Latest / Recovering Out Loud / Cross Addiction Explained: From Alcohol to Work, Gym, Gambling & More

Transcript

Cross Addiction Explained: From Alcohol to Work, Gym, Gambling & More · Recovering Out Loud

• 0:00
  OK, welcome back to Recovering Out Loud with your host.
• 0:02
  My name is Anthony and I'm an addict and alcoholic.
• 0:05
  And today I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite
• 0:07
  topics because this has affected me personally and it affects
• 0:10
  everybody in recovery that I've met.
• 0:13
  Some are better at hiding it than others, but we're going to
• 0:16
  talk about cross addiction. So swapping one addiction for
• 0:19
  another. I've now quit my substance and
• 0:21
  I'm swapping into something else.
• 0:23
  This could be anything from the gym to steroids to body
• 0:28
  dysmorphia, plastic surgery, shopping, gambling.
• 0:32
  We are looking for the microwave mentality, the quick fix, the
• 0:36
  Band-Aid solution to whatever problem is going on in here.
• 0:40
  It takes real work to get to the bottom of this and I'm still
• 0:44
  ongoing. This is an ongoing process for
• 0:47
  me. My big thing.
• 0:48
  I've went from, I had G1 time, I used to G3 four times a week in
• 0:52
  recovery. Spend lots of money doing that.
• 0:55
  There are healthier versions of this and then they're unhealthy.
• 0:57
  But at the end of the day, balance is the key.
• 0:59
  We're looking for balance here. One of my favorite quotes, Rich
• 1:03
  Roll said this one time balance is the fickle lover I can't
• 1:07
  quite court. Something I just have never been
• 1:10
  able to handle is getting balance moderation in my life.
• 1:14
  Food is another cross addiction. I have personal experience with
• 1:17
  this as I mentioned to you, because when I relapsed I was
• 1:21
  getting into steroids and there was something a hole that I
• 1:24
  still hadn't filled yet. Steroids didn't cause me to
• 1:28
  start smoking meth again, but or start smoking meth at all and I
• 1:32
  had never done it before. Steroids got me into this mode
• 1:35
  of secrets, which is I have talked about this all the time,
• 1:38
  but you're only as sick as your secrets in recovery.
• 1:40
  I had a secret I wasn't telling everybody about what I was doing
• 1:43
  on the side. I was getting TRT from the
• 1:45
  doctor and then I was also getting steroids online because
• 1:48
  I wanted to feel like I looked good.
• 1:50
  I wanted you to think I was jacked.
• 1:52
  Body dysmorphia. This fueled my cross addiction
• 1:55
  and it brought me back out to Adderall.
• 1:57
  It brought me out to meth like I said and into really a really
• 2:00
  dark place after 7 1/2 years of recovery.
• 2:03
  So let's talk about it. So you stop drinking, you stop
• 2:06
  using, but now you're suddenly betting online, you're gambling,
• 2:09
  you're using these wheel apps that people are into.
• 2:11
  This is a big one nowadays I'm getting my dopamine from it's,
• 2:15
  it's dopamine seeking behavior. That's what I like to call it.
• 2:18
  I'm looking for dopamine, I'm looking for hits, I'm looking
• 2:21
  for drugs, not in the form of drugs.
• 2:23
  And I can rationalize it, justify it all day.
• 2:26
  Well, it's not mood or mind altering, so I'm OK.
• 2:30
  Meanwhile, you're going down this path that's going to lead
• 2:32
  you to maybe eventually a worse relapse.
• 2:35
  I'm not saying if you're buying things on Amazon every day that
• 2:38
  you're going to relapse. I'm not saying that at all.
• 2:40
  It's the behavior around it and the protection of the cross
• 2:43
  addiction. Now we're starting to fall into
• 2:45
  the old behavior. So I'm I'm ashamed that I'm
• 2:48
  sticking a needle in my ass every week and I'm not really
• 2:51
  telling people about that. My, you know, my mentor.
