Edited by Lucile Bruce, Communications Officer, Connecticut Mental Health Center
Editor's Note: Sobriety, the state of freedom from addiction, means different things to different people. Patterns exist, but there is no clearly defined pathway from addiction to sobriety; rather the journey is lifelong and highly individual. For people who achieve it, sobriety is both a monumental accomplishment and a state of delicate balance. Read on for a few reflections about sobriety from CMHC clients, peer staff members, a neuroscientist, and the director of CMHC’s Substance Abuse Treatment Unit (SATU).
- Luis Coelho - Recovery Support Specialist
- Richard Youins - Person in recovery
- Philip Corlett, PhD - Neuroscientist
- Jon - Person in recovery
- Donna LaPaglia, PhD - Director, Substance Abuse Treatment Unit (SATU)
- Yolanda Herring - Recovery Support Specialist
Luis Coelho
Recovery Support Specialist
On April 8, 2008, I began my journey toward self-discovery. Today, I strive to fill my heart with love and gratitude, and I find in all things, especially children and animals, the self-referential validation of life itself which previously I only thought attainable through the transcendence of the drug experience.
I do it because the love and belonging I’ve found in recovery has taught me that, no matter how angry, sullen, and isolated I feel I can always find something for which to show gratitude. It’s a “suggestion” that has worked well for me so far.
Yes, I have been clean and sober for six years, but for many a night of those six years I have had remarkably vivid dreams about drugs—getting high, being high, recovering from being high, being chased by cops, all the intoxicating insanity that is life on the streets—it is the warp and weave of my deepest subconscious. It is RIGHT THERE in my face, and yet, so distant from the emotional and psychological foundations of my present life. This is the creative tension that propels me, and allows me to seek the good in even the darkest and most abject expressions of human dysfunction. Some may do so more consciously than others, but I believe we all balance on the razor's edge.
As fragmentation, doubt, and shame slowly give way to a deeply experienced centeredness, I give thanks for having been given a second chance at finally learning to love myself and the world—yes, the entire world—at large. Thank you, everyone, for being together in this time and place with me.
Postscript:
Robin Williams had been clean and sober for 20 years and relapsed. The disease never rests—it is always inside you, pacing restlessly, seeking an opportunity to escape the cage and wreak havoc. You live life on the high wire, one drink or line away from a fatal plunge. You stay steady by always growing and moving toward a goal. You are reminded this is life or death when you see a good man forget.
Richard Youins
Person in recovery
For me, my addiction had been active for about 25 or 30 years. And because I was able to hold jobs and somewhat function at some things, I thought I was OK. But I wasn’t.
I had moved into an apartment building where most of the residents smoked crack. I pawned things, lied, and cheated to take care of my habit.
Also during this time, there seemed to be a stir-up in my spirit. I don’t know exactly what you would call it. But I had no peace. Smoking crack and drinking wasn’t fun anymore. I remember going to get some crack and the young drug dealer dressed in the newest jeans and sneakers, talking to me as if I was a piece of crap. I could have been this boy’s father.
I was scared to do anything about my addiction. But I had to do something. On October 28th, 2011, I asked for help. I checked into a three-month program. This program gave me the tools that I needed to start this recovery journey. I have been blessed to have loving and caring people in my path. I am half way into my third year sober.
Philip Corlett, PhD
Neuroscientist, Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit
Our memories define us as selves. As we age and change our memories help us to feel constant and grounded.
But they are not just a record of our past. They help us imagine and plan for our future. We use our past as a best approximation for what might happen next.
However, much like our behavior, our memories are imperfect.
Each time we remember something we put it back into memory slightly changed and updated—we color our reminiscences with the reasons we recalled them. With repeated recall and re-remembering, our memories can get very distorted.
"No such thing as forgetting"
Forgetting is equally complicated. In fact there’s no such thing as forgetting, as Thomas De Quincey writes in his 1821 autobiographical account, Confessions of an English Opium Eater:
"There is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may, and will, interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil—and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn."
Traces of our memories always remain. Those traces can serve as a nidus for full recollection, even years after something is forgotten. And sometimes when we try our best to forget something, our active trying forces the memory to the front of our mind.
Memory & Drug Use
Drugs and alcohol act in our brains. They drive our memory systems. We neuroscientists think that might be because when we first take drugs, they are rewarding. We like to remember important rewarding events. However, drugs can take control of our learning and memory systems so that even when we try not to think about them, they can pop into our minds and drive our craving and drug seeking.
Even after many years of abstinence and forgetting about drugs, those memories can sometimes spontaneously renew. While some people in recovery are able to master their salient memories of drug use—memories that can drive craving, drug seeking and relapse—others are not so fortunate.
However, Drs. Jane Taylor, Bob Malison and myself, researchers working on the 3rd floor of the CMHC, see these memories as a reason for hope.
Memory & Science
In the lab, we are researching the process by which drug memories are updated each time we recall them. We are trying to dampen down those drug memories and perhaps even erase them using psychotherapies (helping people to think about other things when they find drugs on their mind) and pharmacological treatments (using meds that calm your heart and blood pressure when you are thinking about taking drugs). We hope to boost alternative memories of not taking drugs, so that those memories can compete with the drug memories.
