Episode 57
What Drives Substance Use?

Watch Now

https://youtu.be/xwIPSDBVn4M

Listen Now

Description

Discover and gain an understanding of the underlying factors that contribute to and help cause substance use, with podcast leaders Brandon, Jason, and Clinton.

Talking Points

1. Reviewing language shift around the word “addiction”
   
2. Explaining some of the factors that lead to substance use
   
3. How self-awareness can help the healing process
   
4. Discussion about abstinence
   

Quotes

“You’ve started to align with someone who struggles with substance use because you are looking at maladaptive coping strategies. But you don’t get to a maladaptive coping strategy until you ask the question of why and get to the motivation. ….all of the sudden, you can see much, much more clearly. Because it is just about seeking out what need that behavior is meeting, really building insight into that motivation, and then slowly over time, developing alternative coping strategies that are much more adaptive, and align with the person’s wellbeing and desire to get better.”    

– Clinton Nicholson, MA, LPC, LAC, Chief Operations Officer

Episode Transcripts

Episode 57 Transcripts

empathy is knowing your own darkness
without that connection you don’t have
anything what’s the opposite of
addiction just freedom
well
hello everyone
uh welcome to another episode of finding
peaks i am your host the best of hosts
chief executive officer for peaks
recovery centers brandon burns
joined
again today
by
jason friesma chief clinical officer
clint nicholson chief operating officer
nailed the titles i messed that up a few
episodes ago with uh dr ryan actually i
called him the chief clinical officer he
loved that
[Laughter]
approving in any way so
uh welcome back everybody though i’m
excited to be here one of the things
we’ve been talking about you know across
finding peaks episodes we’ve kind of
just been dropping it in there a few
minutes at a time is this notion of
addiction and removing it as language
from our industry and the benefits that
would follow from that we want to hunker
down a little bit more into that concept
today
and focus in on why we are
trying to
push that language aside and really make
a claim that this is a mental health
issue and it is not about the drugs in
that way and
i’ve been talking about it with our
leadership team trying to throw this i’m
gonna i’m gonna hit the kids at home
have any of you seen the movie a scanner
darkly
yes or no
it’s one of keanu reeves best monologue
movies ever made anyways i’m not
recommending the movie because it is
deep and it is dark and it is about
drugs and addiction and a variety of
these things but there’s this scene when
they pull over to the side of the road
and wynonna writers in the movie woody
harrelson um keanu reeves all the best
people and they’re pulled over and the
car is broken down and counter reeves
gets out of the car and he goes
we got to stop doing the drugs it’s
messing with our brains and woody
harrelson walks over and says man it’s
not about the drugs don’t blame the
drugs and
so i want to use that clip as the sort
of transition here that
i feel strongly about what we talk about
when we say push this word addiction to
the side and let’s talk about it as
mental health because the drugs is this
external thing it’s a feature of the of
our internal condition and why some
people use it more than others and why
people become
addicted to it
um you know differentiates across the
public in our culture and for those
reasons it feels like it’s not about
that there’s some condition i think even
when we go to you know dr elardy’s tapes
a few weeks ago and the work we were
able to do with him you know that
dopaminergic effect
is lacking in individuals at times
compared so one person can have less
less of that effect than another person
so this person experiences the world in
sort of a more mundane less excited way
when i look at the mountains i get a
dopamine kick when that person looks at
the mountains they don’t we both arrived
to a party that night we both do drugs
and yeah i get excited about the drugs
but i put it down and for this person
and the way that i look at the mountains
uh for that episode they’re now excited
about it uh in that way and now they
have that effect and what we gathered
from that is that this person over here
is more vulnerable uh than the other
individuals who are you know or and more
susceptible in that way so
again it feels like there’s a prior
condition it could be trauma emotional
dysregulation a variety of different
fancy words in the clinical world that
you will have better access to to
explain than i do but
um
let’s keep moving that needle in that
direction because it feels important and
i think it feels important for what we
do as a treatment
center so i know clinton you are
most prepared at any given time to want
to dislodge that word from the culture
and so i think let’s just do some
foundational stuff
catch all the kids and the families up
to speed on why we’re talking about this
and um so why
do we need to get rid of this word okay
so getting
rid of the word addiction
uh
well let’s start with the stigma right
so there’s a huge stigma around
addiction and the way in which we’ve
