again.

Failure and Transformative Resilience

How do we do that? How do we keep going?

Kristin Wong talks about “transformative resilience.” While resilience allows us to bounce back from adversity, transformative resilience encourages us to improve our lives and the lives of others because of that adversity. Wong reminds us that challenges have value; suffering can be redemptive. She provides the example of a woman who nearly gave up because of how much student debt she had. Instead, she reflected on her mistakes, learned from them, came up with a plan for change, and then developed a strategy to help others in her situation. [7]

Acknowledging our foolishness is not easy, especially when others are quick to point it out to us. Without some internal strength, we can’t admit we made a mistake. We won’t be able to see how unkind, unsophisticated, manipulative, or manipulated we were. If we don’t have that kind of strength, we need to find people, and maybe a god, who will love us until we love ourselves enough to develop it.

Recovery is possible. True, some never make it. Others don’t become sober until after decades of trying. For a few, it’s a simple matter of making a decision and finding a bit of support. We don’t all enter the field as equals. Life isn’t fair that way.

Learning to Love and Be Loved

As long as we are alive, though, it is not too late.

In my work as a chaplain, I am blessed when I can be with someone at the end of her life, even if she’s dying from the effects of too much drinking. One woman I knew never did stop drinking. Since she kept surprising medical personnel by bouncing back from near death, she may have thought she was invincible.

At the end, her mind was so compromised, she could not have benefited from treatment. She could, however, benefit from being loved.

So I sat with her. I visited her at the hospital and at her home. Early on, I encouraged her to try treatment, or at least stop stumbling off to the market to buy beer. Sometimes she made promises she couldn’t keep. When she failed, I didn’t chastise her. I just let her know I still cared.

Loving Over and Over Again

It’s not easy to love someone who’s killing herself, especially if she’s family. People lost in their addiction are not always kind. The woman I visited could get angry and spiteful. I do not judge any family member who chooses to stay away.

Addiction can be so tragic. Even after many years of sobriety, a person can relapse. To bounce back from tragedy takes incredible resilience, and to transform that tragedy into something of value takes generosity and courage.

So keep trying. Find support, heal your shame, and learn to fail. Over and over. Because if we try again and again, eventually we will find success.

In faith and fondness,

Barbara

Credits

1. Carlson, Laurie. Thomas Edison for Kids : His Life and Ideas, 21 Activities, Chicago Review Press, 2006, 60.
2. Ibid 118.
3. Ibid 6.
4. Sandstrom, Auburn, “A Phone Call,” All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown, ed. Catherine Burns, New York: Crown, 2017, 162-166.
5. Maté, Gabor, “The Power of Addiction and the Addiction to Power: Gabor Maté Transcript,” The Singju Post, June 19, 2014, https://singjupost.com/power-addiction-addiction-power-gabor-mate-transcript/, accessed 3/17/18.
6. Forman, Howard, “Mr. Smith’s Recovery: Why We Should Never Give Up On Addicts,” U.S. News, June 17, 2015, https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2015/06/17/mr-smiths-recovery-why-we-should-never-give-up-on-addicts, accessed 3/14/18.
7. Wong, Kristin, “The 6 Steps to Turning Setbacks Into Advantages,” New York Times, Smarter Living, January 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/smarter-living/six-stages-of-setbacks-help-growth.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=MarLLActives&mcdt=2018-03&subid=MarLLActives&ad-keywords=AudDevGate, accessed 3/16/18.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Copyright © 2018 Barbara E. Stevens