What will it really take to reduce drug abuse in the world?

No, not more law enforcement efforts to reduce the production and transportation of illegal drugs.  This question has a basic economic component – as long as the demand is greater than the supply, the war on drugs will be lost.  So, how do we reduce the demand for drugs?  We must learn why people turn to drugs in the first place and we must stop buying into the belief that drug addiction is a disease and one that affects only the weak!

I have always felt that more compassion and understanding were needed for people who found themselves addicted to drugs or alcohol, not punishment, and yet, I wasn’t aware of the research that might support my feelings.  Then I read Dr. Gabor Maté’s book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, and I felt so validated in my view of this deeply concerning human experience.  This book opened my eyes and my heart to the underlying reasons that someone might turn to substances to soothe a painful internal landscape.  What Dr. Maté highlights is that addiction is a normal, natural response to emotional loss which is traumatizing to the human spirit. In other words, addiction soothes the pain of trauma.  So, drugs work – even if only to temporarily separate, or dissociate from the internal emotional pain of our traumatizing experiences.  And sometimes drugs may be the only reliable source of comfort that is available.  Sad, but true and I know many people find this fact hard to believe, especially when they have not walked in the shoes of the people they judge.  Then, when it happens in our own families, it becomes even harder to accept because we must take some accountability and responsibility for the depth of the pain that our loved ones feel.

Now, not all individuals that experience early childhood trauma will turn to drugs, so further research is needed to better understand the relationship between adverse childhood events and dissociation through addiction to manage overwhelming, painful emotions.  What some more recent research has shown is that there is another factor to consider in the equation, alexithymia.  A normal part of our development as children is learning how to understand and express emotions in order to regulate our emotional environment and we learn this by observing and exchanging emotions with our caregivers.  However, when children experience developmental trauma this lesson is impossible to learn, impairing our ability to deal with our emotional experiences and alexithymia develops, which is simply the difficulty to identify, describe, and feel our emotional states.

Early research suggested that men may experience alexithymia more than women, possibly due to the underlying beliefs found in a patriarchal societal culture that values logic and reason over intuition and emotion.  However, with the emerging research that is looking at the association between trauma, alexithymia and dissociation in the role of addiction, it appears that trauma disrupts the ability to process emotions in both genders equally.  Patriarchy only adds another layer of complexity, as this culture informs men – and thus women trying to succeed in a man’s world – that emotions are not valued and reflect some weakness in character.

These research findings bring much awareness to how the human spirit needs emotional connection with others who can nurture both our rational and intuitive intelligence, both our ability to feel and to understand our emotions, and ultimately express our emotions so that our actions can be guided, and not driven by them.  I found this research quite calming to my own spirit, not only because it validated my personal experience but because it validates a new approach to healing addiction, one that comes from a place of compassion and great appreciation for the resiliency of the human spirit instead of through further traumatization supported by the current, failing war on drugs.  This new approach is growing from a broader and deeper understanding of what is considered developmental trauma, which I will write more about in my next Talk Therapy reflection, and the need to help people put words to their powerful, sometimes overwhelming, emotional experiences of the past in order to face the pain and fear head on, because if you can’t feel it, you can’t heal it.

We all can make a difference in reducing the demand for drugs and decrease the incidence of addiction.  My recommendation in doing so is to look into the research that supports that addiction is a symptom, not a disease.  From this deeper understanding, embrace the idea that we are all born with emotions and emotions are a significant part of our intelligence.  Once there, commit to being a better role model to the people in your life by openly expressing your emotions and not just the “positive” ones – all of them, including disappointment, rage, guilt, shame – as all emotions are vital parts of our wholeness and well-being.

If you want to take the first step on the path of deeper understanding of addiction, click on the link below to read a recent study that explores the relationship between developmental trauma, dissociation, and alexithymia: