If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE get help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). When we struggle with addictions, we are often driven to our addictive substances and behaviors because we’re using them to self-medicate to try and escape our inner pain. We come to realize that not only can we not escape our pain, our attempts to self-medicate are actually exacerbating our pain and creating more woundedness within us. What are we self-medicating from? What kinds of underlying pain, fear and trauma are we avoiding? Trauma is a common experience for many of us. It can include anything we perceive to be traumatic, so it varies for each person. Traumatic experiences can include abuse, neglect, abandonment, death or other kind of loss, divorce or separation, injury or danger, and anything else felt to be traumatizing. When we have been traumatized, we often develop mental and emotional responses that are normal and natural reactions to pain. These can include anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, confusion, and overwhelm, among many more. When we don’t allow ourselves to process these reactions in healthy ways, we end up causing ourselves more suffering. Self-medicating is our attempt to numb our pain, to avoid having to feel it altogether. We distract ourselves with external things because our inner pain feels too unbearable to face. When we self-medicate, we’re masking our symptoms which can cause us not to realize just how bad our pain has gotten. We may be experiencing serious depression, we may even be struggling with suicidal thoughts, but because we’re numbing ourselves to our symptoms, we may be minimizing our pain and not realizing the extent of the severity of it. This can cause us eventually to be forced to confront the issue once it has grown significantly and been compounded over years of avoidance. By that point it may have become even more unmanageable and difficult to handle. We might experience a breakdown or hit rock bottom. We self-medicate with anything that causes us some temporary relief, that serves as a distraction from our pain. This can include food, where we overeat to avoid thinking about our underlying issues. Many of us develop eating disorders, evidence of how our attempts to escape our pain can actually compound it. We might self-medicate with caffeine, a common and seemingly innocuous thing that we can actually become dependent upon. Some of us self-medicate with drugs, alcohol and other addictive substances. Some of our self-medicating is behavioral. We might use relationships, dating, sex and affection in compulsive ways to avoid dealing with our pain. We might self-medicate with gaming, gambling and shopping, all of which can have adverse effects on our lives when they are used excessively and compulsively.
Call 1-888-986-7848 for information on our treatment programs.