talked about addiction and treated
addiction culturally for really the last
hundred years is that it is this sort of
um
it’s a treatable disease but is terminal
and it’s in the sense that once an
addict always an addict
um also that it is
about um
there’s a there’s a sense of
um
willpower that is sort of talked about
in the sense that there’s a lack of that
willpower or
a lack of um real agency for if you do
have an addiction or are an addict uh
there are moral implications as well
that there is a lack of sort of
uh i don’t know moral
um a moral solid moral foundation that
allows you to become susceptible and
that’s the reason why you become an
addict um
there are so many
misunderstandings and misinterpretations
that are
that have really just sort of muddied
the waters and at the very least made
the field of um substance use treatment
extremely convoluted
and very disengaged from the rest of the
behavioral health
treatment community and treatment world
we’ve really when even in when you go to
graduate school you can be a clinical
mental health counselor or you can be an
addiction counselor like there’s all
there’s two separate tracks even within
even though
both of these are all mental they’re
still mental health under the big
umbrella but they actually separate them
out and you go down a different track if
you go to grad school
and because of that we have
a lot of disparity i believe in the way
in which addicts are or addiction is
treated and again
the
when we when we bring up this word
addiction
we’re bringing up so much baggage with
it that it i think what we usually end
up doing is spending almost all of our
time just going through the baggage and
never actually getting to the root
um
if you think about
substance use
the reality of substance use is it is
first and foremost a coping strategy
right it’s a way of coping with the
world
and it’s just a very maladaptive one
right yeah also
very effective right it’s it’s immediate
it’s consistent and it works
also it destroys your life in the
process but it’s a coping strategy you
know just like anything else in the in
the world is
uh just like hiking is a coping strategy
right deep breathing is a coping
strategy drinking is a coping strategy
they’re all along the same lines but
because we have this concept of
addiction we treat this coping strategy
differently and all of the sudden
the use of that coping strategy becomes
the individual’s identity and i think
that’s
where we again run into another huge
barrier yeah and in a couple inserts
there you know for folks at home that uh
don’t see it as a coping strategy or a
reasonable coping strategy i think
there’s
um
i’m just gonna call it half of americans
sitting in their offices their cubicles
whatever at home today thinking i’m
going to get that drink tomorrow on
friday night i’ve been working my butt
off all week i’m deserving of it i’m
going to go home and chill i’m going to
have a six pack i’m going to lay i’m
going to watch the game got a lot of
playoff things going on in those sort of
ways
we don’t talk about it as a society but
we are literally using that opportunity
at the end of the week that happy hour
session or whatever to cope with the
things and we almost create a narrative
that we’re deserving of it absolutely on
top of that right
as well too and then a you know another
pivot in two i always talk with you know
you know patients at work you know at
least you know make it to my office and
you know i i love running but i think
for anybody who would see a common
runner down the road i think we look
okay run or they’re healthy they’re
doing a healthy thing i think we’ve
looked at runners in society and said
that’s really unhealthy at some point
you we become sickly because we run so
much and there’s consequences associated
with that i think we look at people who
are you know muscular and we see that as
a healthy thing in a coping magazine but
then we look at some people are muscular
like i think we’ve exceeded this as a
coping as a reasonable coping mechanism
uh in that way and so just wanted to
i think highlight just some examples for
the those who might disengage already
from the episode and thinking that it’s
not a comment well it’s your earlier
point right this idea of vulnerability i
mean there are people that can have a
glass of wine at night as part of a
coping strategy right it’s a way to sort
of release kind of come down from the
day to just sort of relax
uh help enhance your meal what have you
um and that is a perfectly adaptive
coping strategy right however there are
those with susceptibilities and
vulnerabilities that do not have that
same adaptive approach to substance use
so the coping strategy becomes
maladaptive right but they’re both
regardless still coping strategies right
it’s still a way of processing engaging
or
sort of coming to terms with the day or
with your life uh sort of through
external means
essentially and
i don’t know how much you want to
piggyback on this or state more about it
but i think you know in the past
episodes we’ve done together you know
you’ve parsed out how jason as well too
how we’ve gone from
not just addiction of drugs and alcohol
but then there’s sex addiction and
