What separates me from those souls living lives tortured by addiction to drugs and alcohol?
Not much!
I know luck and Divine intervention played a big roll in the way my life turned out.
My parents were alcoholics and two of my three brothers died because of their addictions. I am thankful my one remaining brother, Dave, found Alcoholics Anonymous and sobriety many years ago.
Just because I didn’t turn to substances doesn’t mean I escaped unscathed by addiction. I found a more socially acceptable form, and it made me sick.
The more I work with people, the more I realize many of us have an ‘aholic’ running our lives.
While I escaped addiction to drugs and alcohol, my form of addiction was erosive and detrimental to my health. My addiction was greatly encouraged and valued by others, making it tricky to stop.
It became a part of my identity for a long time, until it nearly took me out.
I was a workaholic. Internal pain drove my addiction; it robbed me of life and made me sick.
Through the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, a renowned addiction expert, author, and speaker who worked in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, I’ve come to understand what laid beneath my addiction.
He says addiction isn’t about moral failure or genetics; addictions of all varieties are rooted in trauma.
Whether it’s being a workaholic, shopaholic, sexaholic, over-eating, overuse of the internet, or drug/alcohol use, helping people heal from trauma is the answer.
According to Maté, “trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. Trauma is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling, and more defended.”
In his 2009 award-winning book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Maté revealed that the neuro-biological source of addiction is rooted in trauma. Our brains and nervous systems are influenced by trauma and each person responds differently to traumatic situations.
According to Maté, our lives are shaped by the invisible force of trauma, which affects the way we live, love, and see the world.
In speaking of people who’re addicted, he wrote, “the painful longing in their hearts reflects something of the emptiness that may also be experienced by people with apparently happier lives.”
Trauma creates a sense of emptiness or pain, causing us to seek outside of ourselves to soothe this feeling with substances, objects, or pursuits.
Addictions of all kinds are an attempt to soothe an insatiable inner need and to quell painful feelings arising from trauma, but the beast is never truly fed with these attempts to soothe.
I believe we’ve all experienced a collective trauma as we’ve navigated the pandemic and the challenges of the past year. I’m curious about how we’ll all emerge as the world opens up. Understanding more about trauma and how it may show up in our lives is important.
It’s timely that a new movie, The Wisdom of Trauma, featuring Maté, will be premiered from June 8-14.
In this movie, Maté shares his vision for a trauma-informed society, offering us hope of healing what drives addiction, pain, and troubling behaviours. The movie is only available during this seven-day period.
I encourage you to check out the website and learn more about the cycles of trauma. There’s even a wonderful free download of The Wisdom of Trauma; Companion Booklet.
Addictions of all kinds are indeed the shadow of our society, and according to Maté, “No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow.”
His vision is to create a trauma-informed society.
As we get curious about what drives the insatiable urge of any addiction, we move closer to creating a more compassionate society and truly breaking the cycles of trauma and addiction.
This important work of being trauma informed may be for others, or for ourselves.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.