• 2:55
  I'm keeping it to myself and now I'm keeping secrets and
• 2:58
  eventually I'm in the mode of fuck it.
• 3:00
  So I'm already using this. What's the point?
• 3:02
  I see Adderall online one day I start buying it.
• 3:05
  I get it prescribed because I need to justify and rationalize
• 3:07
  to myself that I'm not relapsed and I'm getting it from a doctor
• 3:11
  and it's prescription. So don't you know I'm not
• 3:12
  relapsed yet? Meanwhile all this behaviour is
• 3:15
  happening in the background. Nobody knows about it.
• 3:17
  I went, I said to once in to a counselor of mine in in Utah
• 3:20
  when I went to rehab there, I was telling people 90% of the
• 3:23
  truth, but this 10% I was keeping back here.
• 3:25
  And he said to me, you know, if you're robbing banks 10% of the
• 3:28
  time, you know what that makes you a fucking bank robber.
• 3:31
  This could also go in the form of so if you start gambling, you
• 3:35
  quit and you start gambling, you start smoking weed, maybe you
• 3:38
  start working 16 hours a day, workaholism.
• 3:41
  That's another one that is the most glorified addiction in our
• 3:44
  society today. You tell somebody, oh, I had 20
• 3:47
  beers last week and they're kind of like, dude, that's a little
• 3:51
  fucked up. You tell them you worked 20
• 3:53
  hours one day last week. Everybody's like, oh man, this
• 3:55
  guy's on fire. You're going to, you're killing
• 3:57
  it, bro. You're doing great.
• 3:58
  It's the same thing. We're still using something to
• 4:02
  feel better, to change our insides.
• 4:04
  Social media is another example. If you're scrolling 14 hours a
• 4:07
  day, you might keep telling yourself it's not that bad
• 4:10
  because I'm not using drugs. At least I'm not shooting
• 4:12
  heroin. Today I'm going to talk about
• 4:14
  what a cross addiction really is, why it happens, and how to
• 4:17
  recognize it before it pulls you back into the same cycle that we
• 4:20
  all know too well. So cross addiction is when you
• 4:23
  addictive patterns transfer from one substance or behavior to
• 4:28
  another. The substance changes, but the
• 4:30
  underlying addiction process does not.
• 4:33
  Vaping is another one. All these are just popping in my
• 4:35
  head as I go. Some examples of this, alcohol
• 4:38
  into cocaine, pills, now alcohol, alcohol, marijuana.
• 4:43
  This is the most the most common one I see.
• 4:45
  I was doing a hard substance, now I'm just smoking weed.
• 4:49
  What's the problem? You're still blocking yourself
• 4:51
  off. You're altering your mind.
• 4:52
  Anyways, I won't get into that whole debate.
• 4:54
  California sober. Love those people.
• 4:57
  The point I want to drive home with all this is addiction is
• 4:59
  not just about the substance. If I would argue it's not about
• 5:02
  the substance at all. The substance is.
• 5:04
  It's a solution to our problem that is deeper, but it's also a
• 5:08
  symptom of our drinking. Alcohol is but a symptom of our
• 5:11
  alcoholism. I like the effect produced by
• 5:14
  drugs and alcohol because I don't want to feel me.
• 5:16
  I don't want to hear the voices in my head.
• 5:17
  I don't want to think about tomorrow.
• 5:19
  I don't want to think about yesterday.
• 5:20
  I'm going to drink because it makes all that go away.
• 5:23
  So why does cross addiction happen?
• 5:25
  Well, the brain is still wants relief.
• 5:28
  Addiction rewires the brain's reward system.
• 5:30
  We all know that. I talk about it a lot in the
• 5:31
  other episodes. Your brain learns substance
• 5:35
  equals relief. Drink, smoking, alcohol,
• 5:38
  whatever your thing is, meth equals relief.
• 5:41
  Substance equals comfort, substance equals escape.