there’s gambling addiction and all of
these other addictions that are starting
to take place
um
and and really at the end of the day i
think it it it seems more reasonable to
draw it back down to these are all
potentially coping strategies and the
way that we’re actually looking at their
maladaptive coping
strategies and when we start using other
language it feels more reasonable and
sensible to stop
stating addiction that is the case
yeah and i think
the coping strategy implies that
something needs to be coped with which
is i think what you were talking about
as well
and you know you listed the kind of
process addictions if you will and then
you know substance addiction
uh
when we begin to look at it as a
maladaptive maladaptive coping mechanism
then we then we can see that those
behaviors aren’t function a person isn’t
functioning very well with those
behaviors
we get to dig deeper and figure out what
um what is driving that and then also uh
install kind of healthy coping
mechanisms rather than
um
viewing the addiction or that behavior
itself as the primary issue
and then that oh and i identifying that
individual as an addict right as i was
going to mention that too
because that word addict um which
it’s such a shaming word
and that’s you know that’s me getting
into the counselor piece but um it’s a
pejorative like it is meant
uh to look down on somebody and it is
meant to look at um
some sort of moral failing or something
like that that someone hasn’t has
occurred incurred rather than just kind
of recognizing uh that the coping
mechanism somebody went to uh just
turned out not to work very well for
them even if it did help them to deal
with whatever was driving the issue
absolutely and i mean there’s complexity
to substance use to substance use as a
coping mechanism or an added complexity
because there is a physiological impact
yeah right yeah and so then all of a
sudden so it does become more complex to
a certain degree rather than something
like um i don’t know deep breathing
right because you do have these
physiological components where you start
to develop things like dependence you
suffer from things like withdrawals i
mean so there are complexities to it at
the same time i think when we talk about
adaptive and maladaptive coping
strategies again we choose to look at
the behaviors and then the underlying
reasons or motivations towards movement
towards those behaviors and that allows
us to again really dig deep and really
get to the core of the issue rather than
getting stuck on these sort of like
moral failings or these labels or
kind of pejorative identities yeah in
the i mean to the physiological you know
brain aspect and point of it too i mean
one thank god for neuroplasticity at
least in this moment there is an
opportunity to create new neural
frameworks around um what is already
formed in that regard but
you know the
the thing that i think i want to say
about it and the challenge around it is
that even though that’s there and it’s
maladaptive as a coping mechanism the
person is suffering and so they want to
deploy skill sets into the world that
will alleviate that in some sort of way
and to me that nagging physiological
brain state is just a strong tug in that
direction because we’ve been so we’ve
we’ve told the brain every single time i
brought it up several times on this
episode you know i got a trigger i
insert a drug i got a trigger answer to
drug well you take away the drugs you’re
still being triggered at all times and
then where are you putting that energy
to over time you know helping heal the
brain in that sort of way so
i certainly don’t want to take away i
don’t think any of us do that there’s
this nagging brain state now left over
from the event of
the events over time that have caused
what we call addiction today
but to be clear it’s a pull in a
direction of maladaptive behaviors right
rather than um it being the core issue
it starts with the core issue the thing
that needs to be supportive um
the trigger
and then the tug in that direction so
without putting too many words on it
like that is correct right that is the
what i think
as you were talking brandon i was just
thinking about how
um if we kind of
look at depression
i find there to be a significant
parallel how when somebody is depressed
it is really hard to get out of bed and
sometimes they don’t get out of bed
and we can judge that all we want um
and i and i think that’s where we begin
to find some correlation that like
depression other
anxiety other mental health issues have
behavioral components that make us feel
like hey if you just stop get out of bed
and you’ll be okay or
stop pacing or just go to sleep at night
or whatever
and when people are really wrestling
with with um other mental health issues
other than uh substance use
there can still be that um these
underlying behaviors that still need to
be addressed and then the the underlying
issues underneath them and and for some
reason it’s really easy i think for us
to be like okay somebody’s depressed
let’s find the thing in the items that
are kind of driving that depression
and the behaviors of not getting out of
bed but we we’ve lost some of that
curiosity um with addiction although i i
think it’s coming back or with uh
