The Real Truth About Addiction (with Michael Easter)

[@9liveslisa]

Great conversation. There are addicts/alcoholics who refuse to get help and stop their self-destructiveness. It's very hard for the people around them to watch them slowly kill themselves even when help is available.

[@ryancohen5580]

I to was drawn to extreme experiences, ended up addicted to iv meth use after two tours to Afghanistan with the Royal marine commando’s. Worked to love myself again and my family now I have extreme connection happy life and career 10 years clean

[@smkd42066]

That's awesome 👌

[@haywood1980]

A lot of addicts I’ve known have started because they needed to escape trauma. I’ve yet to meet anyone where they weren’t trying to escape something traumatic. I’m not an alcoholic, but I did have a period of time where I was experiencing extreme panic attacks and self medicated. People who knew thought I was just overdoing it with the drinking and thought I was looking to just get drunk. However, my thought process turned from alcohol being a fun, social lubricant to that is where I can find relief from the panic attacks. I saw it solely as the thing that brought relief and quieted my mind, which meant it was no longer fun to drink. It merely had a function. Absolute worst time period of my life for sure, and I would extremely caution anyone not to self medicate, as it can be a slippery slope. Having gone through that, I view addiction and things in much different light than before. I know many people out there that are just trying to get by and they need a great deal of compassion. I’m currently trying to wean off of pain medication, after an accident that almost took my life. I’ve learned through becoming physically habituated to it and working with doctors and other health professionals, that they know very little about the true experience of weaning someone off and rely too heavily on data in their approach. They always say “well studies show you should be able to go down this much and these are the symptoms you’ll experience in accordance”. That’s not how it works and if they would start listening to patients individually during the process, rather than relying on data, I think many more people would be able to successfully get off alcohol or drugs. I know from reading the data, and knowing that my body doesn’t react the way it “should” to most medications, that the data doesn’t support what my pace of weaning should be. My doctor retorts with how studies show a 10% decrease has minimal effects, if at all, but my body is having significant responses to it. With so many people being dishonest about pain medication especially, doctors think you’re trying to pull one over. Really, you’re just trying to make decisions based on what you know. It’s a tough area for everyone involved, so I get where they’re coming from.

[@bakerwannabe4435]

This is good info. Thank you. I think we would all be better off if when we feel we need help or direction or the need to feel better, if we could reach out and talk with someone at that moment, it would help. Instead, if we feel that way and if we have insurance, we have to find out who we can talk to, try to get an appointment, spend lots of time figuring it out, make an appointment, wait 3 weeks to get in- a good luck finding that after typical work hours. If you don’t have insurance, it’s very difficult to find at all unless you have extra money in an account that you can use and most of us don’t. Most of us are in the middle where we don’t meet the income requirements to get help and it not costs us. So yeah, I totally see why it’s so much easier to reach for a substance or something else that can lead to addiction. Of course, that’s not optimal but we need a better way to get help now.

[@bethankrzowski4553]

Euphoric recall...short term gratification long term consequences the addict ditatches from for various reasons...long term affects on brain chemistry included. As a recovering addict this makes sense.

[@GoJojo-lv6zi]

Thank you for having and sharing this conversation! It's opening my eyes to the why behind some compulsive vices. I love the face-to-face setup as well.

[@vincentpham8605]

Being a recovering weed addict I like the nuance of this conversation. We did the drug because it worked. But what are we running from? And one of the reasons it's hard to get clean is because there's so many pieces of your life you have to clean up AND meet the new clean you which can be very uncomfortable at times. Not to mention the pain of detoxing. Lucky my detox wasn't too bad.

[@vivianworden]

This man has a textbook analysis of addiction. If you want a front row seat on how it starts and how the vice is tightened around you. Look no further than Matthew Perry's book, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. This book bridges that gap between those who have studied addiction from the safety of never being in its grasp to the living nightmare it is.

[@joywebster2678]

They both just said they had addictions???

[@joywebster2678]

Society has dropped meaning and having realistic meaningful goals, vs materialistic goals as those are secondary. So if your family unit doesnt unite around a common purpose ( may be spiritual which includes being in nature, religion, community service, stuff outside selfish intent), you get distant individuals cohaniting, and no one parenting, and the inner development of morals, conscious, social awareness, and existing outside of emotion, doesnt happen. So their is an inner vacancy, vacuousness, that begs for real experience and connection. Sadly substances are way to easy to get and then away goes the addiction train. In these cases its why not, not why? Yes there are childhood traumas, always have been, but again an intact purpose driven family has less of them than a broken, hands off enabling household that teaches zero coping skills to their kids.