I want you to know Mark that you have been completely forgiven.  Not for some of the bad things that you have done but 100% forgiven for all the harm you have caused others and mostly harm you have brought upon yourself.  I want you to feel like a thousand pounds has been lifted off your chest.  I want you to experience the freedom that comes with letting go completely.  A new slate is being presented to you to work with.  Love yourself, like yourself, make the right choices.  Run from evil, turn away from temptation.  Most of all do the right thing when no ones looking.

Mark R

Some people use drugs

Some people use sex

Some people turn to the bottle

Some turn to violence becoming plain thugs

Others keep moving or don’t move at all

Then there are those adrenaline junkies going full throttle

So many of us obessed with being perfect, having control and making money

Running from people who did not show love

Running from people who loved them too much

Running from abusers, prepetrators and nightmares there of

Running to escape nightmares that haunt them

Running from responsibility

Or taking on too much

All of this running just to escape someone or something

Never realizing that what they are running from is themselves

We spend so much time searching to fill some big void

Looking for love, acceptence and approval

Searching to fulfill that wounded child that just wants to be hugged

Stop running

Sit still

 The search is over

Embrace your power

Change your mind

Listen to your heart

The answer has been there all along

written by Lise Thompson (Counsellor)

It needs to be more accepted that changing takes time.  Most people have either thoughts or dreams of using soon after they stop or enter treatment.  There is nothing “wrong” with this.  It might be disconcerting to those who just want it all to go away but it is also very normal.  Intense desires such as those that fuel the process of addiction are not shed overnight.   The other drawback to this unsaid phenomenon is that substance abusers trying to quit start to feel like failures when they have cravings and urges!  How debilitating!  You are not failing or bad at recovery if you have urges to use, even intense thoughts.  You are also not failing recovery if you lapse or relapse.  What? How so?  You do not have to go back to ground zero if you relapse.  You just need to turn around and observe what you just tripped on then keep on going.  Brush yourself off.  You do not have to delve deeper into a full-blown relapse or beat yourself up.  Natural feelings of guilt will arise as your behavior is going against your values of wanting to quit, but it does not have to carry deeper into shame.  Shame is feeling bad about yourself while guilt is feeling bad about your behavior.  Therefore, just having dreams, thoughts, and cravings to use does not mean you are doing recovery wrong.  It means you are a normal person trying to quit something that has had strong chemical and psychological holds on your whole person.  It also means it has been the number one way to cope and deal with everyday life and until your newly acquired skills are fully developed, you will sometimes want to resort back to what feels best.  But remember, just because you WANT to resort back and want to use, does not mean you HAVE TO use.

This idea or line of thinking that I am describing goes for so much more than just addiction.  In our society, we hold addiction to an unintelligently different standard of expectations for change.  Most people take a while to change behaviors/states such as anger, upset, smoking, eating, exercise, depression, anxiety, workaholism, sex, etc.  These same people relapse MANY TIMES!!  But for some reason people with substance abuse problems should get over them more quickly than everyone else who has unwanted, unhealthy behavior.  Interesting, huh?

Here at Crossroads we encourage clients to discuss both sides of their ambivalence: the side that wants to quit and the side that isn’t quite on board yet, or sometimes the side that really enjoys using and doesn’t want to stop.  Carl Jung (famous Depth psychologist) talks about a concept called Shadow which holds aspects of ourselves we suppress away that we don’t want to see or express.  Eventually, our shadow finds ways to be seen.  It is easier to reflect on the unwanted parts of us and get to know them.  Sometimes they will teach us things that no other part of ourselves could teach.  It is like the saying, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” which illustrates the idea that you can do something about your shadow side of cravings and urges if you know them and explore them.  If you hide them and push them away they will find weird ways out that do not reach your conscious mind.  Basically you won’t know what you are up against.