substance use yeah sorry absolutely yeah
great correct thank you thank you good
sound yeah good save i was shaming you
yeah
we
have to do away with the word yeah yeah
at some point in this episode
can we just start bleeping it yeah like
it’s a bad word yeah so you know when we
when we
trauma and somatic experience and all of
the um it could be a whole nother
episode and of itself but it seems like
there is a major bend
toward
trauma as integrated care within
treatment episodes uh in that regard and
i think that’s telling you know we get a
lot of phone calls to peaks and people
say oh well they didn’t deal with the
trauma in the past episode that’s why
these things continue to occur if we’re
translating that right it’s person
experience is something trauma caused
you know emotional dysregulation under
certain conditions
they experience that moment and then
that strong tug in this direction uh
pulls them you know back into that
addictive cycle uh in that way of things
but
if if that’s true again then we’re
working on the mental health issue that
is trauma um the dimensional three asam
criteria not the drugs in and of itself
right there’s no
there’s no therapeutic intervention of
like
let’s create you know kind of like what
emdr does maybe a backward dive into an
awareness around the trauma like we
don’t bring the drugs front and center
in that regard i guess some treatment
protocols might call for that in some
environments but again it just seems
like it takes it it always reverts back
to a causal
you know
rudimentary
mental health issue and then the drugs
are an external maladaptive strategy to
that internal issue it never feels like
in all of the times that i’ve met
patient care and family systems that the
thing we’re working on is that
physiological brain state
um
and we work on coping strategies around
those cravings because they do exist
at the end of the day but
even that seems to get away from it
being about the drug itself
yeah
well i’m sorry i was just going to say
i mean i can think of
people very very recently at peaks you
know who literally
it seems to occur with some of the
our younger clients who um
maybe haven’t developed some of the
other coping mechanisms that we’ve
talked about but they come in and their
substance is removed and then they’re
like i can’t
stop thinking about my trauma i’m just
getting these flashbacks or i don’t
like the correlation is blatantly
obvious uh with some people
um that maybe are a little less defended
or don’t have other uh kind of
strategies for dealing with it or for
masking their trauma like
there’s some people that just literally
are like i quit using or i quit drinking
and all i have is trauma and this
doesn’t make life worth living right we
look at those people in the eye all the
time and they then those people
oftentimes this
i mean once once once you’ve taken away
that coping strategy
uh and you sort of exposed the the wound
underneath whatever that whatever that
wound may be
um that’s also a really high risk time
for people to run right like for for
leaving against medical advice or
against clinical advice because all of
the sudden there’s exposure right and
they
and because the there are no coping
strategies that are adaptive mechanisms
that have been added to sort of help
soothe um the per and help the person
sort of cope with those uh
with those really highly acute and um
and and really overwhelming emotions
people
well the brain
literally tells you to go and do drugs
because that’s what will make me feel
better and
that’s that’s the really tricky thing
about substance use as a coping
mechanism there is that physiological
tug that takes months
years sometimes to actually
to mitigate to the point of where you
don’t
where the risk of relapse is actually
significantly lowered
it it makes it it’s also what makes
substance use and um
one of the most highly acute mental
health diagnoses because there is this
physiological component to the coping
strategy that has to be dealt with
alongside the clinical or
behavioral health emotional compo
psychological component and trying to do
those two things at the same time
becomes very complex it’s it’s very
difficult and it’s one of the reasons i
think
that um
the treatment in general for substance
use
if they’re not
treated at the same time together is so
unsuccessful yeah
and
maybe you guys can help me out with this
analogy it’s been a while before i
thought about it but it’s coming up for
me here in this like a dia diabetes is
often like a
sort of side-by-side analogy of
addiction and we have um
two individuals in need of stopping one
using drugs and one eating and you know
a certain way or
needing to
readdress their lifestyles to maintain a
healthy life you know moving forward
and curious uh from your guy’s
perspective how accurate that is because
i believe i’ve heard in some conferences
in special settings before but also as
well too
that
it what what i hope to do is diffuse
this notion of like it’s the drugs over
here because for the diabetic over here
it’s this poor eating habits and it’s
these foods well
for both these individuals the diabetic
has to figure out a way to move away
from those behaviors of the foods that
are causing the in you know disrupting
