Addiction, Disconnection and Why Sam’s So Lucky

The very first time I got upset in Sam’s presence, I did the only appropriate thing: I took myself into another room before any tears fell, then came back once I got myself under control.

“Can I have the car keys, please?” I asked when I returned to the living room. “I want to go to a yoga class.”

Sam, looking baffled, reached for the keys. “Do you want me to drive you?”

“No,” I responded. “I want to drive myself.”

Now, my memory isn’t flawless enough to tell you whether or not I said these things in a robot voice, but it feels likely-ish that I did (also, I plan to start doing the Medical Medium’s Brain Saver protocol, so I’ll report back once my memory becomes flawless).

I came into our relationship ruggedly self-sufficient. Sounds pretty good, huh? How very American of me, to be ruggedly self-sufficient.

Except that’s actually not a good thing. Rugged self-sufficiency is, well…unnatural. Normal, sure, (NORMALIZED, if you want to be impeccable with your word) but unnatural, nonetheless.

I’m writing about it because of an article I read yesterday. In the article, Dr. Robert Weiss, an addiction specialist, gives the best summary of the root cause of addiction that I’ve ever read.

Addiction, he asserts, is improperly classified as a “use disorder.” Rather, it’s an “intimacy disorder” linked to an inability to seek and maintain emotional intimacy. Addiction isn’t about pleasure-seeking; it’s about escaping a painful reality through the only method that reliably works–substances or behaviors.

Unlike their “healthier counterparts,” addicts don’t know how to turn to others to ride the ups and downs of the human experience. But, like all humans, they need SOMETHING to help them ride the waves. So they drink, use or compulsively do.

“After almost 25 years as an addiction treatment specialist,” Weiss writes, “I cannot recall a single client who had not learned early in life (through abuse, neglect, and further traumas) that turning to other people for support, validation, and comfort would leave them feeling worse than before they had reached out. So these individuals learned to avoid the deep relational connections that, for healthier people, bring needed consolation, emotional resolution, and reward, instead finding it easier and emotionally safer to escape and dissociate through the abuse of addictive substances and behaviors. In short, addicts engage in their addictions as an adaptive distraction from their painfully unmet womb-to-tomb emotional dependency needs.”

Let’s break that down: a PhD-level addiction treatment specialist with 25 years in the field has not met a SINGLE client who didn’t learn that “turning to other people for support, validation and comfort WOULD LEAVE THEM FEELING WORSE THAN BEFORE THEY REACHED OUT.”

Not slightly better. Not the same. Worse. Worse than before they reached out.

Now, I’m a big believer in the orchid-dandelion hypothesis (as you’ve likely learned) and I think a lot of this comes down to people being baffled by orchids. No one in my childhood orbit knew how to deal with the four hundred thousand feelings I had on an hourly basis, so I shut down before I even made it to the second grade. I closed myself off and then was a perfect candidate for addiction.

Not because anyone had done anything wrong or because there was an inherent flaw in me. But because of person-environment mismatch. It was what it was (and thank goodness…I’m tickled pink with how it all unfolded now that I’m on the other side).

Over the years, things have shifted for me. My avoidant attachment style has become secure (thanks hubbalicious).

So secure, in fact, that Sam wishes I would take myself to a different room to cry every once in a while. Like when I called him sobbing from the Walgreens parking lot the other day, partly because I had a HORRIBLE experience where the phlebotomist rooted around in THREE DIFFERENT VEINS before THROWING OUT the only blood she managed to draw (when I had given up a morning for the blood draw, no less!)…but also partly because I really love emotions and emotional connection.

I could have held the tears in or dealt with it myself, but why do that? Why suppress and stuff down when I can flow and connect?

Anyway, just letting you know that my love of ALL emotions, including whatever prompts dissolving into a puddle of tears, is Sam’s fault and it felt like a good time to remind him.

Also, this stuff is completely sort-out-able. If you have an addiction and can relate to feeling disconnected and emotionally frozen, you’re not doomed. This is learn-able. It’s one of the many reasons why recovery programs work – you get to work out your inability to be emotionally intimate in a room full of other people who don’t know how to be emotionally intimate. Magic stuff, healing in community.

For all humans, mind you, not just the addicts. We all need deep, meaningful, high-quality relationships if we want to enjoy our time on this planet.

Here’s Dr. Weiss’s article: https://www.consultant360.com/articles/why-do-people-addictions-seek-escape-rather-connect-look-approach-addiction-treatment