Struggling with addiction? This one's for you.

I had a discussion today with a former Inheritance client that brought me back to a topic of conversation I’ve been having privately — with colleagues, clients, and anyone else who would listen — for nearly a decade.

She came to work with me three years ago, seeking to heal her relationship with addiction.

Today, she reflected on what that journey had changed for her.

She started by telling me that, upon committing to the container, some of the people closest to her were skeptical.

“How can she help you?”

“She’s not a recovery specialist or psychotherapist... she’s a Shamanic practitioner.”

What she said next is why I’m finally writing about this publicly.

She told me that, after everything she had encountered in the world of addiction and recovery, she had never heard addiction framed the way I presented it in those first few weeks of working together.

It fundamentally changed how she understood her own journey.

And she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t heard more people approaching it in the same way.

My response was... “Same.”

Because as someone who has spent much of their life watching people they love struggle with addiction — and developing an insane ability for pattern recognition as a coping mechanism — it’s kind of, forgive me for saying this, obvious.

And at this point in my journey, I’m less interested in softening and over-explaining my position in the hopes of being well-received than I am in articulating it clearly.

So here it is:

You cannot fully transform addiction without meeting its source.

Most likely, that source is some form of discomfort that made the addictive pattern necessary in the first place.

I say this with enormous compassion, because I’ve encountered countless people who are technically “in recovery,” yet I can still feel the charge in their bodies.

In the way they hold themselves.

The way they move.

The pace of their speech.

The tension underneath their words.

The texture of their presence.

It often feels like a live wire with nowhere to fully ground.

Sure, the outlet has been removed.

But the charge hasn’t necessarily disappeared.

And when that underlying charge remains untouched, it can continue to manifest through cycles of mental, emotional, and physical distress — or get redirected into a more socially acceptable form of compulsion.

Work.

Sex.

Food.

Relationships.

Exercise.

Scrolling.

Control.

Achievement.

Spirituality.

You name it.

The particular behavior changes, but the function can remain remarkably similar.

You’ve taken away — or rerouted — the most efficient coping mechanism the person had for getting away from an internal experience they didn’t know how to be with.

Yet, the pain is still there.

The tension is still there.

The sensation is still there.

The incapacity is still there.

Because if someone’s established pattern has been to numb, avoid, suppress, or escape discomfort, we cannot reasonably expect them to suddenly know how to truly be present with that discomfort simply because they’ve stopped using a particular substance.

That is a skill.

But a skill can be learned.

This is one of the many reasons why I fundamentally question All Addicts Anonymous' recovery model. I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that someone needs to identify as an addict for the rest of their life.

There is a profound difference between:

“I developed an addictive pattern.”

and

“I am an addict, and I always will be.”

One describes an experience.

The other turns it into an identity.

And identity matters.

If we repeatedly tell someone that they are fundamentally an addict — permanently vulnerable, permanently at risk, permanently defined by the worst adaptation they ever developed — we are asking them to organize their identity around pathology.

Healing doesn’t require that.

In fact, I believe it negates it.

Asking someone to remain psychologically loyal to the adaptation that once helped them survive is asinine to me.

Addiction is a pattern.

It is not a person’s essence.

So what happens when we start responding to the addictive pattern as such?

What happens when someone learns to meet the sensations they never learned to tolerate?

When they learn to metabolize emotions in real time rather than immediately needing to escape them?

When they discover that an internal experience can be intense without being dangerous?

The sensation that once felt unbearable becomes something bearable.

The nervous system learns that discomfort is not necessarily an emergency.

You discover, through your own body, that you can feel something difficult without abandoning yourself.

Self-trust happens.

And self-trust changes everything.

You develop evidence that you can feel something difficult and remain present.

That tension can move without requiring escape.

That grief can exist without physically destroying you.

That desire can exist without becoming action.

That discomfort can rise, peak, and change without requiring you to intervene immediately.

And eventually, recovery becomes less about spending your life managing the possibility of relapse and more about developing the capacity to actually be with yourself.

That, to me, is the deeper conversation we need to be having about addiction.

Addiction can be transformed.

Not by denying the pattern.

Not by pretending there is no risk.

Not by replacing one form of bypassing with another.

But because human beings are capable of change.

Capacity can increase.

Patterns can change.

The body can develop new reference points for safety.

And a person can become so much more capable of being with their own experience that the substance — or behavior — is no longer necessary to escape it.

You do not have to spend the rest of your life in an addictive cycle.

You can become someone who knows how to remain present with yourself when life becomes uncomfortable.

To me, that is a much deeper concept than recovery.

It’s healing.

This is the work I do.

If this resonates with you and you’re ready to explore it more deeply, you can learn more about working with me here.

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Photos courtesy of Patrick Hendry and Jason Mavrommatis on Unsplash

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Struggling with addiction? This one's for you.

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