Why Do People Get Addicted? Amber Reveals The Truth
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[00:00:00] I know that I'm about to state a very unpopular opinion, but the fact is, I just don't believe that All addiction is caused by trauma. Maybe not maybe even like less than half. I'm not sure. Let's have a discussion about it. But before we do that, before you guys blast the comments wide open, before you get me canceled, let me just tell you already, I'm also a big fan of Gabor Mate.
I love his work. His book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghost. Love it. Read several of his books. Big fan. I'm also aware of the adverse childhood experience studies. I know you guys are going to slam me with all that. It's not that i'm not aware of these things. I am aware of these things. It's just that I'd like to take a look at the issue from a slightly different perspective now Admittedly, I am not a research scientist.
I'm just An addiction practitioner, counselor, clinician, whatever you want to call it, for 20 [00:01:00] plus years helping people and their families overcome addiction. And my emphasis has always been looking at the psychology of addiction, looking at the thinking patterns. Why do people struggling with addiction think the way that they think?
It's very predictable. But why is it they think the way they think and how can we, Influence it. How can we shift that a little bit to help them come out of it now? In some ways part of me feels does it really matter what causes it? We just want to know how to fix it There's a part of me that kind of feels that way but there's this other part of me that feels like no, it does matter because I think we spend a lot of time chasing down the wrong like rabbit holes and because of that we end up Not helping people effectively, or maybe as effectively as we could.
We pay for like solutions that are probably not the right solutions. And we waste a lot of time and lives for that matter. So I do think it's an important discussion. I'd [00:02:00] like to have it with you. I am a hundred percent open to ideas and discussion. It's not like I'm super solid. It's not like I can't be convinced otherwise.
I just want to throw out some thoughts that maybe are different than what you're used to. Okay. The popular opinion is that pretty much all addiction is caused by trauma. And there's some reasons for that. There's some research out there like adverse childhood effects. Some of these other things leads us to believe that, but there are other reasons why we believe that too.
Another reason why it's easy to go into that rabbit hole is because when people are in active addiction, they tend to Be very focused on any past trauma or even hurt or heartbreak or difficult situation they've been through. They get very preoccupied with it and they'll talk about it a lot.
And so that's another reason why it makes it seem like this addiction must be being caused by that thing. Cause clearly it's this like toxic splinter in there that's like causing all this problem and the person is self [00:03:00] medicating with the substances or addictive behavior or whatever it is.
And I'm not saying there's no validity to that. I do think that there is some validity to that sometimes. I'd like to offer you a slightly different look. When families first come to me and they start telling me about their addicted loved one, inevitably they start with their loved one's childhood and they start telling me about whatever bad things this person's been through before they even tell me what this person's addicted to before they tell me what's going on now.
They start with the bad thing. Maybe it was, they had a narcissist father. Maybe it was they lost their mom when they were 10. Maybe it was, some other kind of abuse maybe it was just like they were like married to a crazy lady who like literally drove Them crazy and they have drama from that it could be any kind of thing but they almost always start at this point of this is the bad thing that happened And then it's hard to even draw out of them Sometimes like what is the addiction because they get so focused on the bad thing that happened now One of my next questions [00:04:00] After I listened to all that and it's valid.
It's not like they're making up. It's totally valid like what they're saying One of the questions i'll ask after I hear that is i'll say Did you know this person before they were addicted most times the answer is yes, okay Was there a good period of time in which you knew this person and they weren't in this active addicted state?
And most of the time the answer is yes, I will say how well did they function during that time? and most of the time The answer is really good. Actually, they made great grades. They were top student. They were like, super effective at work. A great husband, great wife, all these things. And I'll say, how often did, how often do you think X, Y, or Z bad thing interfered in daily life?
