Addictions

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

I took a Pill in Ibiza

To show Avicii I was cool

And when I finally got sober, felt 10 years older

But damn it, it was something to do

I'm living out in LA

I drive a sports car just to prove

I'm a real big baller cause I made a million dollars

And I spend it on girls and shoes

But you don't wanna be high like me

Never really knowing why like me

You don't ever wanna step off that roller coaster and be all alone

You don't wanna ride the bus like this

Never knowing who to trust like this

You don't wanna be stuck up on that stage singing

Stuck up on that stage singing

All I know are sad songs, sad songs

Darling, all I know are sad songs, sad songs

“I took a Pill in Ibiza” released by Mike Posner in 2015

Addiction. Most people think addiction is a behavioural problem, a weakness issue or a moral failure.  Be it about substances, bad choices or lack of discipline. But according to modern science and somatic psychology, an addiction is a survival strategy for a nervous system that didn’t feel safe. It is an attempt by a dysregulated nervous system to feel something it cannot create on its own. It’s not about sugar, sex, alcohol, drugs, smoking, phones or work. It’s about that state inside your body that these things help to soothe temporarily. To create a moment of safety with the help of an external repetition. And that repetition provides a safety that a body cannot find or fulfil within itself. Trauma is essentially the soil in which addiction starts to grow. And that addiction slowly becomes the body’s way of breathing when trauma has held its breath for too many years.

A healthy nervous system knows how to move between activation and rest. It rises, falls, stabilizes and returns to rest state again. A traumatized system does not. When a childhood environment lacks safety- whether through emotional neglect, inconsistency, chaos, criticism, loneliness or simply lack of an attuned presence, the child learns to survive without regulation. The body of the child becomes a storm it must endure. This is too much for a child to bear. Too much for their brains to process. This imprints a deep biological truth for the child- “I am in pain and I am on my own.” Addiction then appears in life as a companion, a stabilizer and a temporary anchor. Where there was no healthy regulation provided to a child from the environment, addiction plunges the body into developing chemical regulation, behavioural regulation or an intensity based coping mechanism. It does not matter what the substance or the provider of the regulation is, be it alcohol, junk food, cocaine, weed, cigarettes, porn, being a workaholic or being glued to the screen. The functions of these addictions are what matters. How they soothe and what they soothe.

Traumatic events reshape our internal world long before addictions set in. The amygdala which is the brains’ alarm centre is learnt to stay on high alert. Even calmness feels like a threat. The body becomes a place of constant anticipation. The hormone dopamine which regulates motivation, pleasure and confidence is lowered to a flat baseline creating hopelessness. In this state, food, alcohol, work, sex or screens do what the body’s internal natural chemistry cannot. These things give a momentary rise in kick to the body. Then the body craves for more. And you give birth to an addiction.

Addiction is not defeat. It is a physiological consequence arising out of a high threat, low pleasure and a weakened control in the body. If the body is hyper aroused, it seeks sedation by means of food, weed, scrolling and binge watching. These turn the internal screams into whispers. If the body is collapsed or hypo aroused, the body seeks sex, work, drama, achievement. This brings a jolt into a numb nervous system. No matter what the addiction is, the pattern is the same. The body simply reaches for what balances it.

Every addiction follows a cycle in the body-mind system. First there is internal discomfort like shame, tension, emptiness or even rage. The addiction then brings a moment of relief or intensity. This leads to a temporary regulation where body chemistry shifts and the body seems to stabilize. Then comes shame and collapse. This makes the body dip even lower.  The discomfort or wound resurfaces. The body reaches for the addictive substance again. And it repeats again. This is not a lack of will power. This is the cycle of a nervous system just trying to survive its own biology by way of chemistry.

Human beings bond with what regulates them. If a caregiver soothed you, you bond easily with people. If a substance soothed you, you bond with that substance. This bond is not even a slightest bit emotional. It’s purely somatic. It’s felt in the body because of the sensations that arise in the physicality. Under the skin of any addiction lies a story of a child who needed soothing and did not receive it. The child then learns to soothe through fantasy, denial or hyper- dependence. This is a fawn response. Adulthood simply upgrades these strategies into addictions that carry the same function but with more charge. Hence an addiction is a pull that wraps around a physiology with unmet needs. It is the body trying to love you the only way it knows. To keep you alive. To pacify the unbearable. To protect you from feeling pain from the emotional storms raging in your fascia and tissues. To main a homeostasis in a body that carried far too much for far too long.

When we meet addictions with compassion rather than shame, it is a step taken towards understanding and healing from trauma. And true healing is not about pausing or dissolving the addictive behaviour. It is simply about giving the chassis, the pelvic region, the throat and the spine to regain the felt sense of a safer internal world. Somatic Experiencing® helps to discharge the story in the body that the addiction is feeding as under every addictive urge is a body saying- “There is something I never got to feel.” Somatic Experiencing® heals addictions by giving the body the capacity, the safety and the regulation that the behaviour provided hence making the addictive power null and unnecessary. And with healing comes an inner vibrancy. To experience life. To simply live life. Without a pill. For the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

“The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. He might get burned, but he's in the game. And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll Beat his wings 'til he burns them black... No, The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. . .The Moth don't care if The Flame is real, 'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal. And nothing fuels a good flirtation, Like Need and Anger and Desperation... No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real. . .” ― Aimee Mann, an American Songwriter.

“Addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you–it’s the cage you live in.”– Johann Hari