Cody-- Thank you so much. I just read this and you answered my questions and helped me see addiction way more profoundly than ever before. Please keep teaching and guiding people to help understand that pain is the driver. I've been through the undoing of my pain but there is still more to wrestle with especially in our current culture. I think it's deep shame. I know it is for me. Please keep posting about this issue. We need to understand the why and how to help others who are still struggling.
This absolutely chills me to the bone. I have 3 of 4 children (grown) who struggle with addiction. I’ve known that their hearts are broken from their childhood trauma. They are all dealing with it differently. To the one who is hiding his using, and going deeper into the types of drugs, I wonder how to best support him. It’s all secretive. He’s getting ready to lose his family. How to talk to him?
So glad I ran across Cody Taymore ! Just yesterday - Couldn't stop reading , wanting it not to end !!! Your style of writing really connects w/ me Cody! Will be following & looking for other writings of yours .
Thanks, Cody. This made a lot more sense than the outpatient rehab, the church based recovery/rehab, the therapy... you see this in a unique manner as you were/are an addict. All else has been pure judgement in my life. I'm the loser, I'm the destroyer, I'm the problem. Never "I can help you... I will be here... I'm not going away". Great insight, and again I thank you and I'm glad I stumbled across this peice on Substack. As life long alcoholic who still drowns his demons your words were encouraging and important for me at this time.
Thank you, Cody. I started my substance abuse at age 14, loving how it took all my anxiety away and made me feel “happy.” Years later, I was in AA and thought I was among my best friends. When I relapsed, they all dumped me without a word. I realized they were trying to protect their own sobriety, but I thought it was so unfair that they were only my friends when I was sober.
I know addiction has likely knocked years off my life, but my PTSD is so severe, and it does provide some relief at times. Living in the world is hard when you’re terrified all the time. Thanks for giving me some things to think about.
Hello Glenna, thank you for sharing this part of your life. I still do not know how to manage, I don’t have the required skills to stop suffering. So often, I want to give it all up. I surely will, actually. I am "terrified all the time", just like you are. All.The.Time. I don’t know how I will turn out, but things are not looking too good for the future... thank you again, dear Glenna. Sending warmth.
Thanks for writing, Angelique. One thing that has helped me quite a bit is taking the love and compassion i feel for others and turning it back on myself. At first, it felt totally fake because I was used to hating myself, but I kept doing it and actually started to feel some of that love. As soon as I got rid of all my guilt and shame and replaced it with positive feelings towards myself, I started getting better every day with less anxiety about the future. I hope this helps. I know it's really hard sometimes.
Thank you for your kind response, Glenna. I admire you so much for having succeeded at liking yourself. For the life of me, I can't get rid of the guilt. It's gnawing at my flesh, burning like acid. As much as I almost excel at comforting and instilling hope for better days to come in a person who suffers, it doesn’t work for me. And of course, I'm blaming myself for not being able to be reassured, to get rid of despair with my own words. At this level it became quite pathological, I believe... I apologize for spilling so much negativity. Anyway Glenna, it's wonderful that you acquired this "skill".
Years ago I read an article titled "it's not you, it's your cage" about how the original scientific experiments upon which we built the modern theories about drug addiction was flawed. Those experiments were famous, and involved drug addicted lab rats given the choice between water laced with drugs and clean water. The rats were housed in laboratory settings, isolated by themselves with no entertainment, socializing or enrichment provided. Inevitably the rats fell into addiction and many died. Decades later, someone repeated those experiments, except they changed the conditions in which the rats were housed. This time, they provided the company of other rats, toys and enrichment activities to alleviate boredom. These experiments yielded an appreciable difference in the rates of both addiction and death from overdose.
Oh Cody you really hit a nerve here. I wish everybody would think like you. This is so ridiculous, and so meaningless to want to stop any kind of addiction without FIRST removing the cause of the addiction. By this, I mean the pain, of course. When you're bent in two, unable to breathe because you suffer so much, you will (at least I will) try anything to avoid drowning, right, like a kind of survival instinct. So sending someone to rehab so as to remove the chemical poison from your system WITHOUT dealing in the first place with the real poison, the one that pushes you to use chemicals or alcohol or whatever else. Everything you write makes so much sense. It actually should be obvious to medical professionals, yet it's not ! Man am I mad. As for me,my neurons are saturated now. There's no relief to be found. Nothing. Nowhere. I'm stuck with monster Angst. (I need a way to put an end to it, though, and fast). Cody thank you, as always. You know how to choose the perfect words. I so wish more people could read you, they have so much to learn from you.