Either they brought it. Or you could tell they were reacting to something or maybe they're having trauma symptoms and they'll say like I knew about it and it was there like they told me about it But it really just didn't come up It really didn't seem to be a factor but it became a factor when the addiction started for a couple reasons one is because the family is so like mind blown about What the heck happened here, [00:05:00] especially when you've had this person you love and you care about for so long Who's been doing great and then all of a sudden they're not even the same person anymore Like you really you literally don't recognize them.
It's like they're just not it's not your person anymore And so your brain starts to try to make sense of it especially double especially If you're a parent like you're talking about this is your child It could be an adult child but if you're the parent you literally start thinking back to every babysitter you ever hired every bad thing could possibly happen and you just Trying to understand this and it's a normal reaction, right?
If I can understand why I can make sense of it because this behavior doesn't make sense. It's just like what the heck is happening. But here's the thing. When you have an addiction, you throw your brain chemicals all off balance. We, I think we all agree on that, right? I don't even think there's any controversy about that.
We know that, right? You throw your brain. Into a mess, right? And if you're addicted to a substance, your brain starts to counteract the substance by producing brain chemicals, overloading your [00:06:00] brain with brain chemicals that do the opposite of whatever the substance does. So for example, if you take something to stay awake and get a lot of work done, your brain will start flooding you with chemicals designed to make you sleep and rest and eat and stuff like that.
Whatever the thing does for you, your brain tries to balance it out by doing the opposite. If it's if you're taking pain medicines to deal with pain guess what your brain does You have no pain relief in your body. Everything hurts. That's the opposite way So what happens when you get in this active addiction cycle is you have all these Negative brain chemicals going on.
Okay, you got it's just a mess up there, right? Have you ever had the experience? I bet you have I know I have okay where you are either Sad about something or mad about something and whatever it was that happened You're just so upset about it and then suddenly and women, we're good at this.
Okay So so go ahead and put your little hand emoji in there and be like, that's me. We're really good at this Our brain starts to remember [00:07:00] Everything this ever happened to us that made us sad or mad or whatever that particular emotion is It's because that brain chemistry conjures up certain thoughts and certain memories it's pulling that to the front of our brain.
And like I said, if you're mad, if your husband does something you're mad at, you should remember everything he ever did that you're mad at, and you might even start saying it, which is not the good plan. Y'all know that, but that's for another day, but that's what happens. And so if you can understand that principle, because I'm sure it's happened to you before, you could maybe begin to understand that if someone's brain chemistry is off balance and they're sad, mad, angry, irritable, they're not sleeping good, like it's just a mess in there.
That naturally the thoughts start to come along with it and you get preoccupied. I see this probably most especially dealing with people who are addicted to alcohol. What happens when you drink is you start remembering every bad thing that ever happened to you, every wrong that's ever been done to you.
And you replay it over and [00:08:00] over in your head and you work yourself up and you experience all the emotions and you re traumatize yourself. It's every time you get drunk, you're retraumatizing yourself. And so it looks like that the event is causing the addiction, but I think in a lot of cases, it's the addiction that is pulling forward some of the trauma.
It's not that I don't think that. The bad things didn't happen. I like, I totally believe the bad things happen but part of what I think is when someone gets addicted, all of that starts to take over, they start to be obsessive about it because their brain chemistry is so off. It's and this happened to me, it is postpartum.
After you have a baby your stuff is a mess, right? Everything's a mess your hormones You're breaking was everything is a freaking mess and you start having some crazy thoughts now I never had the some of the like really terrible bad postpartum crazy thoughts like I don't want my kid or I'm going to and I'm not making fun of them Just saying I didn't have that but what I did have was like really weird OCD thoughts [00:09:00] right and the thoughts were like I had this weird thought that I was going to accidentally leave my son in the back of the car like I was going to forget to drop him off at daycare and go to work and he'd be in the car all day and Something bad would happen to him.
I had this weird feeling that I was going to drop him over like the banister, like in our house, it's one of those things like where you can walk across the upstairs, but you can look down, into the like living room area. I had this weird, I was going to drop him down in there. So I'd literally walk right in the middle and hold him like this close.
