Honesty in Addiction Recovery

During their active addiction, before addiction recovery, addicts live in a world of pretension, half-truths, exaggerations, rationalizations, justifications, and flat out lies. These are mostly defense mechanisms to protect what the addicts thinks is holding it all together, the drug of their choice. From the outside it appears insane when an alcoholic’s dishonest about something that’s destroying him/her. When a heroin addict lies, cheats and steals to get a little more heroin, to the non-addict it seems to make no sense at all that a drug could be that important. Is the alcoholic or heroin addict having so much fun that they’ll violate all trust to get what they want? I doubt the addict is having any fun at all at this point. In the addicts’ mind they need the drug to keep going, to keep from losing their mind, to keep from suffering mentally and emotionally, to function.

In the later stages of alcoholism, withdrawal from alcohol can be fatal, and for the heroin addict withdrawal feels like dying. Addiction recovery seems impossible. Withdrawal can be so painful that it cancels out reason and judgement. The craving feels like a matter of survival, so, yes, the addict will lie to keep from getting in this condition. In early stages, though, the lies are merely a defense against the judgement of others. No one wants to see themselves, or have others see them, as someone who can’t handle alcohol or is a junkie or something like that. Out of pride most addicts in the early stages will make excuses for their excesses and periodically strange behavior. At this point the person still has some control over the drug, so they can straighten up for a while to prove they don’t have a problem.

The addict might be totally honest in business and in general, but when it comes to the addict’s drug of choice there’s growing dishonesty. In treatment and addiction recovery we stress rigorous honesty and try to break down the denial the addict has built to protect their drug of choice. It’s critical that the addict in recovery looks at the addiction with rigorous honesty. This takes a while. At first, it’s a simple decision to admit there’s a problem, then it’s a process of becoming more and more honest as treatment/recovery feels more comfortable, and as they witness others in the group become more honest. It’s not surprising when someone in early recovery still minimizes the problem — it’s not necessarily a sign that the person will relapse — it just takes time to become rigorously honest. As long as the person is still taking recovery type actions, there’s hope.