Functional addicts are such interesting people. It's remarkable how they manage to match (and oftentimes surpass) the competition of their peers while still juggling their addictive habits. Having grown up so close to people struggling with addiction, your points carry weight, and love is such a great path to healing. The main issue between addicts and those trying to assist them (whether professionals or not) seems to be a gap of emotional intelligence via both parties. The addicts are almost invariably battling an underlying emotional struggle that is misunderstood or altogether unknown to the person trying to offer help. In this way, transparency seems to be the route to healing. It helps to diminish shame on behalf of the user and helps prevent those trying to help from overstepping and, as you rightly highlight, mistakenly "making it all about them." Humanizing addiction and the battles we wage is the key to empathy. Only with empathy can we heal.
Thanks you for admiration towards the forgotten the unseen the ones in the shadows they too are somebody’s uncle, son, grandson, brother, sister, aunt, granddaughter, sister, and daughters too. And you’re so right they need help not to be arrested but genuine help from the medical system. Good one Cody. 🌺
While international and more-local merchants of the drug-abuse/addiction scourge must be targeted for long-overdue political action and criminal justice, Western pharmaceutical corporations have intentionally pushed their own very addictive and profitable opiate resulting in direct and indirect immense suffering and overdose death numbers for many years later and likely many more yet to come.
It indeed was a real ethical and moral crime, yet, likely due to their potent lobbyist influence on heavily-capitalistic Western governance, they got off relatively lightly and only through civil litigation. … Instead, drug addiction and addicts are misperceived by supposedly sober folk as being weak-willed and/or having committed the moral crime.
A very long time ago, I, while sympathetic, would look down on those who had ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted to hard drugs or alcohol. Although I’ve not been personally or familially affected by the opioid overdose crisis, I suffer enough unrelenting PTSD symptoms (etcetera) to know, enjoy and appreciate the great release by consuming alcohol or THC.
In the book (WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing) he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Bruce D. Perry (M.D., Ph.D.) writes in regards to self-medicating trauma, substance abuse and addiction:
“For people who are pretty well-regulated, whose basic needs have been met, who have other healthy forms of reward, taking a drug will have some impact, but the pull to come back and use again and again is not as powerful.
"It may be a pleasurable feeling, but you’re not necessarily going to become addicted. Addiction is complex. But I believe that many people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse are actually trying to self-medicate due to their developmental histories of adversity and trauma.”
Societally neglecting, rejecting and therefore failing people struggling with crippling addiction should never be an acceptable or preferable political, economic or religious/morality option. They definitely should not be consciously or subconsciously perceived by sober society as somehow being disposable.
But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate and representatives’ opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts, including safe(r) drugs.
Too often the worth(lessness) of the substance abuser is measured basically by their ‘productivity’ or lack thereof. They may then begin perceiving themselves as worthless and accordingly live and self-medicate their daily lives more haphazardly. (Not surprising, many chronically addicted people won’t miss this world if they never wake up.)
Typically, societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on a (self)medicating substance that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
The unfortunate fact about self-medicating is: the greater the induced euphoria or escape one attains from it, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their non-self-medicating reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while not self-medicating, the greater the need for escape from one's reality — all the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.
Especially when the substance abuse is due to past formidable mental trauma, the lasting solitarily-suffered turmoil can readily make each day an ordeal unless the traumatized mind is medicated.
Addiction isn’t just about the bad choices or the rock-bottom moments — it’s about what you do next. Read this brutally honest piece from someone who’s tired of shame, tired of hiding, and ready to reclaim hope. If you’ve ever struggled (or loved someone who has), this one’s for you.
Thanks for sharing that. A lot of useful information there. I too am a recovering addict 17 years clean. My biggest problem in life was myself. Using drugs to run from problems like so many people. The sad part about addiction is, you can promise wonderful things if addict gets clean, guilt and shame them, try blackmail. Sadly none of these will work. For the addict thinking about quitting, you can try willpower, changing friends and locations, only to find a new set of using friends and new connections. You have to want to get clean and be ready to quit. Sadly relapse can be a part of recovery but the sooner you put it down again, the better your odds are. I had to relearn how to live life but it has been worth it. I now have stage IV cancer and have to tell you. I would rather have the cancer than the lifestyle I was living when I was using. Thanks again for posting. Most people quit and dont take the time to teach folks the basics. It's helpful because for us recovering addicts, no matter how much clean time we have. We are only 1 bad decision from being back at square 1. Be safe and take care of each other
Cody-- Thank you so much. I just read this and you answered my questions and helped me see addiction way more profoundly than ever before. Please keep teaching and guiding people to help understand that pain is the driver. I've been through the undoing of my pain but there is still more to wrestle with especially in our current culture. I think it's deep shame. I know it is for me. Please keep posting about this issue. We need to understand the why and how to help others who are still struggling.
