The United States of Addiction: A Way Out

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”
- Lewis Mumford

This past February, I had the pleasure of having two telephone conversations about addiction and its impact with Stephanie Brown, Ph.D., psychologist and author. The article that follows reflects Stephanie’s thoughts and mine, based on our conversations.

We live in a culture of addiction in the United States. Stephanie Brown suggests that a hallmark of American culture is addiction, which is directly tied to the fact that Americans believe there are no limits. Each of us has lost control and lost the ability to set limits in our lives such that we’re unconsciously addicted to things like email, a cell phone, Blackberry, alcohol, sugar, or (insert name of stimulant here).

continued…

If we’re living in a culture of shoot first and think later, how do we turn that around?

Brown has some advice. “First, you need to begin to focus on what is real now. Many adult children of alcoholics find that they have to be withdrawing all the time from the pressures of our culture today because it so closely mimics the craziness of their childhood families. Our culture is out of control.”

Brown says, “The adult child of alcoholics doesn’t know what reality is. When they were growing up, anxiety and loss of control surrounded them. Growing up, the adult child seeks their original family everywhere, seeking transference of the past. An adult child cannot make a clear judgment about the present because they are so infected, to the bone, with their childhood experiences.” And it’s not just adult children who are filled with anxiety today. According to Brown, because the culture at large is behaving much like an alcoholic family, that is, toying with control, filled with anxiety, living beyond its means, and denying its limits. We share a state of addiction, which our culture wholly supports. As adult children, we’re equipped with defenses, an inordinate focus on control, and we’re thinking all the time. We’re just not able to relax. “There’s a paradox there,” says Brown. “ACAs are fearful of becoming out of control and anticipate out-of-control scenarios constantly. But, no human being has control all the time.”

In order to get a grip, it seems incredibly important that we become thoughtful, reflective beings. I realize, of course, that this is not an easy task for you or me. Just the idea of being thoughtful is in direct conflict with one of the states of being most common to adult children of alcoholics: being anxious. Can you relate? Becoming thoughtful requires letting go of the need to be mentally in control. We must let go of a very old ‘survival’ behavior that provides only the idea of safety in order to embrace a state of being that builds a stronger core self.

I have some tips for those interested in Slowing Down:

MAKE TIME FOR REFLECTION

* Go for a walk (no iPod)
* Take a stroll around your living space, see and observe what surrounds you and contemplate your environment
* Sit in a comfortable chair and make sure you deeply breathe, while reflecting on your day so far and the rest of the day to come. Reflect on the small choices that made up your day. How did you participate in the world today?

Learning how to become reflective and carving out time for self-reflection in your life will depend on your current environment and habits. It may be an easy alteration for you, or, it may require a retrofitting of your daily routine. What is the first step? “Begin to place a value on becoming self-reflective as a person,” Brown says. “Value the state of self-reflection.” Brown also suggests to come together with family, friends, and the community. “Find those people who are concerned with the fast pace of things. Schedule (literally) time for your family, personal time, during which all technology is turned off. Schedule it! Take action to un-wire, make time with your family to talk to one another, and also everyone should have time for himself and herself too, in the family.”

Brown goes on to point out that people wrongly assume that change takes place at the macro level (“large, sweeping changes”) as if that’s the only way to bettering yourself. However, the reality is that change takes place at incremental levels. “Just start small,” she says. Start by deciding you’re going to reduce your activity level. For example, one less night out, one less errand, class, appointment, etc. Then, do it. You might think that there is nothing in your current life that you can do without, but I bet you’ll find (I have) that you can get away with one or two less commitments.

If you sit and relax, an important question to try to answer is this: What is realistic and what is unrealistic about how you approach your life? What in your life do you expect yourself to do each day and each week and each month? Is it realistic? How high are your personal expectations and standards? Are they realistic or exceedingly high? (Feel free to write these questions on paper.)

I have some tips for identifying and defending your personal limits:

ACCEPT THAT YOU HAVE LIMITS

* Understand and accept that you have limits
* Feel free to say, “Let me get back to you,” before committing to plans and activities or deadlines that’ll make you feel stretched too thin. Don’t feel guilty about saying you need to postpone things till you’re less busy!
* Pare down your activities, work hours, commitments, and schedule time for your own self-reflection

“Cyberspace is limitless,” points out Brown. “But, human beings have limits. There is no way human beings can keep up. Compared to machines, we will fail.” I have reflected on this observation over the weeks, and it’s a keen one. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence, for me, that I’ve struggled with feeling unable to keep up at work since email became part of my work environment. We’re actually smarter than computers (which require human programming), but we’re not faster. We shouldn’t expect ourselves to be as fast as machines.

Not being able to set limits is a culture-wide characteristic that leads, I think, to deep frustration and feelings of worthlessness. Brown agrees and points out that, “The state of lack of limits in our culture is at epidemic proportions.”

Accepting that you have limits is key. It will help us disengage from our culture of addiction. The first step is to accept that you have limits. Yes, you are still okay even with your limits. You must assert your limitations, and have self-respect for yourself while acknowledging your limits. If you don’t believe you are okay even if you can’t do “it all,” then read that again, until you believe it.

If we children of alcoholics don’t have a grip on reality (it is said that we don’t know what “normal” is) then how can we comprehend where our limits begin and end? If your expectations of yourself are sky-high, that may drive to you achieve many amazing things; it’s important that you can simultaneously be realistic about when you’ve done a good job, and give yourself the appreciation you deserve for small, incremental achievements. If we were each raised to believe we were the cause of our mother’s or father’s pain, how do we learn how to disengage from that behavioral habit enough to judge our realities and champion both our goals and limits?

I have more advice: trust yourself. Get to know yourself. Here are three ways I do it:

FOCUS ON THE SELF

* Start getting to know yourself (not the person you become for others) and what you like (and don’t)
* Use a book, or workbook as a tool (Brown recommends her, A Place Called Self, a book and workbook, for both men and women, and there is also, The Child Within workbook by Charles Whitfield)
* Write down who you are (how would someone describe you? how would you describe you?)

“Focus on the self is number one for everybody. It is so important, and hard, for the ACA,” Brown says. “Focus on the self is hard for an ACA who had to focus on their parent and had all the responsibility that ACAs had.” It’s important, she says, to just keep asking yourself, “What’s real?”

Also, Brown recommends that we self-educate. “Learn that you’re not alone. Learn about alcoholism and how it effects ACAs. I recommend 12-Step groups for the sense of community, learning how to focus on the self. I recommend finding ACA groups where you can find them, and Ala-Non groups that include adult children.”

If you’re reading this blog, you’ve already started educating yourself.

“Focus on your self and reach out for help,” Brown says. “The process of recovery, to become a healthier self than the one you grew up with, while simultaneously reaching out for support and help is the best approach. You want natural, healthy growth.”

Don’t focus on your self in order to become self-sufficient! That propensity to strive to become self-sufficient is always a risk for ACAs. (Just ask my sister, who bravely pointed out some years ago that I don’t know how to ask for help.) We need to remember to continute to reach out, and ask for help, and to accept help.

And, as always, be good to yourself.

About STEPHANIE BROWN: Stephanie Brown, Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, director of The Addictions Institute in Menlo Park, CA, and co-director of The Family Recovery Project at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA. She has authored and co-authored several books for adult children of alcoholics, including A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation (book and workbook) , The Family Recovery Guide: A Map for Healthy Growth and Safe Passage: Recovery for Adult Transformation. She lives in Northern California.