• 5:45
  Your brain is literally programmed after doing this
• 5:48
  enough to feel, to have that quick reaction, that automatic
• 5:53
  reaction, uncomfortable emotion use.
• 5:56
  It's like a, it's an escape hatch, a chemical eject button
• 6:00
  if you will. So when the substance
• 6:02
  disappears, the brain doesn't just go, oh, we're cool now,
• 6:05
  everything's good, I've got this.
• 6:07
  Or maybe it does. But that's not actually what's
• 6:10
  happening neurologically. What's actually happening is it
• 6:12
  says, where's that substance that used to regulate me?
• 6:16
  I need that. Where is that?
• 6:18
  So it starts searching for other things.
• 6:20
  If another substance or behavior provides dopamine or emotional
• 6:23
  relief, the brain can latch onto it quickly.
• 6:27
  The addictive thinking stays the same.
• 6:29
  So even though the substance changes, the thinking pattern
• 6:32
  remains. Things like escaping feelings,
• 6:35
  seeking instant relief, justifying behavior, obsessive
• 6:39
  thinking, compulsive reward seeking.
• 6:41
  They can. Now we're just latching onto
• 6:43
  working out at the gym. Somebody might say I don't drink
• 6:46
  anymore, I only smoke weed. But if the thinking and
• 6:51
  compulsion are identical, the addiction process may still be
• 6:54
  active. So if the thinking and
• 6:56
  addiction, sorry if the thinking and compulsion are identical.
• 7:00
  Negative thought, compulsion to pick up something.
• 7:03
  I use outside things to change my insides.
• 7:05
  Untreated emotional pain. Many people use substances to
• 7:08
  regulate anxiety. I don't feel good.
• 7:10
  I don't like this feeling. I'm scared, I'm tense, I'm
• 7:12
  uncomfortable. I'm going to drink.
• 7:14
  Trauma. I've had some kind of trauma in
• 7:16
  my life, generational or big T trauma, and I don't want to
• 7:20
  think about it. I'm going to escape.
• 7:21
  I'm going to regulate my trauma. Loneliness, stress or shame,
• 7:25
  these are all different reasons. Everybody's different.
• 7:27
  So if recovery removes the substance but doesn't address
• 7:30
  the emotional drivers behind that substance use, the person
• 7:34
  often searches for another coping mechanism.
• 7:36
  Shopping, working, working out, golf, anything.
• 7:39
  Some are healthier than others, like I said.
• 7:41
  But going to the gym 24 hours, I don't know, every 10 hours a day
• 7:47
  or 4 hours a day can still be an unhealthy thing.
• 7:50
  I can still go to the gym 4 hours a day and not hang out
• 7:54
  with my wife or not hang out with my kids.
• 7:56
  It's all about moderation. Like I said, balance.
• 7:59
  I remember there was a time in my recovery when I would go to
• 8:01
  the gym on my lunch break every day and I'd be late for
• 8:04
  meetings. I would come back because I was
• 8:05
  obsessed with going to the gym and escaping and achieving that.
• 8:09
  That feeling of regulation relief.
• 8:13
  If I didn't go to the gym, I would beat the shit out of
• 8:15
  myself for not going and I'd have this negative oh you're a
• 8:17
  piece of shit going in my head if I missed it.
• 8:20
  Not necessarily healthy. So most common forms of cross
• 8:24
  addiction that I see alcohol into marijuana, cocaine into
• 8:27
  alcohol. That's a big one.
• 8:29
  I'm I'm an addict, but I'm not an alcoholic.
• 8:31
  I hate to tell you, but if you drink, eventually you're going
• 8:34
  to end up using that drug again because in my experience
• 8:37
  anyways, drinking didn't do it for me.
• 8:39
  If I love cocaine and then now I'm just drinking.
• 8:42
  This is for me personally, my experience.
• 8:44
  I always I'm thinking about what's next when I'm drinking.