My thoughts are you might as well talk about what you feel/experience because you are already feeling/experiencing it. Don’t be afraid to explore all parts of you because they all lead to healing.  Just because we have thoughts that scare us doesn’t mean those thoughts are who we are.  Those of you early in recovery or even long time in recovery, allow those thoughts to come to the surface and find a safe person to share them with.  Find a way to give them voice so that voice becomes less powerful. Do not feel like a failure, or that you won’t succeed in treatment or recovery because you have urges, thoughts, feelings, even yearnings about your using life.  You are always up against the choice of how you want to live your life and the more choices you make in one direction the more ingrained that way of life becomes.  It can always be changed.  So let yourself be open to the exploration process of all parts of you and there will be less shame.  Put it all on the table so you know what you are working with and you’ll be further along than if you didn’t.

Post written by: Jason McCarty, Outpatient Therapist

The reason I bring this up is the other day I was holding my son and had a very annoying itch in my ear that I desperately wanted to scratch. I couldn’t scratch it because I was trying to get him to sleep so as you can imagine, the itch became more intense. It made me think of addiction and urge-surfing right in that moment so I tried it. Instead of wanting it to go away or scratching it, I just felt it, observed it, and allowed it to be there with no action. Don’t get me wrong, it was partially driving me crazy and it felt like a bug was tickling my ear, but also just observing this as what it was allowed me to ride it out. I can’t actually recall if it went away totally but it certainly lessened from when it first began to itch.

The experience I had with my itchy ear helped me to better understand the internal process of addiction. I don’t mean to demean or lessen the intensity of addiction by comparing it to my itchy ear (smile) but in many ways it is similar. Ultimately, cravings are an experience in the mind/body. Addiction is also an experience. It’s not a disease in your body that forces you to use like a robot. It is something experiential. Therefore, in many ways, experiential approaches to overcoming cravings and addiction will be quite beneficial to a substance abuser. One may need to have some clean time under their belt to be able to withstand the urge-surfing, but it can eventually be a useful tool.

So is addiction one huge itch? No. Cravings are one big itch and addiction is the constant scratching. Just because any of us feel something compelling doesn’t mean we have to act and often times, if we wait it out, it goes away or subsides to a tolerable level. I would encourage you to start trying urge-surfing with things like an itch in your body, or a desire for a coffee or sweets, or a negative emotion. Instead of “doing something”, just feel it, let it wash over you, and know it’s only a sensation.

Post written by: Jason McCarty, Outpatient therapist

If you are addicted, this mindset can also benefit you. Seeing the process a little more realistically will help to keep the discouragement at bay. Know that if you stay on the road to recovery and seek help, you will get clean. There might be ups and downs but that doesn’t mean you’re not going forward. Give yourself some time. Change is a combination of baby steps and periodic leaps. It takes time.

Post written by: Jason McCarty, Outpatient Therapist

The client who actually isn’t ready for treatment did not choose to quit yet.  I even say that statement with caution because we don’t really know this.  People are complicated and our resistances are there to protect us, whether one calls it denial or something else.  Someone may go to treatment and come across a personality type in their counsellor that keeps them from moving forward with being open.  We all then decide that client isn’t ready.  This may or may not be true.  What is going on behind a person’s resistance and defenses is not knowable until it is.  We can make some general assumptions and logical inductions, but we don’t really know what is or isn’t motivating that person.  Let’s say that client did not make the choice to really quit, that his/her parents, spouse, friends, etc, pushed her/him to come to treatment.  That client has not yet made the first decision in the process of recovery.  The first decision is to stop and want a different life.

Isn’t that enough?  Wouldn’t that motivate someone to get clean?  No, not completely.  Someone could decide to stop, go to treatment, but not fully benefit.  They say they want to stop but yet, seem to be standing still.  There is an old adage in the addiction treatment community that if you want to change you have to change everything.  That can be quite scary to most people.

So what does the second decision consist of then?  The second decision is to move forward with doing the work. We talk quite often in the addiction treatment world of “doing the work”, and this really entails the examining, changing, and processing of one’s emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and relationships, to keep it simple. Doing the hard work sometimes is about being vulnerable enough to allow other human beings to help. Doing the hard work sometimes means exploring events of the past that continue to keep one stuck.  Doing the hard work sometimes means deciding who one wants to be.  Doing the hard work sometimes means taking medication.  Doing the hard work sometimes means taking more responsibility for one’s life.  Although I describe this as hard work, it can be, and usually is, very rewarding and transforming.  The pain that most people are in emotionally is about the fear of their pain, not the actual pain.  Facing our own demons and pain is not as painful or scary as the fear about having that pain.

