Healthy Habits - Breaking the Cycle of Addiction: The Power of Community-Based Treatment

 By Nicholas Mathews, Founder & CEO – Stillwater Behavioral Health

In my experience, many people who abuse substances want to recover on their own because this is how they seek to prove that drugs or alcohol don’t control them. They also tend to think this approach would enable them to demonstrate their own fortitude.

Unfortunately, this approach — while admirable — often results in failure. Studies have associated having a limited or unsupportive social network with increased rates of relapse.

It’s an understatement to say that breaking the cycle of addiction is hard. I speak from my own personal experience with substance abuse, having been addicted to heroin for a long time. It was through the unwavering support of my own mentors, friends, and loved ones that I was able to wean myself off drugs, and I’m still a member of AA to this day.

In my experience, community-based treatment is critical for success.

Treating the source of addiction: Trauma

Trauma is the underlying cause of many people’s substance abuse problems. As an international group of researchers concluded in the scientific journal Addictive Behaviors, “Our findings emphasize the strong association between all types of trauma and the risk of several specific substance and behavioral addictions.”

Trauma results in deep pain that many people turn to substances to assuage. The drugs or alcohol effectively become a way they seek to self-medicate.

Take away the substances, and what’s left is usually an enormous ocean of agony, distress, and confusion. There’s typically so much pain that the psyche flinches away from it and tries to flee somewhere — anywhere — else. 

That’s why healing this trauma can be the last thing someone addicted to drugs or alcohol might want to do. It’s much easier to reach for another hit. Even people who are in recovery often seek to avoid dealing with their trauma through strategies such as fixating on their physical symptoms or refusing to open up to a therapist.

As the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) points out, however, “Self-medicating is not without risk. The most significant danger of self-medicating, with any drug, is overdosing.” In addition, NAMI explains, these “negative coping strategies… do not provide long-term relief from symptoms. Instead, substance abuse interferes with proven methods of treatment, and leads to long-term health problems with significantly worse mental and physical outcomes.”

What successful recovery requires

The recovery process necessarily takes away someone’s self-medication strategies. In the process, it exposes their ocean of pain. Healing requires opening up to these difficult emotions, letting them wash over you, and learning how to swim in them. 

Since substance abuse creates biological dependencies in the body, recovery also means experiencing withdrawal. This can involve seizures, tremors, vomiting, pain, sweating, and fatigue, among many other things.

Entering into recovery also means refraining from doing those rituals, routines, and habits that the addicted person associates with comfort. It means ending relationships with people who still use or aren’t supportive of your recovery, grieving those connections that used to be so important, and doing all the difficult, boring, scary adulting that comes with rebuilding your life.

Let’s be honest. It’s normal for people to struggle in the face of challenges like these. It has nothing to do with how strong, smart, or motivated that particular person might be but has everything to do with how powerful these addictive substances are, as well as the underlying causes of addiction.

The good news is that, while these challenges never become easy, they become more manageable when you connect with others and can rely on the positive support of the whole community.

The difference community makes

Asking for and being willing to receive help is one of the main keys to a successful recovery, along with being honest and practicing self-care.

Nonjudgmental, compassionate, empathetic care is available through facilities that specialize in exactly this approach. These treatment centers not only connect you to experts who understand what you’re going through but also to like-minded people walking the journey alongside you. They can assemble a new team around you, and these meaningful, authentic new relationships will help you let go of the old.

I have a high opinion of people in recovery because the people who walk this path have shaped their souls in the hottest possible forge. There’s no virtue in making this already difficult journey even harder, but there is a great deal of virtue in maximizing your chances of success. I won’t ever lie and claim recovery is easy, but with community-based care, you can give yourself the best shot.

You don’t have to try to recover alone

Too many people who want to recover fail to do so because they aren’t willing to accept support. But recovery isn’t a contest. No one hands out gold stars to those who try to do it alone.

What would trying to go it alone actually prove? What would it be like to stop trying to prove yourself to other people? What would it be like to do the right thing for yourself? How would it feel to receive the attention and support you deserve?

I didn’t do it alone — I didn’t have to — and neither do you.

– Nicholas Mathews, founder and CEO of Stillwater Behavioral Health, is a passionate and committed treatment provider in every aspect of his professional life. A resident of Southern California by way of Oregon, he started his career in behavioral health as a result of his own profound experiences with personal recovery; his passion is giving back to a population of his peers. A serial healthcare entrepreneur, every venture he undertakes is dedicated to helping individuals struggling with addiction and mental health disorders.