Addict? Compulsive?
Do These Words Matter?
How do you know if you’re an addict? How about a compulsive?
The questions reveal more about the people asking them than the eventual answers.
Look, the term “addict” is over-used, while “compulsive” doesn’t see enough use. Why is that?
If you haven’t figured it out, being in a 12 Step program has a kind of social cache today. That’s good and bad. But dude, when you’re doing the steps, there’s nothing easy or attractive about it. There’s certainly nothing about that journey that you’d want to repeat or miss…hence the attractiveness of maintaining hard-won sobriety. An issue I have is that online discussion frequently contains a glibness about addiction and compulsion that is unhelpful.
To avoid repeating those errors out loud here, let’s unpack “addict” and “compulsive.”
Before we begin, two key ideas…
There’s no such thing as “almost being an addict” or “maybe being a compulsive.” Why? By the time nearly all addicts and compulsives finally come to eventually embrace the idea of their addiction or compulsion, they’ve been out of control for years. If you’re pondering the words “addict” or “compulsive” when thinking of self, then I urge you to try on the shoe…it probably fits.
Next…
Put away your DSM-IV volume, sit down and take this in: if you cannot control your behavior, you are not in control. Here, you are in full blown addiction or compulsion. This implied litmus test helps us finally step into one of the twin worlds of addiction and compulsion treatment. However, there’s a hidden pre-test: one has to get to the point where your ego tires long enough for the objective self to briefly come up for air to recognize that the amount of self-control you actually have is nowhere close to what you thought you had or tell others you have.
This brings us to a question: which word is best…Addict? Compulsive?
Did you remember to put down your DSM-IV? If not, please put it away; but in any event, do read on. Here, our field experience is more helpful than the DSM. Addict is connected to those addictions that express in non-survival based human behavior. In other words, alcohol, drugs, and gambling are examples of human behavior that are not needed in classic survival.
What about other destructive behavior, like excessive sex or over-eating? The challenge here is that these are human behaviors you may recongnize are core to life — reproduction and food consumption. If these are your unmanageable behaviors, then they ought to be thought of as “compulsions.”
But there’s another difference between addictions and compulsions. The addictions I’ve identified here are things experts and survivors agree are best managed by complete removal from a life. For example, alcoholics don’t manage alcoholism by limiting themselves to a maximum of two drinks daily. Here, successful management is long recognized as a full stop.
The compulsions are different. These involve behaviors rooted in instincts. Removing these behaviors from life may result in either death (starvation) or unhealthy sexual suppression that leads to acting out in dangerous or perhaps illegal ways (sexaholism). An added complication for sexaholics is starting a family naturally if their treatment strategy is full stop.
But there’s another problem and its actually more pressing. Contemporary treatment tactics and behavior management tools frequently lump these two classes of human behavior (addict + compulsive) together under the single banner of addiction. I believe that thinking is misguided. Approaches that only think in terms of addiction come across as the proverbial hammer in a land of nails.
If you’re an addict as I’ve outlined in this post, what I want for you is to build a fence around the addiction; next, treat you; then importantly, eliminate “the addictive thing” from your life.
In sharp contrast, if you are struggling with a compulsion, what I want for you is to successfully employ control measures and mindset changes. What does that look like? These are healthy beliefs, ideas, concepts, relationships, measures, knowledge, rituals, and behaviors that create the conditions for appropriate sexuality, food consumption, etc.
To amplify, in the compulsion recovery model, inappropriate behaviors (the out of control stuff) lie outside boundaries. Inside those boundaries you will find healthy, dignified, self-respecting, and productive values, norms, and behaviors.
What unites those seeking to get on top of their acting out mentality and behaviors — both addicts and compulsives, is a program which helps unearth pain and trauma, then identify ego and emotion toxicity to help people mitigate their negative self-talk and destructive rituals.
Where addiction and compulsion treatment paths part ways is on the question of what else do we put in the treatment bag in addition to 12 Step? Again, for “addicts,” it’s about a full-stop. For “compulsives,” it’s about a healthy arrangement and improved understanding of sex, food, etc; not a full-stop. For addiction and compulsion, it’s about effective use of recovery literature, tailored therapy, support groups, self-care, social science, meditation and prayer to get onto the recovery path and to live on it.
Easy, huh? Hell no.
Space and attention span constraints dictate we stop here.
For now, you’ve got a few basic ideas for thinking about addicts/addictions versus compulsives/compulsion. None of this brought your raging behavior under control, or fixed the chocolate mess that’s your life. However, if you’re in early sobriety (addict or compulsive) and you’re wondering what comes next or where you ought to turn, you’ve got some starting points. That’s more than I had.
My name is Mig. Just a dude in recovery. Questions? Feedback? BS flags?
Email me at: the.recovered.life@gmail.com