• 8:47
  I want more. I need, you know, this is nice,
• 8:49
  but I need to, I need to feel in control and cocaine provides
• 8:52
  that for me. Eventually I'm going to pick up
• 8:55
  cocaine and I've proven that to myself many times in my
• 8:58
  relapses. And so a lot of people will
• 9:01
  rationalize this with themselves and say, well, I quit.
• 9:03
  My main problem, like I said to you before, at least I'm not
• 9:05
  shooting heroin. I want to tell you your
• 9:07
  addiction doesn't care what the substance is.
• 9:09
  It cares about the effect produced.
• 9:12
  So another form is substance to behavior.
• 9:14
  This one I see a lot with the people that I work with and the
• 9:16
  clients that I work with gambling huge right now.
• 9:20
  It's very secretive to the thing about gambling too, is I can do
• 9:22
  it in secret and no one would know.
• 9:25
  Unless you're checking credit card statements, you wouldn't
• 9:27
  know. Sex, porn, food, work, exercise,
• 9:32
  shopping, social media, they can all become addictive because
• 9:35
  they also trigger dopamine and emotional escape.
• 9:39
  So like I said to you before, the socially acceptable ones,
• 9:42
  workholism, extreme fitness, constant productivity.
• 9:45
  I need to always be doing something and I can never sit
• 9:47
  with myself because I'm always doing something.
• 9:50
  And if I'm not achieving something, not working towards
• 9:52
  my goals, I must be a piece of shit.
• 9:54
  I must be useless. Underneath all that, you will
• 9:56
  see. You might see obsession, loss of
• 10:00
  balance, avoidance of emotions. Like I said, compulsion.
• 10:03
  The behavior might look healthy on the outside, but is still a
• 10:06
  function of emotional escape. I am not dealing with the deeper
• 10:10
  issues at hand here. So what are some signs that you
• 10:14
  might be experiencing cross addiction obsessive thinking
• 10:16
  when I'm not doing that behavior or substance, am I thinking
• 10:19
  about it constantly? Some examples of this is what
• 10:22
  can I when can I do it next? You're planning and I used to
• 10:24
  write down all my steroid regimen and that used to give me
• 10:28
  dopamine. I remember I'd be sitting in
• 10:29
  meetings at work and I would be writing down my stack for my
• 10:33
  steroid use and I would get so excited about I'm going to go on
• 10:36
  this cycle, this day and I'm going to add up all these
• 10:38
  milligrams of this and that and it was the perfect plan.
• 10:41
  I'm going to get jacked and I did let me tell you when I got
• 10:44
  jacked, I didn't get happier. Maybe the voice, it's never
• 10:48
  enough. At the end of the day, I there's
• 10:50
  always more jacked and I look back at pictures now of myself
• 10:53
  when I was on steroids at the peak, I was fucking and I, I
• 10:57
  remember at that time not being happy with the way I looked.
• 11:00
  I look at it now and I'm like, wow, I'd be so happy with that
• 11:02
  today. All perception.
• 11:04
  It's hilarious how the mind works.
• 11:06
  There's for us anyways. For me there's always more.
• 11:09
  There's always more ripped. This is a disease of not enough.
• 11:12
  I am not enough. It is not enough. 1 is too many,
• 11:16
  1000 is never enough. Two, loss of control.
• 11:19
  You plan one thing and do another.
• 11:21
  I'll do only a little and you do more than you plan to.
• 11:25
  Prime example. Three, emotional dependence.
• 11:28
  You rely on the behavior to regulate your mood, escape
• 11:31
  discomfort, change how you feel. This takes a lot of deeper work
• 11:34
  and journaling and meditation and prayer and bouncing it off
• 11:37
  of people. Am I using this as a crutch?
• 11:39
  Ask yourself that. Am I avoiding the feeling behind
• 11:42
  here? Am I avoiding feelings at all?
• 11:44
  Four, it starts to replace recovery practices.