Exactly the same approach is being taken in PTSD treatment, and we are even trialing similar drugs: propranolol is being tested both in our cocaine research and in PTSD treatment. It dampens the physiological responses to overwhelmingly salient memories, of combat or drugs.
Even after decades of sobriety, stress and difficult life events can facilitate relapse, which may prove fatal for some. For this reason we need to remain vigilant and employ all of the tools at our disposal to help fight this disease.
Jon
Person in recovery
When I got drunk for the first time, all of my insecurities went away. It was a great experience and I had an amazing night. However, there were consequences immediately. Alcohol was my first love, but it turned on me very quickly.
During my late teen years, I was living a life of mania, depression, addiction and pain. Every year my insanity became stronger. I was living to drink, and drinking to live. I was utterly hopeless.
At the perfect times, I was presented with a plan of recovery from alcoholism through Alcoholics Anonymous. I have been to psychiatric facilities and treatment centers for my mental illness. At the center of both my addiction and my mental illness was fear. I was always afraid of losing something I had or not getting something I thought I needed. I have found a new perspective and today I have the courage to walk through inevitable fear.
Today my life is incredible. I took action to change the broken person that I was, and I became a man of strength and dignity. I am very active in the local AA community. I continue to see a therapist and a psychiatrist. If I could offer anything to anyone who feels hopeless, I would tell them to believe in the millions of people who once felt like they do, who now live with freedom and purpose.
Donna LaPaglia, PhD
Director, Substance Abuse Treatment Unit (SATU)
I open up my Principles of Addiction Medicine textbook and begin to prepare my lecture for my residency Core Addiction seminar. The task at hand is how to synthesize a volume of assessment and treatment principles, 602 pages to be exact, into a coherent series of lectures on addiction. My desire is to pack the sessions with a bounty of technical information, research data, best practices…but I know that I have only six classes to convey the essence of addiction and treatment. I step back from this daunting task and ask myself, what is most important?
First and foremost: people recover. I’ve seen it. I have witnessed people working toward sobriety, working to maintain sobriety, fighting to reclaim sobriety. Recovery is possible.
Second, although the work towards recovery involves the client making individual decisions every day, they welcome our help, support, and feedback as health care professionals.
Third, when treating clients with substance use disorders, we benefit from shifting our stance away from holding a firm frame around traditional elements of psychotherapy, to adopting a more flexible approach to treatment. This may include administering a breathalyzer test or urine test, before seeing a client in your office for a psychotherapy session. This may include calling to check on a client you haven’t seen or heard from in a few weeks. This may include assisting in calling the social service office to help your client acquire a bus pass or food stamps. These activities do not fall under traditional psychiatric training, and many may feel these tasks are not their responsibility. It is important to remember that every helping activity has the potential to be therapeutic.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, we must be ready, willing, and able to carry hope for our clients—who have lost hope, lost the will to live, are frightened, suffering, and alone as they face the fight for their life.
I invite anyone reading this to open your heart, to shift your stance, to become energized to help those suffering from addiction. There is no better work than to help a fellow human live a better life.
Yolanda Herring
Recovery Support Specialist, Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health
As I look back on the past four years, wow—it amazes even me. I remember that day well, the day that I quit. As I sit and ponder my past, it seems like only yesterday when I was caught up and caught out on crack cocaine.
I was at home when a brother came in. Crack never allowed me to speak (literally). On this day, he came in with a twenty-cent piece of crack and gave it to me. He proceeded to go into the bathroom, and when he came out he asked me if I had anymore.
I said, it’s done.
He said, it can’t be done.
It’s done, I repeated.
It can’t be done.
Why not? I asked him.
It can’t be done, sis, because you’re talking.
That’s when I realized, it was over. I knew that the God of my understanding whom I had come to trust and love had finally answered my long awaited prayers.
Crack had made me become someone I never thought I would be. It made me pick, peek, and scratch, and it also left me unable to speak. In that moment, even though I had smoked, I was speaking, and I knew my time had come. I knew there was a lot of life out there, and I wanted to be part of it.
My clean date escapes me. There were many times I’d been 70 days clean, 89 days clean—and I would go out and celebrate before my 90th day, which meant I never made it to 90 days. Back then, I thought the key chains and the time I had would keep me clean. I was wrong. Today, it’s what I’m learning to do for me in my everyday life that keeps me humble, in constant ongoing recovery. It’s my relationship with God that keeps me clean today—and the people who have come into my life.
September, I’ll have four years. No one will ever understand how far I’ve gone and how far I’ve come. I didn’t come it alone. I had a lot of wonderful people in my path who continue to help and inspire me in the direction that I know I will go. Just to name a few, starting with the loves of my life: my three handsome sons that in spite of our ups and downs mommy will always be mommy, and countless others who have truly played a key role in my staying sober and wanting to give to a community that I had taken so much from when I was so very lost and such a very broken addict who also suffered a severe mental illness. It humbles me to the point of my true existence to think about who I was and the person I’m becoming.
I have sat with many, looking for answers that only I could give, but what they gave me were the tools and the knowledge to want to answer the unanswered. Even though it’s been nearly four years I still don’t know all the why’s, but I’m learning as I go. It’s not always easy and there are times when the old me creeps in—funny, I never allow her to stay for long, as I know the journey she wishes to carry me on. I’ve come too far to allow any good or bad situation to turn me around.