how and why do addicts behave so selfishly I mean seriously are they
really that insensitive to other people's needs
is it really just all about them that's what we're gonna answer
in today's video
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down the
youtube channel designed exclusively to help you
understand the science and psychology of addiction
so that you can get your life and your loved ones back on track and get back to
living the life that you want to live so anyways i was watching
this other video on youtube it's by a channel called the middle
i'll put a link in the description it was really interesting because
they had these six people half of them were
people that were in recovery so they've had addictions and the other half
were people that were family members so they had all these people in the sort of
the back of the room and then they would ask these
if you agreed with the statement you would come up and sit in the chairs and
then kind of share your perspective on that and then the
other side would come share their perspective one of the first
statements i guess it was a statement on a question that they made was
addicts and alcoholics are selfish now what was interesting to me was to
see the response of the people remember i said there's six people in the back of
the room half family members half people in recovery and so what
happened was all three of the people that
identified themselves as people in recovery came and sat in the chairs and
then i think one of the family members and i just thought wow that's
interesting the people that are in recovery the people that are saying i'm
an addict and an alcoholic they're saying oh yeah addiction is
selfish and some of the family members are
disagreeing and you would kind of think like that would be in reverse
but as surprising as it is this is probably pretty typical of the response
it seems that families often want to kind of minimize
and justify it in their own head to make it okay it's sounds like they're
just fine for the person but when you deal with people in
recovery they're a lot more hardcore with addiction than people not
in recovery are which is kind of surprising and i thought oh i could make
a video about that is addiction selfish but most of what i
want to spend this video on is how and why that is
because i think that's really actually the important piece for you to
understand is addiction and alcohol is included in
that selfish yes absolutely because it seems if you have been around
an addict or an alcoholic if your needs can coincide with their
needs and get their needs met and do something
nice for you too they will but if it comes between what they have
to have their substance and your needs you will always be second
you can never be more than second you can be second
and that's the best you can be does that mean they're inherently
selfish people no but the illness of addiction brings you to a very selfish
place no matter who you are now sometimes
based on the personality of the person with addiction they may
not look very selfish on the outside but i promise you on the inside
there's some selfishness going on so let's get to the how and why the why
is because the addiction brings this person
into a survival mode much like you would be if you were starving to
death and that's why that happens to people with drug or
alcohol addictions so how do humans that have addiction
continue to behave this way and justify it in their brain
or feel okay about doing it that's the important part here it's the
psychology of the matter i guess the why really is the biology of the matter
but the how they keep doing this and keep
being okay with it and keep not seeing it is the how so let's take a look at
that you know we all know that denial is a
part of addiction but to me denial is so much
bigger than that and i think when we can understand that we can do a better job
of putting together recovery programs for people
so when this person is choosing to go get this substance they're not thinking
in their mind they're like literally lying to themselves
about what's happening in the moment or why it's happening
or about what the outcome is going to be that's the way that they continue to
hurt the people around them over and over and over and it looks like at times
that they could care less or that they don't even notice
or that they don't get it when that's probably not the case at all
what's really happening is the self-deception is so deep
and so entrenched so before we take a look at these lies these self-deceptions
that people are telling themselves to justify
these selfish behaviors so basically what that means is to fool oneself
when we're self-deceiving ourself we're not being
clear and honest with ourselves about our values our motives or our beliefs
and as we go through this list i would love it if you would
think of some others to add to the list like add them down there because
other people that are watching this can really benefit from that
okay i'm only going to do a little bit that is
super common right i'm just gonna do this little much and when i run out
it's over i'm not doing any more cocaine here's another equally
as common self-deception thought just this once
or another version of that is one more time
last time okay on monday i'm going on a diet it's kind of like that kind of
thing this is the last time total
self-deception here's another one um i'll replace it
before they notice it being gone so this happens a lot of times if
someone is taking someone else's like medication or alcohol or they're
taking in items they're stealing something from someone else
in order to get the substance and they think oh i'll put it back before they
even notice total self-deception another really
common one sometimes the person with the addiction will blame the people around
them for needing to drink or use it looks
something like this well if my wife wasn't so controlling i probably
wouldn't drink so much conversion like that another
self-deception is this thought about i deserve it like
you know i work hard for this family i provide for this family and i deserve
to be able to have a few drinks and relax when i get home from work
and sometimes you see that one when people acknowledge that they have
addiction but they are grabbing a hold of that as an excuse
so it's like i can't help it i'm an alcoholic i can't help it i'm an addict
and it controls me and that's just what
addicts do i can't help but self-deception
how about this one i'm just drinking or using
because i'm so miserable in my marriage i'm just using so that i can work
extra hours and provide money for my family it's that i'm doing it because
rationalization here's another kind of self-deception that you might
hear from someone who's maybe stealing from
businesses or department stores you know maybe someone goes into the target and
they're stealing or shoplifting or whatever
it's just all these ways in which we self deceive
we lie to ourselves to make the behaviors okay
here's another couple and these two kind of go together one of them is
my situation is really different you don't understand i call it like
terminal uniqueness and then the counterpart to that is
no one else understands you don't get me it kind of goes with that
i'm different special unique so i have these different special
unique set of circumstances and these rules don't apply to me because this
that's not the way it works total self-deception
ultimately most of these are surrounded by one big self-deception
which is i'm not hurting anyone or i'm not hurting anyone but myself
these things are untrue but it's all these little lies
that we tell ourselves along the way that
allow us to continue to make these bad decisions over and over again and
why do i think it's so important for you to know this
it's so important because even though putting their best effort in they focus
on not having the substance but they're not realizing that there's a
whole lot of other psychological processes that need
to be addressed otherwise those processes will
come back into play and either lead the person back to drugs
or alcohol or at least lead the person back to
making other bad decisions or decisions that hurt the
people around them sometimes in recovery they call that
being dry now to really understand denial on the
deepest level i want you to watch this next video i'm going to put it right up
here for you it's about the levels of denial and it's
the perfect second part to this video you just watched