the insulin levels and all that sort of
thing within the body
but for that individual as well too
there’s a reason in which like those
food
eating habits have become maladaptive
and they need to find those
um better suited ways especially with
this new condition for going about their
world that’s in front of them
so i bring it up because again as as a
mechanism of diffusion of these external
things when really you have this
internal suffering in the individual and
just as difficult as it is to ignore
that tug the diabetic still has to
ignore that tug towards the unhealthy
eating habits
yeah i think um to be clear it’s type 2
diabetes you’re referring to okay not
type one yeah type one let’s get that in
there uh
yeah
just be clear and i’ve heard the same
metaphor and um
you know because i think
the metaphor comes from uh you know that
type two diabetes uh there’s a component
that is behaviorally driven right like
um and that can be that it can be
behaviorally controlled
uh
earlier in my career i worked for um the
pharmaceutical company eli lilly
um who actually i believe is the company
that developed insulin
first and so they out of indianapolis
and they
um
still are a leading researcher on uh
diabetes medication and so part of our
training
we had just tons of patient
information and behavioral interventions
and all this mental health stuff that we
would uh provide to endocrinologists and
in primary
care physicians because compliance with
a healthy diet or even just taking
insulin or measuring uh blood sugar uh
was quite low
and oftentimes people would change their
behaviors as soon as they started to
feel better or started rather than
realizing that it was the meds that were
helping them and so i think the the
metaphor
makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways um
and then i think uh in other ways it
doesn’t make sense but i’ll follow it
over to you
yeah that was more of a slide it doesn’t
make sense go yeah
i
i guess um
where the hole in the metaphor for me is
at what point do you ask the diabetic
why why are you eating like this right
like why is why have you developed a
diet that has led to
what is noticeably um negative
consequences and continue to engage in
that diet regardless of the fact that
you know that you’re hurting yourself
right that’s to me at that point
um
unless you ask that question you lose
the metaphor but i think once you ask
that question all of a sudden you’ve
started to align with somebody who
struggles with substance use because
you’re looking at maladaptive coping
strategies right but you don’t get to a
maladaptive coding coping strategy until
you ask for the question why and get to
motivation right that’s if you don’t
know what you’re
coping with then
then you’re not really talking about
coping strategies anymore and you it
comes more towards again uh it’s a moral
deficit it’s a lack of self-control it’s
a lack of will power uh lack of
self-respect you know that’s all of
these very shamey
um narratives that start to pop up and
um
and so i think that
when you
get rid of going back to the original
question right when you get rid of the
word addiction and or when you get rid
of these sort of very uh in the word
addict um
you
eliminate the shame
shadow right and all of a sudden you can
start to
see things much much more clearly
because it’s just about seeking out
why is the behavior what need is that
behavior meeting right
really building insight into that
motivation
and then slowly over time developing
alternative coping strategies that are
much more adaptive and that more align
with the person’s well-being and their
desire to get better right
things get very clear at that point
right and all of a sudden we’re not
caught up we’re not caught up in this
hundred plus year
narrative of oh well you know i have uh
i’ve lost all control in my life and now
i need to hand myself over to a higher
power in order to regain it it’s like
uh you know the higher power component
is actually meeting a different need as
well that is really getting to that is
probably to some degree when it works
answering part of that why are you doing
this question right
um but again i think that we
we complicate things right right and
addiction in the an addict as concepts
are
more than anything just complicators
yeah yeah and we’ve done uh
uh you know kind of trailing down to the
end of the episode here we’ve talked
about it um not that it this should be
word language that’s continually
deployed in the world it’s certainly
shame based but out of the rooms comes
this language of the dry drunk
and the individual who’s been absent
from drugs and alcohol for some time
period but has this
sort of
my reel from it is that there’s
significant emotional dysregulation
still there’s still anger there’s still
you know shame there’s still sadness
there’s still all these other sort of
things and
i think um the language should not be
used but for the sake of the
conversation it’s it’s pointing at the
real problem absolutely you know in the
absence of alcohol i still have to live
with this i still have to live within
this world
and
people are looking at me in a way to get
this terrible language dry drunk because
i may be without alcohol but i seemed
