Empowering others struggling with hardships, Bored Panda compiled a list of people who prove that overcoming anything is possible with the right mindset and support. Scroll down to see powerful before and after pictures of people’s astonishing achievements in kicking addictions’ behind. While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out an important conversation with Gillian Tietz, educator and host of the Sober Powered podcast, and Dr. Hannah Roberts, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and mindful drinking coach, who use their background and experience to spread information about addiction. Something that helps battle addiction is support and understanding. This can be done by educating ourselves and shedding more light on the misconceptions about substance abuse, which can hinder the progress of providing people with the care they need. To better our understanding of this epidemic, we reached out to experts for their insights. One of them is Gillian Tietz, educator and host of the Sober Powered podcast, who uses her biochemistry background and previous experience of alcohol abuse to spread information about addiction. We also contacted Dr. Hannah Roberts, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and mindful drinking coach who helps individuals change their drinking without judgment or a sobriety requirement through her online course, Mindful Moderation. Another reason why people abuse substances is to relieve negative emotions like anger or strengthen positive emotions like happiness and excitement. “Boredom is also a big trigger for addiction because you don’t have to find someone fun or interesting to do, alcohol/drugs can instantly make boring activities fun and make us instantly feel comfortable and connected around people we don’t know or like,” Tietz adds. She also mentions that people who struggle with addiction tend to have a lower tolerance for discomfort and can’t tolerate a wide range of emotions without getting overwhelmed or checked out (known as the window of tolerance). “When emotion goes beyond what we can tolerate, it feels very unpleasant, and we can use alcohol/drugs to bring it back into our window. However, when you repeat this process over and over, your window shrinks and you become less resilient. Plus, alcohol damages all areas of the brain, and when we get sober, emotions will actually be heightened and more intense for the first few weeks or months after all the years of numbing.” However, something that people don’t realize in the moment is that even though addiction provides a couple of hours of relief, it’s actually fueling those bottled-up feelings even more. She further explains, “Plus, when we drink/use constantly, we can’t improve our situation or make our lives more fulfilling. A main part of sobriety is to build a life you don’t want to escape from. Your actual life becomes the reward, not the 2-hour escape.” Tietz also mentions that people who struggle with addiction usually don’t have appropriate self-care mechanisms in place. ”They can be people pleasers, not know how to set boundaries, put everyone else’s needs before their own, and go go go all day without breaks. By the time the end of the day comes along, alcohol/drugs feel like “me time” because they don’t know how to practice self-care. In reality, they’re not getting “me time.” They’re checking out and turning off their brains because they desperately need a break. Poor self-care is one of the most reliable predictors of relapse.” “Growing up, a lot of us received the messaging that drugs were bad - that we would become addicted the second we tried something—and that we were morally bad people if we tried or used drugs. There are so many harmful stereotypes in that. First off, many people use different kinds of drugs without ever becoming addicted. And no one really plans to become addicted. Many of the people who struggle with substance use have real problems and real pain that need attention and care.” There’s also not one moment you become “addicted.” Addiction is a social construct that isn’t easy to define medically. The clinical term we use is substance use disorder, and the disorder is understood to exist on a spectrum of mild, moderate, or severe. People’s drug use (and the related problems) can move up and down on that spectrum throughout the days and weeks, as well as over a lifetime.” “The concept of “rock bottom” is a stereotype too. Hollywood loves to play with this myth, so it’s what we all think of as the step before recovery. People will sometimes say “Oh, they aren’t ready to change yet. They need to hit rock bottom before they do.” This is a dangerous stereotype because it prevents people from getting help earlier. People can want to change and even create change at any time. It’s normal to feel some ambivalence about change, especially if you don’t have solutions for your pain, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself the opportunity to change.” “I believe that if the general public understood that addiction changes the brain, then they wouldn’t have such harsh judgments. I believed everything the stigma said, and when I realized I had a problem with alcohol, I couldn’t handle it. It made me stay stuck longer, desperately trying to learn how to moderate because I didn’t want people to label me and judge me. I genuinely believed I was a weak-willed loser and it made me deeply hate myself. We can’t shame ourselves sober. What I’ve learned from my work helping people get sober is that there is usually a lot of pain and hardship behind someone’s drinking. I’ve worked with hundreds of people, and I have never met a weak-willed loser. The more I learn about someone’s story, the more I understand why they were so drawn to alcohol or drugs.” We do not develop any coping skills or tools to handle life while we drink or use them for every problem we have. Often, these skills were never modeled for us while we were growing up, so we had to figure out how to learn them as adults. Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