• 11:47
  This one's big. Instead of doing things that
• 11:49
  support recovery, like meetings, connection, coffee, reflection,
• 11:53
  healthy coping, you're doing said thing.
• 11:55
  The behavior becomes the primary emotional regulator.
• 11:59
  The work is not coming from in here.
• 12:01
  My solution is not coming from in here, which is where it is.
• 12:04
  It's coming from out there. I'm getting my solution, my
• 12:06
  relief out there somehow, either in substance, chemical behavior,
• 12:11
  outcome, people clapping right, people giving me Atta boys.
• 12:16
  It's coming from outside of me. The solution is inside all
• 12:19
  along. It is within you.
• 12:21
  You need to look for it and dig deeper and sit and quiet.
• 12:25
  Be undisturbed. Tap into a spirituality to a
• 12:28
  connection greater than yourself, power greater than
• 12:31
  yourself. That's the way I do it.
• 12:33
  So the difference between coping and cross addiction recovery can
• 12:37
  actually involve finding finding healthier outlets.
• 12:41
  Things like exercise, hobbies, social connection, creative
• 12:44
  work. These are all good things to
• 12:45
  fuel creativity and promote emotional regulation.
• 12:49
  Exercise is a huge 1 to regulate your nervous system and provide
• 12:53
  peace and calm and serenity. The difference between the
• 12:56
  difference is compulsion versus balance.
• 12:59
  Healthy coping is I can take it or leave it.
• 13:01
  Cross addiction is it becomes necessary to function
• 13:05
  emotionally. I can't live without without it.
• 13:08
  I can't function emotionally without it.
• 13:10
  So what's the solution? Treat the addiction, not the
• 13:12
  substance. It's not sexy, but it's
• 13:15
  effective. Real recovery focuses on the
• 13:17
  underlying addiction process. So things that help prevent
• 13:21
  cross addiction? Emotional awareness meditation
• 13:24
  is a huge practical tool. I use it guided meditation every
• 13:27
  morning, watching my emotions, watching my thoughts, being
• 13:30
  present, taking account of what's going on in this current
• 13:33
  moment. Not thinking about tomorrow, not
• 13:35
  thinking about yesterday. Prayer is another one.
• 13:37
  Tapping into a power. Hey God, power greater than me,
• 13:40
  spiritual creator of the universe, universe.
• 13:43
  Help remove my fear so that I can be silent.
• 13:46
  Help remove my sadness. Help remove my need to always be
• 13:51
  right. Help remove my obsession over
• 13:53
  this problem so that I can get the creativity to solve said
• 13:58
  problem in the silence. Therapy is another coping
• 14:00
  mechanism. Addressing trauma, learning to
• 14:03
  sit with discomfort, community and accountability and self
• 14:07
  reflection. This whole recovery process is
• 14:10
  about honest self appraisal, self searching, self
• 14:16
  examination. Why do I do the things that I
• 14:18
  do? Why am I like this?
• 14:20
  What do I do when a negative emotion comes up?
• 14:23
  What do I do when somebody is yelling at me on the street?
• 14:27
  What are my patterns? Recognize them, be aware,
• 14:29
  document them, ask other people that are close to you.
• 14:33
  Hey do I what do I do when I get angry?
• 14:35
  When when something bad happens, what, what's my how do I react?
• 14:39
  The big point here, recovery isn't just removing substances,
• 14:43
  it's learning how to live without needing to escape your
• 14:46
  life. How do I live without needing or
• 14:48
  wanting to escape the current situation?
• 14:51
  Not having resistance. Suffering is fear, sorry.
• 14:55
  Suffering is pain times resistance.
• 14:58
  So if it's 2000, let's say it's 2000 units of pain.
• 15:02
  If we can talk about this, if we can talk about this practically,
• 15:06
  let's say somebody passing away in my life causes.
• 15:10
  That's a bad example actually, 'cause that's painful.
• 15:12
  Let's talk about something more more common.
• 15:15
  OK, I'll give an example from my life.
