Hi, I’m Dave Marlon and this is understanding the disease model of addiction. It’s a new way of seeing recovery. Addiction is a disease. It’s chronic. It’s progressive. And it’s a a condition with recurrences. They don’t have to happen, but they often do. It involves changes in your brain chemistry and in the structure and the function of your brain. It affects your reward systems, your impulse control, and your decision-making. It’s not a moral failing, but it needs treatment and it needs support.
So, let’s talk about the brain changes in addiction. the brain’s reward system gets hijacked and you start developing new neuropathways which usually the substance or sometimes the behavior ends up rewiring your brain. It usually entails a weakness of impulse control. I’ll never do that again or I promised myself I wouldn’t but now maybe I’ll just have one. Uh, ooh, nobody will know. These are all examples of lies we may tell ourselves that are intertwined with the brain changes of addiction. It it occurs when our decision making becomes compromised. I often say that one of the uh phenomenon of craving they end it ends up showing it up itself as you changing your mind. When you make a solemn oath and you say, “I’m not going to I’ll use drink. I’m not going to drink for a period of time and then you have this phenomenon of craving and then you change your mind and even though you said you weren’t going to, you change your mind. You say, “Oh, I could just have one.” Or like I said before, no one would know. No one will know. It explains why just stopping isn’t simple.
Now there’s a spectrum of use and there’s abstinence, there’s social drinking, there’s heavy drinking, and then there’s alcoholic drinking. And each one of those four categories are different. And there’s no clear dividing line. It’s a gradual progression. And as you move into alcoholic drinking, there’s this proverbial dotted line that you cross. And you don’t get a memo when you cross it. Nobody sends you a flag. And it is this gradual process. So alcoholic drinking often sneaks up on us. That dotted line is where choice ends and compulsion begins. Before the dotted line, we could sometimes stop, although it’s hard. Drinking often feels optional but risky. And many believe they still have control. But after the dotted line, there’s a loss of control. There’s an obsession, a compulsion, and a and the cravings dominate. Drinking no longer becomes a choice. It becomes a need.
So what’s the role of faith in recovery? In the chapter we agnostics, faith brings a new power. It ends up that faith and humility are not not a negative or a sign of weakness. It ends up being a a strength and a power that we could leverage. trust in a higher power or in the process of recovery itself. I like using the example of electricity. We all appreciate that electricity runs our lights, our powers, you know, helps us cook our food. It helps us in tons of ways, but we don’t necessarily know how this electricity exactly works, how it’s running through this building right now. But we know it works, and we trust that it works. We’re encouraging I’m encouraging you to trust the power of recovery that it works and we should trust it just like we trust electricity. The focus is on long-term, not just on detox and the physiological separation from the substance, but ongoing lasting recovery.
The path to healing. If we accept the disease model, we get to remove the self-lame. Why did I get a DUI? Why did I lie? Why did I drink more than I intended to? All of those things are relieved when I find out that I had a disease. However, having this disease also means that I need to treat the disease. I need to surrender to help, to meetings, to therapy, to a higher power, to a recovery community. Crossing the dotted line is not the end. And often we’re we’re we’re clenching on, you know, trying to to grab it with all our strength, but once we cross the line, uh recovery is possible. And it ends up being the most the beginning of the most beautiful process in my life.
Addiction is a disease, but recovery is a choice that each of us can make each day. I chose to make that choice today. I hope you do, too. Healing begins with honesty, trust, and willingness. We have to begin to be honest with ourselves and honest with people around us. And we have to be willing to accept recovery and with support and faith. Recovery is possible for anyone. My sister often says, “If this recovery works for my brother, it’ll work for anybody.” So, it’ll certainly work for you.
I’m Dave Marlon, and this is Recovery with Vegas Stronger.
