Addicted to GETTING MY WAY. No seriously...ADDICTED.
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[COLUMN 1] Addictions That Are Commonly Thought Of: |
[COLUMN 2] Addictions Sometimes Are Sometimes Thought Of: |
[COLUMN 3] Addictions That Are Rarely Thought Of: |
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Drugs (i.e., Cocaine, Pills, etc.) |
Shopping |
Getting YOUR way. |
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Sex |
Food |
Doing what YOU want. |
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Alcohol |
Negativity |
Avoiding boredom. |
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Pills |
Video Games |
Distorted and/or Imaginary Self-Expression |
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Social Media |
Plastic Surgery |
[Toxic] Music Culture |
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Porn |
Risky Behavior |
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The Internet |
Tanning |
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Work |
Exercise |
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Gambling |
Sugar/Sweets |
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Love |
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Television |
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A Closer Look at Column 3
As a professional counselor, I have, and continue to work with a wide range
of American children. Though I am intensely passionate and a dedicated student to my career field, one of
the things I strongly dislike is the surface level, robotic, mechanical, and soulless style of counseling. To be
honest, I truly believe that many therapists are unconscious of how they are addicted to sniffing out and
finding symptoms in clients. The problem with this, to me, is that it removes the possibility for brilliant
divine creativity. I remember a young aspiring psychologist once saying to me, “Shawn, you’re right. I feel
in becoming a psychologist, I lost John (himself).”
I do not believe that enough of my peers have seriously considered the things
in Column 3 as legitimate addictions. I do agree that there are reasons
not to. For example, they are more existential and ambiguous and not as
inanimate/concrete. One could also argue that the items in column 3 are
personality traits and/or symptoms of other mental health disorders. However,
I do not see it as any of those things.
When I am doing family
therapy with the Doe family and I physically see how the kids flip out when he/she can’t get his/her
way, (DESPITE whatever it is that they want to “get their way with,”) this
tells me that there is a great possibility that I should look at this behavior
as more of an addiction or as an “abusive element” instead of
‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’ (ODD), ‘Intermittent Explosive Disorder’ (IED),
etc.; especially if desires are for things that continue to result in negative
outcomes. For example, Jewel Doe (Child)has been arrested along with Mason,
4 times in the previous 8 months for a variety or petty crimes. Jewel, acts out around the house because a
parent said she cannot go to visit their Mason. To me, this is more serious than “unruly behavior.”
In this scenario, there is some sort of addictive behavior because Jewel wants
to keep hanging out with her friend, REPEATEDLY, despite the unfavorable
consequences and major problems. This is reminiscent of classic addiction
behaviors. Is Jewel addicted to her friend, the relationship, getting
her way, the stealing, some type of thrill-seeking, a possible distorted
sense of being a ‘badass’, all of it, or something else? I don’t know…but
something is there – and something other than the traditional mental health
diagnosis that clinicians ‘impulsively’ assign to kids because it sounds
right. Here’s another thing; TOLERANCE. Let’s assume that Jewel’s
parents have aloud her to stay up for 1 extra hour, for the previous 4 days to
play a video game. On the fifth night, her mother and father require her
going to bed at the regular time. Jewel refuses; and when her parents
tell her that she is unhealthily losing sleep, she responds “I’ll just deal
with (‘tolerance’). I want to play my
game!” Playing for three and half
straight hours isn’t enough anymore…now she needs four and a half hours every
night. If her parents threaten to take
the video game away, she then demands to watch television. When they take the power chord for the television,
she then threatens to not go to school tomorrow. Here, we see that it may not be about any of
these electronics. Jewel just wants to
get her way. Her left brain is most likely
highly stimulated in this moment because she is angry, combined with various bodily
chemicals being activated in response to her anger, simply because she can’t
get her way. Think about that for a moment: chemicals…brain…anger
due to not getting her way (the substance), refusal to go to school (potentially
causing impaired functioning).
This is suggestive of addictive behavior.
I would argue
that many people are not necessarily addicted to drugs as much as they are
escaping boredom or reality. This is not an uncommon thought. I
have heard many incarcerated adolescents and teens say that boredom led to the idea
to do whatever it was that got them incarcerated. I postulate you have heard
kids and adults say, “I ‘use’ because I wanna get out of my head. I don’t
wanna deal with the things on my mind.” They are escaping reality.
Well, why do some kids want to spend so much time with their friends – even if
the friends aren’t really good friends? Why do kids want to listen to
toxic music? There may be many reasons, but sometimes, two of those
reasons are: 1. avoid boredom and 2. escape a reality that is too difficult to
mentally bare. Therefore, a child who impulsively wants to visit and hang
out with friends in order to avoid boredom – may actually be an attempt to “use”
the social experience as a means experience a high and/or to avoid experiences
of “withdrawal” from not being with friends.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Extra inset* - 2 days after I wrote the first draft of this blog, I randomly
read the following statements from a book:
“In the September 17, 1966, issue of Science
News there is a description of a report of Dr. Paul Hollander to the
American Sociological Association meeting in Miami. Juvenile delinquency, he says, is now becoming
a problem in Russia, but the delinquency of young Russians probably is due
to boredom,”
“…there had been an increase of juvenile delinquency in the Moscow region…The
party official noted that more than 80 per cent of all youth crime was
committed in a state of intoxication,”
What is the chance that, two days after I ‘speculatively’
write about my own observation of boredom and intoxication in some kids, I then
come across information from a Science article (that is over 50 years old!)
that validates what I am saying in 2021? How freaky is that…??