To quit and be successful, these two decisions might need to be revisited or renewed often in early recovery.  It is also important to determine what one needs in order to follow through with both decisions.  Sometimes that is support from others.  Other times it is letting go.  I have watched clients stay “on deck” like a batter on a baseball team and not step up to the plate.  It is like they are in a holding cell.  This assessment is not a negative judgment toward those clients, it’s just where they are.  I wonder, “what does this person need to move into the batter’s box?”  They’ve obviously decided to play this game (i.e. recovery, treatment, counselling) but they sure are having a hard time “getting in there.”  As practitioners it is our job to help them navigate fears and hesitations so they can step in when they are ready.  Once they make that choice, the recovery process becomes a lot more doable.  There is no cure here, or arrival, but the second choice is necessary in the way any of us change something about our lives – we actually have to DO something.

Lastly, I want to say this is my own observation in doing this work for several years.  The change process is quite complicated and this portrayal is only an aspect.  Take it for what it is worth.

Two Decisions:

1. To Stop
2. To Do the Work (actually start changing)

Post written by:  Jason McCarty, Outpatient Therapist

I will let someone else explain this better than I and then discuss.  Yang (2009) writes:

According to Fromm, freedom is unavoidably tied to responsibility and destiny. Responsibility is equated with authorship.  Jean-Paul Sartre (1956) wrote that to be responsible is to be “the uncontested author of an event or thing” (p. 633). To be aware of responsibility is to be aware of creating one’s own self, destiny, life predicament, feelings, and, if such be the case, one’s own suffering. Sartre, like Fromm, believes that human beings are doomed to freedom.  Again, a paradox. (p. 184).

How can discussing freedom sound so negative and depressing??!!  No one ever said the existentialists were a bubbly sort and their writings definitely struggle with the sunnier side of life, but they do write about human realities. We are in a paradox.  We do fear our own freedom.  We do fear our own sense of responsibility.  It can feel like walking a plank.  It can make us want to run Home or stay in bed.

Addiction is also a paradox.  It can serve both as a way to avoid, as well as, a way to discover.  It can be a way one’s psyche forces them to take responsibility.  The only way out of addiction is to take responsibility and confront one’s freedom.  I have seen adolescents and people in their twenties arrive in addiction because so much was done for them by parents that they don’t know how to stand on their own two feet.  Addiction is a way to cope with that but it is also a way to change the dynamics in the relationship so drastically that parents can no longer “rescue” their “child” and that child is forced, by their own accord, to grow up, take responsibility, and live life.  This becomes a choice for the person in addiction.  Do they want freedom?  Without choice and responsibility, we have no freedom.

As the quote stated above, the scariest thing about responsibility and freedom is that it is ultimately up to us to create our life, “to be the uncontested author” of our lives.  We create our predicament.  “No, not me, the government screwed me, my parents have wronged me, my boss is unfair, my family won’t talk to me, I have a disability, I’m clinically depressed!!!”  We all have limitations, and some more than others, but the only true way out of them is to realize what responsibility we do have for our feelings, our thoughts, and our lives.  There are also limits to freedom, and accepting and realizing this will help to “experience” freedom within those limits.

But why is it so scary to be the author of our lives?  That’s what we want isn’t it???  Yes and no.  If it is all up to us, then we are very much to blame.  We don’t’ want to hear that.  We don’t want to feel like failures in a world that expects perfection the first time.  We want a place to lay blame if it doesn’t work out.  “I’m not clean because that treatment center sucks!”  “I cheated on my wife because she won’t have sex with me.”  “You made me angry.”  “I can’t go after my dreams because my mother needs me to take care of her.”  Even the things we think are to blame are choices we make.  We already are the author’s of our lives but we can often ignore that.

Accepting responsibility for everything, gives us freedom.  Realizing we make choices everyday, and accept responsibility for those choices, gives us freedom.  Freedom is scary, but once we step into it, it is liberating.  We are all looking for some aspect of liberation, but ultimately we are needing full liberation from ourselves – that part of ourselves that gets in the way of freedom: our fear.