• 15:17
  My I, my tenant left all her shit behind at her house and I
• 15:21
  couldn't. It was hard for me to get her
• 15:23
  out and I was stressing about it for a long time.
• 15:26
  If that caused me 2000 units of pain to have to deal with that
• 15:31
  and to have to sell my house and to have to get somebody out and
• 15:33
  I'm not getting rent, I'm paying my mortgage and nothing is
• 15:36
  coming in and I'm now struggling.
• 15:38
  This is now affecting my pocketbook.
• 15:40
  I'm freaking out. That causes me 2000 units of
• 15:42
  pain. Me now sitting in that problem,
• 15:45
  obsessing over it, not trying to solve it, but obsessing over it,
• 15:48
  being fearful of the outcome, trying to control the outcome,
• 15:52
  trying to get her out. All that energy that I'm
• 15:55
  burning, burning up foolishly, that's another 10,000 units of
• 15:58
  pain. And I know you can relate to
• 16:00
  this because we all do it. If bad thing happens, we amplify
• 16:04
  bad thing by applying our story on it, by spinning our story.
• 16:09
  Oh, she's never going to move out.
• 16:11
  I'm never going to sell my house.
• 16:12
  I'm going to get be poor. I'm going to lose my house now
• 16:15
  I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage.
• 16:17
  Now I have to. All this shit goes up in my head
• 16:19
  and it's not true. These stories I spin.
• 16:21
  Stop spinning the stories. So that was an incredible dive
• 16:26
  into a side tangent there, but it felt necessary to get out.
• 16:29
  So powerful way to end this will be addiction is incredibly
• 16:34
  adaptive. You hear people say your
• 16:36
  addiction is doing push ups in the parking lot.
• 16:38
  I found that to be true. It's getting stronger.
• 16:41
  It's progressive. And if I relapse again, I don't
• 16:44
  know if I have another recovery in recovery in me, to be honest.
• 16:47
  I know I have another relapse. I don't know if I have another
• 16:49
  recovery because it was hard to come back here.
• 16:52
  If you close one door, I would say this recovery is like having
• 16:55
  six garbage cans and five lids. There's always something that's
• 16:58
  coming up. There's something I have to deal
• 16:59
  with and it's not a curse. That is just the way it is.
• 17:02
  I can pay more attention. When I was an addiction, I had 6
• 17:05
  garbage cans and 0 lids. Everything was smelling like
• 17:08
  shit all the time. Focus on what's causing you pain
• 17:11
  and suffering in your life, not pain causing you suffering in
• 17:13
  your life. Stop resisting it.
• 17:16
  The worst thing you can do is tell yourself that this can't be
• 17:19
  happening. This thing isn't supposed to
• 17:21
  happen. I shouldn't be feel having this
• 17:23
  scenario happen in my life. Stop resisting, accept it.
• 17:27
  The answer to the solution will come when you're quiet.
• 17:30
  The creativity will come. Recovery is not just about
• 17:33
  quitting something, like I said, it's about changing how we cope,
• 17:36
  how we regulate emotions, and how we deal with circumstances.
• 17:40
  There are no problems in life today, there are just
• 17:42
  circumstances. I always say this, but when it
• 17:45
  rains it's a bad day because it ruined my BBQ party.
• 17:49
  When in other parts of the world they're happy it rains because
• 17:52
  it grows their crops. I am spinning a negative
• 17:55
  connotation, negative story on said circumstance.
• 17:59
  When those things change, how we cope, how we regulate emotions,
• 18:02
  how we deal with life. When that changes, the addiction
• 18:05
  has nowhere left to hide. And then you can begin to heal
• 18:09
  and be present and not be in the state of disturbed all the time.
• 18:14
  Be able to help others. Recovery is simple, not easy.
• 18:17
  And if no one has told you this yet, today I love you.
• 18:20
  Thanks for listening. Please like, subscribe, follow
• 18:23
  the podcast, and have a wonderful day.