UFO Info Week-End

Part of the process involves allowing that everyone makes mistakes addictive natures are often perfectionist we can learn from them and we can apologise

Part of the process involves allowing that everyone makes mistakes (addictive natures are often perfectionist); we can learn from them and we can apologise when we hurt others.All human beings can benefit from creative work, healthy hobbies, supportive friends and a loving family. When things go wrong and things become too hard to bear or when childhood influences still dominate adult behaviour to an inappropriate degree, all can benefit from any number of therapeutic approaches. This means acknowledging what it is that they are doing in situations that are causing them pain; and recognising what it is that they can change – which is usually their behaviour and attitudes – and what it is they can only accept – usually external circumstances and other people’s attitudes and behaviour. This might seem obvious to everyone else, but the person caught up in the addiction is practised in blaming everyone and everything else for their inability to manage their lives. Once acknowledged, sustained awareness of the tendency to avoid emotionally challenging situations goes a long way to opening the door to alternative behaviour.One of the biggest changes addicts of any kind need to make is to take responsibility for their lives.

The treatment we offer at Promis is based on the “12 steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous, a self-help fellowship founded in the United States 60 years ago by alcoholics helping themselves, and each other, to stay sober. The principles encapsulated in this programme of recovery address the physical, emotional and spiritual nature of the difficulties in which addicts find themselves. The foundation, and indeed the first “step”, is a recognition that there is a problem. But one can not simply stop tranquillisers nor desist from anorexia. Sudden withdrawal from chronic tranquilliser use has a significant risk of suicide and therefore needs to be done gradually over a period of three months.

By contrast, intravenous heroin addiction can be safely and comfortably detoxified (on reducing doses of oral Methadone) over five to 10 days, while cocaine, even crack, addiction usually requires no detoxification at all (hence dispelling the belief that addiction is partly defined by withdrawal symptoms). The double negative of anorexia (how do you get someone not to not do something?) could theoretically best be treated with Naltrexone, blocking the mood-altering effect of starvation for one month while the patient becomes used to group support and to three structured meals daily (excluding sugar and white flour because their mood-altering properties will in due course cause a craving for more, so that anorexia would simply turn into compulsive over-eating or bulimia).In the longer term, the emotional emptiness that underlies all addictive behaviours requires a substitute method of mood alteration, a way of coping with the vicissitudes of life without resorting to blocking out the feelings This is where the long-term work comes in. None the less, it is perfectly possible simply to stop smoking one day and endure the decreasing physical withdrawal symptoms over the next five days. The emotional emptiness and vulnerability that follow putting down the “drug” then illustrate why the addict smoked or used other addictive substances and processes in the first place.

People who have tried to give up smoking know that nicotine chewing gum or patches may become simply alternative addictions. Fortunately, getting off addictive substances or behaviour is generally the most straightforward part of treatment: staying off is the difficult bit The two exceptions are tranquilliser addiction and anorexia. The first essential in the treatment we offer at Promis is abstinence. There is no point in trying to reason with someone who is drunk, nor with trying to get someone on Methadone maintenance (or for that matter someone on regular prescriptions for tranquillisers or anti-depressants) to express subtleties of feeling. Furthermore, they also demonstrate that the vast majority of the population have no addictive tendency, irrespective of the universal capacity to be foolish.The analogy with short sight is useful when it comes to treatment: there may be nothing one can do about having the condition but there is a great deal that can be done day-to-day which takes into account this predisposition so that it no longer disrupts one’s life. Those requiring in-patient treatment will usually have five or six of these characteristics in three, four, or even more addictive outlets. Thus addictive disease varies in intensity from one individual to another, just as many other genetically based conditions (such as short sight) vary in intensity.