you know these days there's just so much emphasis put on the brain or the biological parts of
addiction and that is wonderful because it's a lot of great science and research that's being done
that really helps us understand why this problem occurs I am definitely a big fan however I feel
like there's just not enough emphasis being put on the psychology of drug and alcohol addiction these
days because yes there are some brain changes that occur that make addiction a very hard
cycle to break but honestly with all the latest research and science we've come so far we really
know how to address that part so much better than we used to but with all of our energies
going that way these days there's just not enough time energy and effort put towards understanding
the psychology of the issue so that's what we're going to talk about in today's video
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down the YouTube channel
designed to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction
so that you can get your life and your family back on track and get back to living the life that you
want to live many of you probably already know this but if you don't know this I
am an addiction counselor I have been working in this field for a very long time with individuals
struggling with an addiction and also their families and because of that I've been able
to get a real close inside look at the thinking patterns that go on when someone is struggling
with addiction you see because of all those brain changes that occur you find yourself
doing things that you really never thought you'd do acting in ways that don't fit with your value
systems and even thinking thoughts that just don't even sound or feel like yourself ultimately the
addiction changes who you are as a person your personality may feel different your family and
friends probably tell you pretty regularly that you're different and because of all of those
changes that happen you start to develop these like psychological defense mechanisms in order to
protect yourself from the shame from the guilt in order to continue with the addiction because it's
these very psychological processes that create that sort of shield or guard of denial that allows
the addiction to go on for so very long let's take a look at what some of those defense mechanisms
look like and why they are developed let's start with a really obvious one
anyone that struggled with an addiction or has a loved one with an addiction knows that
lying and addiction are pretty much best friends it's like lying is the bodyguard for addiction i
mean all kinds of lying lying to yourself lying to the people around you it can get to the point that
you just automatically lie because you you have all these secrets inside and you're so used to
like protecting those secrets did you just find that you may lie about stuff that you don't even
need to lie about like what'd you have for lunch maybe you had tacos but you said you had Chinese
and there's no reason for that lie other than that it becomes almost like an automatic reaction when
you have an addiction you begin to rationalize and justify your behavior to yourself these two
defense mechanisms are extremely important when it comes to allowing the addiction to continue you
know there are some really like standard ones like you could tell yourself everyone does it
or it's not that big of a deal those are just like super standard basic rationalizations but
there are also more complicated rationalizations like I'm a grown man or I'm a grown woman i work
hard I deserve it or this is the only thing that helps me with my anxiety or my depression
or my mental health problem it's not just rationalizing the substance use it's rationalizing
all of the things that you have to do in order to keep the addiction going like the lying and
the stealing and the broken relationships and the broken promises justifying type behavior happens
so quickly in our thought processes that it can be really hard to catch well I only did that
because or it just happened this one time or I didn't have any other choice or this other person
forced me into doing it which leads me to another really common psychological defense mechanism of
blaming you know I hear this on a lot especially from young people you know I'll hear them say
something like well the only reason I have to do all those drugs because my parents so crazy and
they stress me out and they just make too big of a deal with it and I probably wouldn't even use
so much drugs if they weren't so mean crazy strict whatever or I do hear it from spouses
sometimes I hear things like well it's because I'm so unhappy in my relationship and my spouse
are just constantly on my back they never leave me alone nothing I ever do is good enough and so
it's like you're shifting the blame for the bad decision making on to some other person or maybe
you shift the blame by saying you're miserable in your job or there's some other kind of situation
at school or somewhere else that you really just dislike now like I said it's not that none of
these things are true there's probably truth to all of those things but if you get really honest
with yourself you're probably hiding behind some of those things in order to continue to
make not so great choices and of course you cannot have an addiction without doing a lot of scheming
now I know y'all know what I'm talking about if you're relating to any of these defense mechanisms
give this video a thumbs up so I'll know I'm on track how to get rid of the evidence I can't tell
you how many people I see that deal with alcohol use disorders who have literally have to put so
much energy into getting the alcohol like a lot of times they don't want to go to the same place to
get it every day because they feel embarrassed so they have like a different they have like a
whole set of different gas stations or stores or liquor stores or whatever that they go to so that
the same person isn't seeing them buy it every day and the energy that goes into getting rid of
the bottles and the cans and the paraphernalia and the other evidence oh my goodness it is seriously
way too much energy for anyone out there who struggled with addiction you know what this is
like you're using so much behind the scenes even if you use whatever it is you do you do out in
the open you probably do even a lot more than that behind the scenes it just takes so much energy you
have to put a lot of thought and preparation into it just to pull the whole thing off and eventually
it becomes literally like a whole full-time job of a secret life you have going and it's exhausting
another psychological defense mechanism that you may find yourself trapped in when you have an
addiction is splitting now what I mean when I say that is you know that when you have an addiction
that all the people in your life probably know part of the story about what's really going on
with you so you spend a lot of time and energy keeping those people separate like you don't want
your family talk to your counselor because that wouldn't be good right because your counselor
knows secrets and your family knows secrets that you don't want your counselor to know
or your mom knows something that your dad doesn't know or your best friend knows something that
your spouse doesn't know so you end up doing a lot of things to make sure to keep people apart
sometimes that just means you try to keep people from talking and other times it means
getting people to actually be mad or angry at another person because when you do that it helps
you to avoid taking responsibility for what you're doing you can suck someone else into the blame
game with you by you know making somebody focused on this other person or situation that's unjust
like making your parents feel like it's your teacher's fault that you're failing school
and so you split the two people apart you know when addiction has gone for a really long time
you can sometimes lose the ability to be able to accept the answer no and sometimes maybe
it's like you just can't not do things because a lot of times when you have an addiction you just
have to do certain things which means no matter what kind of boundary somebody's put with you
you end up breaking it I think for sure you're beginning to understand what I'm telling you now
you see the science of addiction is all about how tolerance is created how one substance gets you
out of balance so your brain tries to counteract it by producing the opposite effect and those are
some of the biological traps but I'm telling you it's the psychology of addiction that's really
difficult to break because even if you figure out and you manage to get clean and sober and you
leave the drug behind if you don't address some of these other patterns habits psychological defense
mechanisms whatever you want to call them that you've developed over years and years and years of
using substances or doing other kinds of addictive behavior guess what those behaviors and thinking
patterns will continue even if the substance is not in play or even if the addictive thing isn't
there there's a term in recovery called a dry drunk and what that means is it's like someone
quit drinking but they didn't fix anything else and so they're usually still pretty unhappy and
pretty difficult to be around and I think that happens when like I said we address the addiction
as in we're not doing the behavior or taking the substance anymore but we don't fix any other stuff
that can also happen to someone when they maybe address the addiction but don't address
underlying anxiety depression other mental health problems that can put you in what they call like a
dry state sure the first part of overcoming an addiction for most people is getting out of the
biological cycle of it but if you really and truly want to be addiction for good
you're going to have to really delve into the psychological part of it because that's the part
that's going to take you back that's the part that can cause you to relapse and because it's
such an important thing to understand I want you to watch this video next because
there's even more information in there about the thinking patterns and the psychology of relapse