Contradictions in Addiction Treatment

At NewDay Counseling, we deal with contradictions. Recovery from alcoholism or some other drug addiction is riddled with contradictions. The addict most often hides the truth, or shades/spins the truth. If you can’t relate to drug addiction, perhaps you can relate to a person who stays in an abusive relationship, or someone who is delusional about their over-eating. If a person is emotionally attached to that which is destroying them, they can’t always see the truth, especially if they’re driven by that strange psychological twist that perceives the person, place or thing that’s destroying them as desirable and needed.

Most of us know someone like this — a person acting in a destructive manner that they minimize or rationalize. The drug addict often protects their drug of choice from the truth because they think the drug is needed to keep it together. When they stop using the drug is when they feel bad and think the world’s coming apart, so of course they’ll come into treatment with this contradiction — the drug is killing them, but they think the drug is vital to their survival.

The person coming into addiction treatment might be compliant due to external pressure from a spouse, employer or judge to get treatment and deal with the addiction problem, but compliance is not acceptance. A person can go through treatment and achieve everything that’s asked of them, but still not accept their drug of choice is the culprit. It’s like a deep love for an abusive spouse that creates a blind spot.

Our job at NewDay Counseling is to not be misled by the contradictions. The client receiving addiction treatment might live in a fantasy world, but we have to stay in reality and point toward the truth. Family members who’re dealing with a love one who’s addicted to a drug often go through the same process — they’re misled for a long time because of the contradictions, but then determine they have to live in reality for their own sanity. This is often called “tough love”. Tough love is telling someone you love the truth even if it drives them away or makes them angry for a period of time.

If we feed into or buy into the delusional world of the addict because it’s easier to go along, we’re only becoming a part of the problem. The solution to addiction is to meet the delusion head-on and find a way to break through the denial. There are different techniques used to break through denial — sometimes the backdoor is the better entrance, rather than breaking down the front door, but the truth has to be discovered and accepted by the addict if recovery is going to happen.