Episode 15 - The Gift of Knowledge

The holidays can be a dreaded time of the year if someone you love is suffering or has lost their battle with the disease of addiction.  This will be my second Christmas without my daughter Laura who struggled for 15 years with addiction but lost her life to overdose on December 21, 2017, right before the holidays.  

It’s hard to think about gift giving during this time of year, because the holidays may be filled with regret, grief, or stress.   This Audio Journal focuses on gifts, not for others on your list, but those that you should give to yourself.  Today’s episode is devoted to the gift of knowledge.

I’ve talked to countless parents and family members who are struggling to make sense of their loved one’s substance misuse, crazy behavior, and personality change.  We often mistake addiction as a moral failing or a series of bad choices, failing to recognize that addiction is a chronic complex brain disease.  Now, let’s figure out how to unwrap the gift of knowledge so you are more prepared to deal with it.

Start with understanding the science behind addiction.  Addiction is a brain disease and there is a scientific underpinning about how it manifests itself and progresses.  Let me take another brain disease that millions of us know about as an analogy, Alzheimer’s. There is a scientific and physical reason that people’s memories disappear.  It has to do with plaque coating the transmitters in the brain that allow one to process and act on information.   Once there is enough plaque build-up, signals can’t get through and memory fails.  People that have Alzheimer’s are not being difficult or frustrating’ their brain is misfiring.

The human brain is wired to reward us when we do something pleasurable. Exercising, eating, and other pleasurable behaviors directly linked to our health and survival trigger the release of a neurotransmitter called dopamine that makes us feel good and encourages us to keep doing what we’re doing.  But the brain can also be rewired in harmful ways when it’s exposed to drugs. When someone takes a drug, their brain releases extreme amounts of dopamine causing the brain to overreact, reducing dopamine production in an attempt to normalize these sudden, sky-high levels the drugs have created. And this is how the cycle of addiction begins because the individual will seek those substances to get that dopamine rush.

So that’s part of the science of addiction.  It’s the brain’s rewiring to overproduce dopamine levels that rise and crash, causing the person to seek more of the substance to level themselves out.  

You next level of knowledge should be around the condition itself.  Addiction is not an acute disease that can be treated quickly and cured.  It’s a chronic condition that will last a lifetime and requires on-going maintenance and management.  When you treat diabetes, you can’t take insulin just once, feel better right away, then stop. You have to manage yourself with medication, diet and lifestyle change over a lifetime.  The same is true of addiction.

People go to rehab to treat the acute symptoms and get stabilized.  They come out looking healthy, but it’s a mistake to believe that because their acute symptoms have been dealt with the person is cured.   Without the proper long-term plan, the chances are 85% that they will return to substance misuse in less than a year following rehab.  It’s important to know the difference in the characteristics of an acute vs. a chronic disease so you know that you must play the long game.

That brings us to the next knowledge gift which is know how to manage the disease long-term.  This is the most complex part of the equation and requires the most knowledge and research.  It’s important that you understand that the recovery and disease management process have many compon