This absolutely chills me to the bone. I have 3 of 4 children (grown) who struggle with addiction. I’ve known that their hearts are broken from their childhood trauma. They are all dealing with it differently. To the one who is hiding his using, and going deeper into the types of drugs, I wonder how to best support him. It’s all secretive. He’s getting ready to lose his family. How to talk to him?
So glad I ran across Cody Taymore ! Just yesterday - Couldn't stop reading , wanting it not to end !!! Your style of writing really connects w/ me Cody! Will be following & looking for other writings of yours .
Thanks, Cody. This made a lot more sense than the outpatient rehab, the church based recovery/rehab, the therapy... you see this in a unique manner as you were/are an addict. All else has been pure judgement in my life. I'm the loser, I'm the destroyer, I'm the problem. Never "I can help you... I will be here... I'm not going away". Great insight, and again I thank you and I'm glad I stumbled across this peice on Substack. As life long alcoholic who still drowns his demons your words were encouraging and important for me at this time.
Thank you, Cody. I started my substance abuse at age 14, loving how it took all my anxiety away and made me feel “happy.” Years later, I was in AA and thought I was among my best friends. When I relapsed, they all dumped me without a word. I realized they were trying to protect their own sobriety, but I thought it was so unfair that they were only my friends when I was sober.
I know addiction has likely knocked years off my life, but my PTSD is so severe, and it does provide some relief at times. Living in the world is hard when you’re terrified all the time. Thanks for giving me some things to think about.
Hello Glenna, thank you for sharing this part of your life. I still do not know how to manage, I don’t have the required skills to stop suffering. So often, I want to give it all up. I surely will, actually. I am "terrified all the time", just like you are. All.The.Time. I don’t know how I will turn out, but things are not looking too good for the future... thank you again, dear Glenna. Sending warmth.
Thanks for writing, Angelique. One thing that has helped me quite a bit is taking the love and compassion i feel for others and turning it back on myself. At first, it felt totally fake because I was used to hating myself, but I kept doing it and actually started to feel some of that love. As soon as I got rid of all my guilt and shame and replaced it with positive feelings towards myself, I started getting better every day with less anxiety about the future. I hope this helps. I know it's really hard sometimes.
Thank you for your kind response, Glenna. I admire you so much for having succeeded at liking yourself. For the life of me, I can't get rid of the guilt. It's gnawing at my flesh, burning like acid. As much as I almost excel at comforting and instilling hope for better days to come in a person who suffers, it doesn’t work for me. And of course, I'm blaming myself for not being able to be reassured, to get rid of despair with my own words. At this level it became quite pathological, I believe... I apologize for spilling so much negativity. Anyway Glenna, it's wonderful that you acquired this "skill".
Years ago I read an article titled "it's not you, it's your cage" about how the original scientific experiments upon which we built the modern theories about drug addiction was flawed. Those experiments were famous, and involved drug addicted lab rats given the choice between water laced with drugs and clean water. The rats were housed in laboratory settings, isolated by themselves with no entertainment, socializing or enrichment provided. Inevitably the rats fell into addiction and many died. Decades later, someone repeated those experiments, except they changed the conditions in which the rats were housed. This time, they provided the company of other rats, toys and enrichment activities to alleviate boredom. These experiments yielded an appreciable difference in the rates of both addiction and death from overdose.
Wow. I hope this post goes viral. You write about addiction in a way that I have never seen anyone else do.
Oh Cody you really hit a nerve here. I wish everybody would think like you. This is so ridiculous, and so meaningless to want to stop any kind of addiction without FIRST removing the cause of the addiction. By this, I mean the pain, of course. When you're bent in two, unable to breathe because you suffer so much, you will (at least I will) try anything to avoid drowning, right, like a kind of survival instinct. So sending someone to rehab so as to remove the chemical poison from your system WITHOUT dealing in the first place with the real poison, the one that pushes you to use chemicals or alcohol or whatever else. Everything you write makes so much sense. It actually should be obvious to medical professionals, yet it's not ! Man am I mad. As for me,my neurons are saturated now. There's no relief to be found. Nothing. Nowhere. I'm stuck with monster Angst. (I need a way to put an end to it, though, and fast). Cody thank you, as always. You know how to choose the perfect words. I so wish more people could read you, they have so much to learn from you.