just as miserable as if i were on
alcohol it’s white knuckling right
another term right or the the coping
mechanism just shifted from alcohol
to a a without any addressing any of the
actual root cause right and then not to
discredit the 12-step world and it’s in
the 12-step process because you know
that can be part of the coping
strategies that replace
um this the maladaptive ones it can be
very adaptive and also help to really
develop insight um but it doesn’t
necessarily get to the very heart of the
matter right like it there are
layers upon layers that need to be
addressed um with any mental health
diagnoses right and
um
stopping at sort of the mid the like
high mid layer is is for some people
it’s just not enough for some
maybe you know for some people it’s they
are very successful in 12-step world and
um
are able to utilize that platform to
develop to both gain insight and develop
more adaptive coping strategies
i think we would be remiss too if we
didn’t mention
that there’s a stigma with mental health
in general yeah absolutely
we’re trying to get
addiction just to get to be on par with
mental health but that’s there’s already
a stigma on top of that
um because there is a stigma about being
weak if you’re depressed or
weak-minded around your trauma and all
of that and
that part just feels really important as
part of this discussion is that we’re
we’re fighting an uphill battle with
this word addiction but there’s also an
uphill battle kind of in general with
the culture with mental health uh
stigmatization yeah it’s like we’re just
trying to work deal with one stigma
instead of two right right because we
just get to the one yeah let’s drop it
down and the
and that’s that’s important and
certainly we could talk about that uh
for at length as well too but i i on on
the way out here i think that the thing
that i want to talk about as well too is
because we run into individuals say who
come to us with opioid use disorder
opioid addiction in the language of it
right and then we say something like
well what does drinking look like for
you i actually drink very low i care
very little for it right they’re
explaining whether or not it’s adaptive
or healthy over here that it’s a
non-issue right and that the issue is
this but it’s it’s a maladaptive
behavior for some you know other core
issue and in that way of things it feels
like
what we also want to eliminate
i want to be very careful about this but
addiction in that regard isn’t
abstinence forever and it doesn’t
necessarily have to be that way and i
think this is
wildly new territory especially within a
stabilization phase we’re probably not
going to talk about this side of stuff
this is aftercare you know sort of
therapeutic approaches to this but
um to be addicted to all things just
because of this in this way even though
this thing isn’t actually a maladaptive
feature in one’s life
it seems like it helps us move away from
these abstinence-based concepts as well
too and i think
you know that the light tone i want to
put on it is if i’m 21 years old and i
have this opioid use disorder issue and
i walk into a treatment center and they
say addicted to this
and abstinence forever there’s an
unreasonableness that um if i’m putting
myself in their shoes that comes with
that way i just turned 21 it’s actually
not a thing i can’t remember the last
time i drink i’m just really stuck in
this thing right now
and it starts to
change the potential for the individual
that’s in that chair and provide greater
opportunities under those healthy
coping mechanisms that
if it is the drink in the individual
situation in the future i’ve dealt with
this emotional dysregulation instead of
going to the bar for happy hour because
i’m angry at work i dealt with that
anger about work before i got to the bar
as an experience
and it i think is more supportive of
individuals especially young adults who
are just in vulnerable positions and
have to live the rest of their lives uh
in that way and can’t really foresee
themselves way out in the future not
doing other things that their friends
are doing and the other things that
their friends are doing aren’t opioids
at this time well and again i think that
that just highlights the
the
the issue with saying that well you have
an addiction so now you’re an addict
right like now you have this terminal
thing that becomes part of your identity
that you never get rid of and you’ll
forever have to deal with and no matter
how old you are whether you’re 21 or
you’re 75
you will wear this scarlet letter
forever it’s
really
disheartening right it’s extremely
overwhelming and it too is and again
like this is
there’s a lot of nuance here but it’s
it’s inaccurate in a lot of ways um
for some people that
concept of
uh abstinence is just absolutely
necessary and it’s what they need and
it’s what works for them
and we are in a lot of our programming
has is
rooted in abstinence right like
especially at the stabilization period
because we do have the brain does have
to heal right and it is
and there again we talk about
vulnerability that you are still
vulnerable to replace one with another
like one maladaptive coping strategy
with another maladaptive coping strategy
and that could be substance replacing