Hoffman, L., Yang, M., Kaklauskas, F., & Chan, A. (2009). Existential Psychology East-West. University of the Rockies Press: Colorado.

Written by Jason McCarty, Outpatient Therapist

I pick it up from time to time to be re-energized and motivated to take on this daunting task of helping people overcome their addiction.  Today I read a paragraph that I would like to share.  It describes well Crossroads’ bio-psycho-social-spiritual philosophy.  It also helps to really show the existential reasons for continued, chronic use.

Mate (2008) writes, “Like patterns in a tapestry, recurring themes emerge in my interviews with addicts: the drug as emotional anesthetic; as an antidote to a frightful feeling of emptiness; as a tonic against fatigue, boredom, alienation and a sense of personal inadequacy; as stress reliever and social lubrication. And, as in Stephen Reid’s description, the drug may – if only for a brief instant – open the portals of spiritual transcendence.  In places high and low these themes blight the lives of hungry ghosts everywhere”(p. 32).

I like his use of the word “themes.”  As human beings we are all faced with these themes in our lives.  None of us are exempt from these struggles and none of us make it out unscathed.  Further, we all have found imperfect ways of coping with these major human needs and experiences.  Addiction to drugs and alcohol is only one imperfect way of answering these needs.  We all have mini-addictions that are there to gain our attention and let us know we are missing something.  Overcoming addiction and leading healthy lives is about listening – listening to the finger pointing of addiction in all of us.  The finger is pointing at you and your needs.  When we ignore this, we are “addicted”; when we pay attention, we are free.

Written by Jason McCarty, Outpatient Therapist

Written by Jason McCarty, Outpatient therapist

While it is very important to draw boundaries with addicted loved ones, cutting them off from your relationship is not the answer (sometimes it may be).  You do not have to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side to begin managing boundaries better.  We can easily get ourselves caught in enabling behaviors.  It becomes a gradual process intended to help and protect and then we fear if we don’t continue they will end up dead on the street.  This catastrophic fear is not helpful either.  It can keep you stuck in the cycle.  The key is to find boundaries, smaller ones, that communicate the loved one what you will tolerate and what you won’t.   When they use in the house or when they come around high, it makes you or the kids or whoever scared, uncomfortable and angry.  You do not want this happening anymore.  You might stop giving them money, but will feed them.  You may have begun to learn their manipulations and start calling them on that.  Allow yourself to care for yourself just as much as you care for your loved one who is addicted.

People in addiction are still people.  Instead of focusing on them stopping their use, focus on what you don’t like about what they do in the relationship.  Not much of what you will do or say will get them to stop using directly.  But you can draw boundaries that protect yourself emotionally and mentally around their behaviors.  This way, as you speak from your experience in the relationship, they will not feel like you are trying to change them.  They will lose interest in being in relationship with you if they feel like you need them to stop using.  Keep them close to you in relationship so that when there are moments to discuss using and stopping, they will feel open enough to speak with you.

This is love.  Love is not tough.  Further, Love is not meeting all their needs, or doing too much for them because of fear.  I mentioned to a group of moms one time that all their worrying and attempts to control their addicted children were not even doing anything.  It is an illusion that our worries and attempts at control are doing anything.

Lastly, this is not easy!  Living with or being in relationship with someone who is addicted can be maddening, confusing, and downright unfair!  You might not have the energy to help anymore, or their might be other reasons why you need to cut them off from your life.  Physical safety, emotional abuse, and constant boundary crossing on their part need to be addressed appropriately by you.  You must care for yourself and/or your children while the addiction is running rampant.  But doing so in the name of “tough love” is not actually helpful.  If you have the energy and want to help this person, find a balance between enabling and cutting off.  It is all about balance when we decide to do things differently.

If you live near Kelowna, Crossroads has a group for friends and family called the Impact Group that meets every other Monday evening at 7pm.  We also offer outpatient counseling to those with addiction and/or their families and friends.  Check out our website for more information on these programs.

Written by Jason McCarty, Outpatient Therapist