Functional addicts are such interesting people. It's remarkable how they manage to match (and oftentimes surpass) the competition of their peers while still juggling their addictive habits. Having grown up so close to people struggling with addiction, your points carry weight, and love is such a great path to healing. The main issue between addicts and those trying to assist them (whether professionals or not) seems to be a gap of emotional intelligence via both parties. The addicts are almost invariably battling an underlying emotional struggle that is misunderstood or altogether unknown to the person trying to offer help. In this way, transparency seems to be the route to healing. It helps to diminish shame on behalf of the user and helps prevent those trying to help from overstepping and, as you rightly highlight, mistakenly "making it all about them." Humanizing addiction and the battles we wage is the key to empathy. Only with empathy can we heal.
Hope you are gaining many readers. The information is greatly needed…
CT
Thank YOU for caring and sharing for others!
Know YOU are so Appreciated and Loved!
R
Thanks you for admiration towards the forgotten the unseen the ones in the shadows they too are somebody’s uncle, son, grandson, brother, sister, aunt, granddaughter, sister, and daughters too. And you’re so right they need help not to be arrested but genuine help from the medical system. Good one Cody. 🌺
This was very enlightening. I have a new mindset. Thank you!
Why is it we don’t have more therapy support in schools and communities?? Seems like that would be less expensive than addiction?! Hmmm…..
While international and more-local merchants of the drug-abuse/addiction scourge must be targeted for long-overdue political action and criminal justice, Western pharmaceutical corporations have intentionally pushed their own very addictive and profitable opiate resulting in direct and indirect immense suffering and overdose death numbers for many years later and likely many more yet to come.
It indeed was a real ethical and moral crime, yet, likely due to their potent lobbyist influence on heavily-capitalistic Western governance, they got off relatively lightly and only through civil litigation. … Instead, drug addiction and addicts are misperceived by supposedly sober folk as being weak-willed and/or having committed the moral crime.
A very long time ago, I, while sympathetic, would look down on those who had ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted to hard drugs or alcohol. Although I’ve not been personally or familially affected by the opioid overdose crisis, I suffer enough unrelenting PTSD symptoms (etcetera) to know, enjoy and appreciate the great release by consuming alcohol or THC.
In the book (WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing) he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Bruce D. Perry (M.D., Ph.D.) writes in regards to self-medicating trauma, substance abuse and addiction:
“For people who are pretty well-regulated, whose basic needs have been met, who have other healthy forms of reward, taking a drug will have some impact, but the pull to come back and use again and again is not as powerful.
"It may be a pleasurable feeling, but you’re not necessarily going to become addicted. Addiction is complex. But I believe that many people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse are actually trying to self-medicate due to their developmental histories of adversity and trauma.”
Societally neglecting, rejecting and therefore failing people struggling with crippling addiction should never be an acceptable or preferable political, economic or religious/morality option. They definitely should not be consciously or subconsciously perceived by sober society as somehow being disposable.
But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate and representatives’ opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts, including safe(r) drugs.
Too often the worth(lessness) of the substance abuser is measured basically by their ‘productivity’ or lack thereof. They may then begin perceiving themselves as worthless and accordingly live and self-medicate their daily lives more haphazardly. (Not surprising, many chronically addicted people won’t miss this world if they never wake up.)
Typically, societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on a (self)medicating substance that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
The unfortunate fact about self-medicating is: the greater the induced euphoria or escape one attains from it, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their non-self-medicating reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while not self-medicating, the greater the need for escape from one's reality — all the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.
Especially when the substance abuse is due to past formidable mental trauma, the lasting solitarily-suffered turmoil can readily make each day an ordeal unless the traumatized mind is medicated.
Addiction isn’t just about the bad choices or the rock-bottom moments — it’s about what you do next. Read this brutally honest piece from someone who’s tired of shame, tired of hiding, and ready to reclaim hope. If you’ve ever struggled (or loved someone who has), this one’s for you.
https://progressisprogress.substack.com/p/im-an-addict-and-im-not-sorry?r=5xcddw
Thanks for sharing that. A lot of useful information there. I too am a recovering addict 17 years clean. My biggest problem in life was myself. Using drugs to run from problems like so many people. The sad part about addiction is, you can promise wonderful things if addict gets clean, guilt and shame them, try blackmail. Sadly none of these will work. For the addict thinking about quitting, you can try willpower, changing friends and locations, only to find a new set of using friends and new connections. You have to want to get clean and be ready to quit. Sadly relapse can be a part of recovery but the sooner you put it down again, the better your odds are. I had to relearn how to live life but it has been worth it. I now have stage IV cancer and have to tell you. I would rather have the cancer than the lifestyle I was living when I was using. Thanks again for posting. Most people quit and dont take the time to teach folks the basics. It's helpful because for us recovering addicts, no matter how much clean time we have. We are only 1 bad decision from being back at square 1. Be safe and take care of each other