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My intent
in writing this brief piece is to think through the need to incorporate
addiction counseling for the things in Column 3, like we do the things in
Column 1 and 2. I recall talking to a youth and at one point he said,
“Music is my crack *he laughed*. I need it. It helps me.” I
attempted a smile but I didn’t laugh. He played segments from 2 songs he
considers to be his ‘medicine’. Both songs had lyrics that even adults
shouldn’t want to listen to. Studies have shown that aggressive music
directly affects the psyche. When this kid is stressed, he goes to his
‘drug of choice’ (his “crack”), thinking that all of those toxic ideas going
into his mind is his medicine and that is scary. To play devil’s
advocate, perhaps the beat of the song, the melody, and other variables are
impacting him as well. Let’s take away my concern about the lyrics; he still
admitted that this music, TO HIM, is a drug. If this is a
collective experience among people, adults included, then why wouldn’t we look
at toxic music culture as something to treat medically too? There is
absolutely no way I would be able to have involved myself in my own
self-improvement in 2008 if I didn’t significantly “wean” myself off of toxic
music culture. Am I completely sober from toxic music? No.
But I sure don’t abuse music or allow myself to become addicted to it anymore;
and one of the things that helps me stay away from that path is the fact that I
have surrounded myself with an evolving “group of people” who are former toxic music
abusers as well (think
support groups like AA/NA). I understand I am using ideas to play on words but to me this
stuff is an addiction…
In my own
work, I like to embrace a very holistic model of wellbeing which encompasses (but
are not limited to), at least 8 types of “bodies” that are all just as
important as the physical one and at least 8 types of intelligences. In the
previous year and a half, I have been researching and studying the effects of
nutrition on the 8 bodies of wellbeing and how food specifically affects things
like aggression, criminal intent, maliciousness, mood, etc.; and unfortunately,
not enough mental health clinicians, in my opinion, incorporate nutrition and
dietary psychoeducation into their work. Thus, even if you disagree
with me and don’t think the items in Column 3 are addictions, if you look under
those behaviors, you may find that things like sugar, dye, and other foods
which cause biochemical imbalances may result in the things in Column 3. Even
if I am wrong about Column 3 items being “addictions” or types of substances
abuses, from the PerspectVe of the previous sentence, you will still find that
some FOODS are causing behavioral issues and are related to ADDICTION.
Why? Because as Dr. Bobby Price once stated (I’m paraphrasing), addiction
is engineered into the food.
One of
the major takeaways from this blog should be to understand the serious nature
of having a substance use disorder in regards, or being addicted, to the things
in Column 3. It is very hard to conquer
addictions and the ‘addictive state’ usually does not ever go away. I need you to understand that. You may improve yourself, change your
behavior and mindset about things – to the point where you no longer use a particular
substance(s), but that energy is still within you.
“There is no such thing as no longer having a
substance use disorder. Once you have
it, you always have it…it is considered a permanent diagnosis. Once someone has developed that chemical dependency…there
is an underlying brain abnormality. That
abnormality is not going to go away. That
susceptibility to the problem will not go away just because they’re changing
their behavior. It’s much like
cancer. You can go from having cancer…to
no longer having detectable cancer in your system but you still have underlying
cell abnormalities that put you at risk of RELAPSE. So, we don’t say that we’ve cured the cancer. We say that you are in remission. And it’s the same way with substance use
disorders,”
People who have met me after
the age of 23 have a difficult time seeing me as a rageful person. The truth is, I have a previous history of
anger, rage, and violence. I was
addicted to my former reputation of being a no-nonsense type of kid. I “craved” it. In my mind (at the time), and in an internal
world of struggling to figure out who I was, it gave me an identity. It was a negative identity but to some kids
(my former self included), it is better to be a negative somebody than to be
NOBODY at all. This created person was my escape from reality. The manufactured tough-guy teenage version of
me became an addiction. I did not want
to be Shawn because Shawn was vulnerable.
But the tough-guy was hard; and got a lot of respect from peers. Though
I have engaged in significant self-improvement in my adult years and no longer
desire to be a rageful violent person, a dark energy is still somewhere inside
of me; and you, the reader have darkness somewhere inside of you as well. It is human.
Self-improvement and spiritual/soulful growth are the new addictions. And that is the “cure” if you ask me! From my PerspectVe, the ONLY way to defeat an
unhealthy addiction, is to gain a healthy addiction. This is not a fact. It is simply my opinion.
Remember, when you are addicted to toxic things like toxically “getting your
way”, YOU are NOT actually getting your way.
The addiction is getting its way.
YOU are getting used.
I hope this blog provided
you with some…substance.
#ExpandYourPerspectVe
© PerspectVe LLC, Shawn
Coleman, MS PC 04/23/2021
References
J.I.Rodale. (1968). Natural Health, Sugar and the
Criminal Mind. New York: Pyramid Publications.
Norton, A. (2017, February 15). Aaron Norton -
Overview of How to Diagnose Substance Use Disorders Using DSM-5.
Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIBbqUQ6KLk
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