This article is not intended to minimize anyone’s trauma, but to discuss a hidden trauma nobody talks about. In my experience, talk therapy was part of early recovery, and while I was attending these sessions the goal was to dig until you hit the coffin of a dead past, open it, and exchange fists with what’s inside.

The problem with this is that the reason a person started using is often not the reason they can’t stop. Early trauma may open the door, but addiction itself becomes a new, ongoing trauma—one that reshapes identity, nervous system responses, and survival strategies. But nobody seems to want to talk about it like that.

What I am saying is that it is very difficult to practice psychological Judo on a memory while you are still being attacked by your addiction from behind; meanwhile believing that a few mood-altering medications, sitting for hours in a circle nobody wants to be in, and making visualization collages in a treatment center are supposed to be holding off the most immediate threat—even when you’re sober.

Over time, addiction stops being a response to trauma and becomes a trauma-producing system of its own. And this is ignored.

This can be dangerous because, when treatment focuses primarily on why someone started using, it may unintentionally reinforce the idea that the addiction is still serving a necessary protective role: especially when the behavioral modification techniques are lightweight, ineffective, weak as fuck.

It’s like an overweight person walking on a treadmill while eating a pizza.

And the reason this can be so confusing is because most can’t get their mind off the science and protocols. To really make sense of something like human behavior, especially with drugs, I needed to think of addiction as a relationship with another person—personify it. (Click this link for more on that).

So, let’s do that here. . .

If the drug were a person, it brutalizes the addict’s entire body, daily, while telling them they like it, and this goes on for years. If the addict tries to leave the drug, they undergo a level of psychological torment (intense cravings) and physical torture (withdrawal) that essentially the addict insane, to the point where they want to take their own life: this happens more often than most want to believe. If the drug were a person, it destroyed their relationships beyond repair, isolated them from friends and family, and impaired their ability to socialize without it. It constantly stole time, money, got them fired, got them to have unwanted sex, persistently lied, stole opportunities, gaslighting, maybe even put them out on the streets, and I could go on and on.

Tell me that’s not traumatic.  Does that sound like an abusive relationship?

And for the longest time there was nothing the addict could do to stop—helpless and hopeless. This abuse went on for years, some might relate this to a toxic relationship with a narcissist, but I liken it to a case of Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome is a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation. People develop positive feelings toward their captor (the drug) or abuser over time. I would like to add, even to the point of loving and defending their abuser—anything to avoid the awful reality of what is happening to them.

Healing from addiction requires more than understanding the past. It requires breaking a traumatic bond in the present. Altering my addiction identity and nervous system programming took an entire year. It didn’t change when I got sober, it changed when I changed everything: how I breath, think, eat, drink, socialize, self-image, social shifts, career shifts, what I listen to and watch (input), belief system, fucking everything.

Did I want to just quit using and leave almost everything else the same? Hell yeh, I did. I tried it many times too. It never worked.

Why?

Because my addiction was a culmination of the whole. It was all connected.

I changed everything that did not support my sobriety. If a job was not aligned with the Authentic version of me, I changed it. If a woman was not aligned with my needs (not my wants) I changed it. If my diet was not aligned with my health, I would change it. . . As this process went on, it facilitated my innate healing systems, and the past lost all power.

There’s a difference between changing everything that did not support my sobriety and just doing things instead of using my drug of choice.

Why?

We cannot heal ourselves, we are too dumb, but we already have everything in place to heal properly and efficiently. What we can do is facilitate this process, but the system is already set up if we simply get out of its way.

If I cut my finger, I can clean it, protect it with a band-aid, stop doing things that injure it again, and that’s about it. I don’t know how to repair the torn tissue, but my body does. And it’s the same with psychological wounds. Now take that notion and think about repeatedly exposing yourself to a past trauma in the name of therapy.

In my experience, the best way to heal past traumas is to break the current bond with addiction because the way this is done is by facilitating our innate system of healing. Oversimplified, I learned how to ALLOW the healing from my addiction to occur by returning to a natural state. But I can’t even list all the unnatural aspects of our daily lives because it would trigger most in some way.

“I got sober, but I obsessively follow News narratives, barely exercise, drink pop, eat oil, work constantly, scroll until my eyes crack, watch porn, gossip, speak negatively…”

See what I’m saying? Being sober does not equate to healing and growing. This is why people lapse, it’s not because of a memory.

I can’t give all my shifts in perception in this blog post alone. So please, explore this website. Almost all articles interlink; they are all brushstrokes on the big picture. After a few, you will notice that there is a way to make your rise far less difficult, confusing, and much more effective than what you have been experiencing thus far.

I suggest you start here, at Cravings. (hit the link)