After 30 years of smoking, 25 years of drinking to excess and 20 years of overeating, it still struck James as peculiar that the 28-day rehabilitation clinic he was advised to attended happened to be in a hospital. “I'm well enough,” James thought to himself. “My problems are psychological, not physical.”
There are actually several key reasons why this type of thinking falls short of the best type of clinical response to an addiction – to almost any addiction. The first is that the damage James did to his body over the years needs to be understood just for the simple reason that if there are critical physical conditions that need to be addressed, the sooner the better is always the right course of action. Secondly, ongoing stress is not an ideal environment for someone in recovery, so it helps to heal or improve on physical conditioning simply so the addict can get on with the important work of getting clean and sober.
And here is another link between physical conditions and recovery from addiction: In simple terms, in early recovery, an addict is served well by bad news. Addicts go straight when they realize they are creating more pain for themselves than pleasure, so this is the time to keep reminding addicts that there are painful consequences to their addictive behavior. A physical examination that shows the damage they have done to themselves can serve as a powerful wake-up call.
There are, of course, deeper psychological points that might be made at this point. For women, body images are especially important and are rarely confidence boosters. In one study, a forensic sketch artists listened to a second party to draw a woman's face and then listened to the woman describe her own face. In almost every example, the women viewed themselves as less flattering than others viewed them.
Addiction is also described clinically in many esteemed circles as a part of a vicious shame cycle. In this dynamic, someone is ashamed of their drinking, their drug or whatever their addiction might be. This might be masking a much deeper sense of shame, but it also mimics that deeper shame. The way out of the shame, of course, is to drink or use drugs again. This, at least, alleviates the pain. But as soon as the drug or the drink wears off, the addicts are ashamed of themselves for not being strong enough to stay away from their substance of choice.
Curiously, I once heard and obese food addict in tears once say, “I no longer want people to reject me or say they don't love me ever again, because I am fat.”
Here, on paper, it may be even more clear that the same sentence should be turned back onto this addict with the point that she should start to love herself and not reject or hate herself because of being fat. From there, a recovery might begin.
How does this change? We are lucky in two ways here. First, even in the case of someone morbidly obese, there is hope so long as someone is heading in the right direction. It may not be smart, healthy or attractive to weigh 300 pounds, but if you weighed 315 pounds two weeks before, 300 is a measure of triumph.
Secondly, as the late Albert Ellis would have said, addicts are obsessive about their addictions. They think about them constantly. They horde stashes of their favorite substance, mother over these stashes and have many obsessive=compulsive mannerism about them. Ellis might have even said that addicts are very good at being addicts. They know how the game is played and do it well.
Ellis's advice was simply for an addict to obsess over their recovery.
And what a treat this is if you throw physical exercise into the mix. How many benefits can be named here? Instead of shame, you might begin to feel proud of what your body might do, losing weight or regaining stamina if you are an ex-smoker. At the end of the day, when there is adequate exercise, you feel relaxed and tired. You can also get an endorphin rush from exercise.
I
f you become addicted to jogging or going to the gym to work out, you aren't breaking any laws. You can turn the same cycle around. What a shift to have vanity click in after years of self-abuse. When you feel better, look better, you might see your social life improve.
Along that line, there are two choices. Exercise can be accomplished alone, but a recovering addict needs friends who espouse positive behaviors. For that reason, an addict should go to the gym with a group or find friends there if possible. Go jogging with a friend, instead of alone. Get every last ounce of benefit you can from the work of recovery. Making new friends isn't such a bad idea when you can make that happen.
Of course, these days, there are many resources to help make exercise a part of your recovery.
• Just look at YouTube here to see how powerful and erroneous your image of yourself might be.
• Try http://www.everydayhealth.com/smoking-cessation/living/exercise-can-help-you-quit-smoking.aspx for information on basic exercise after smoking.
• Rehab International at http://rehab-international.org/drug-addiction/stereotypes also provides guidance for exercise for recovering addicts.
• And, if you think you're overdoing it, check out http://rehab-international.org/drug-addiction/stereotypes to keep yourself in check.
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