one substance with another so all of
these risks are very real and of course
again a very nuanced conversation
very um
yeah it could be pretty volatile i think
to a certain degree depending on who
you’re talking to
um but it does highlight this idea of
of one of the the major problems with
this idea of addiction is that i have an
addiction now i’m an addict and i’m an
addict forever
and i think one of the you know the the
charitable takeaways from a conversation
like this as well too is that i think
the goal in early treatment is not to
discourage people about their future
opportunities but to engage them in the
suffering that brought them to a program
like ours in the first place
and somebody comes in and says i have
this opioid use disorder and we label
them as an addict right away that can be
language that will immediately they’ll
pull the eject button the ama it’s
language in the way of the opportunity
uh at times and that feels full circle
to me unless jason you want to drop the
mic on something here on your way out or
just another layup
really uncomfortable and volleyball
spike yeah
yeah
i don’t the only thing i want to follow
up with uh
about for
was just with the young people the
heroin addict drinking again to me
if we look underneath that you know what
drives a lot of addiction or at least a
symptom of it is certainly this
isolation and this hidden life and so
you know to me my new my language that
i’ve wanted to develop over the last you
know a few years of my career too is
just
if you’re open with people you trust and
uh it isn’t hidden and then you’re
honest with yourself about whatever
comes up for you along your path
that feels like kind of a way to
progressively have those conversations
instead of
um because what unfortunately what i
watch in the abstinence culture is like
if somebody
begins to dabble or they want to try an
edible or something we’re in colorado
after all you know three years into
their recovery journey
they have to like disappear or hide it
and to me that is
that’s where i think
you know significant relapse can be
fostered is in that secrecy and silence
and all that i think
but being open and transparent uh to me
feels like the answer to a lot of that
yeah
dig it yeah and i think
just for me i
while i’m really passionate about this
topic obviously like i
and at the same time i recognize that
it is um it’s a tough conversation to
have and i think
uh it can be just having this
conversation a lot of people are gonna
disagree with me and again this is a
very nuanced topic um and i’m speaking
uh with maybe a tone of certainty but
obviously there there’s no
right answer in this situation i think
that
for me what i hope for is that we have
better conversations that are more open
that have more room for curiosity
as opposed to the sort of certainty that
i think we’ve approached um substance
use and this concept of addiction with
in the past yeah and in
because of these nuances and i’ve stated
in multiple episodes as well too we have
the concept of trigger and we do drugs
and trigger and do drugs the initial
mistake at least in my belief around
early recovery concepts within treatment
is somebody thinks okay trigger it’s not
going to be opioids but i can have a
drink right you know that’s the pro it’s
you’re just inserting the new
maladaptive features trigger
emotional dysregulation go to a
therapist go to a spot you know go to
somebody to talk to that about to work
through that issue on and then over time
gives us a new opportunity as the brain
heals around the opioid originally to go
okay i was triggered
i
did the deep breathing got emotionally
regulated i feel good in this moment now
i’m gonna go have a drink and i’m gonna
do it in a public space and i’m not
going to hide from it i’m going to have
support and then i’m going to take that
experience maybe back to a therapist and
somebody of accountability right so
just parsing that out a little bit so we
don’t leave the viewers with like yeah
this has to be done intelligently and we
have to take it quite seriously because
people die
resulting from
maybe miscommunicating some of these
features along the way
at the same time there’s a it’s
worthwhile it feels like to figure out a
way to kind of push this language aside
and focus on what is the real issue and
for us at peaks that’s mental health
so
with that everybody on the other side of
the screen here thank you for going
through this with us if you’ve got
questions thoughts
heated concerns about what we just spoke
about in this episode uh finding peaks
at peaksrecovery.com
we love hearing your feedback uh we love
even hearing frustrated feedback at
times so send us all of that
check us out on the facebooks the
instagrams the twitters all of those
special things follow chris burns and
peak’s recovery and his journey
uh as he goes about that a lot of energy
but a lot of um great energy around
recovery it’s fun to follow in that
regard uh join him i think he’s on next
week uh as the host and then friezma
will be like two weeks from now but
he’s kind of the mediocre host
there it is anyways we’re taking jabs
here on peaks we’re trying to have a
good time love you all very much thanks
for joining us until next time
signing off