Cause I had, because this weird OCD. And even understanding and knowing what was going on with me, I still couldn't stop it. I had to use all my skills. I had to go for my walks. I had to do all my things. I would start crying and my husband would say, why are you crying? I said, I don't know. I'm just sad.
So if you've ever had an experience like that, then that can help you understand the way that our brain pulls memories, creates crazy thoughts. It's actually stemming from the chemistry. If somebody has postpartum and they're having these bad thoughts, whatever they are we don't [00:10:00] think to ourselves, we don't think to ourselves like, oh, they always just wanted to do that bad thing.
Now they got this baby. Now they're doing it. It's not like we think that has been there the whole time. There, there's a realization that some of those thoughts are coming from the chemistry. That's all I'm trying to say. And one of the ways that I vet out. Which thing could be happening is I ask the person or their family.
Tell me about a time when you were sober for a significant amount of time. How often did you think about this? Was it an issue? Did it interfere in your daily life? Those are the questions that I like to ask. If the answer is like no, it really wasn't that big of a deal then in my mind a lot of it is being stuck in a bad memory because of the addiction in most cases Once someone gets sober Not immediately, but after they're sober for a while and things start to normalize out It's not like those bad memories aren't there.
It's not like there's never was a hurt feeling, but it [00:11:00] doesn't run the show anymore It's not a preoccupation. I would say and probably i'm just making this number up but 80 of people once they get sober all that other stuff seems to go away now There are cases where someone might have severe ptsd and they're drinking to manage the ptsd And then that caused the addiction.
I just want you guys to understand that it's not always that way the other thing you got to think about when you think about this research that shows certain things, certain ways is you, there's a lot that goes into research, right? It's like, how many people were in this study? Who were the people in this study?
Did you have people from every background, every kind of race, religion, socioeconomic background? Because if you don't you're probably going to get some correlations that might not line up just right. It might be being. Really correlated to something else. I tend to see in my practice a lot of pretty high functioning people or The children of some pretty high functioning people and I'm not saying that nothing bad ever happened to these people[00:12:00] Because bad things have happened But in the majority of the cases, it's nothing.
It's like the regular like Traumas that we go through no, I don't want to minimize that and I know y'all are going to kill me with the complex trauma I get all that. I'm just saying even from their mouths They will tell you like I don't know like I don't see it I don't find it like okay, like I got my heart broken high school in time Maybe we should talk about that Like they'll try to find you something if you ask them enough questions But even from the person's mouth a lot of times they're like, I don't know like I wonder myself Maybe I don't remember it.
Like i've literally had people call me up and say I have no memory but Something must be in there and it's dangerous because You'll find a memory if you're looking for one hard enough like your brain will come up with something And so you got to be you got to be careful about that and from the family member perspective why this is so important is because what happens to the family is You feel so bad for the person you have so much empathy for this bad thing that happened to them that you Ignore, allow, [00:13:00] enable, whatever, like really bad behaviors for an exorbitantly long time because you, you have this over empathy for someone because you do know they went through this horrible thing or whatever and you feel bad for them, so you give them a free card. The other thing that happens sometimes is the addicted person knows Especially if it's a kid and like you're the parent they're going to play on your guilt. They're going to it's an ace card They're going to throw it out every single chance because if they know that's where your soft spot is They're going to throw it out I have to do this cuz my anxiety and then before you know it you're literally going on the street and buying them the drugs like people.
I just need you to stop and slow down and think this through. A lot of people actually feel like if you address the trauma, the addiction will go away. I can tell you that will not be that way. If something's gone on long enough to be like full blown addiction, then it's its own beast by then and even if it was caused from the trauma Even if it was like directly [00:14:00] related to the trauma by the time something becomes its own addiction You can't make it go away by dealing with the trauma.
In fact, you really can't Deal with the trauma when someone's in active addiction I don't care what kind of fancy treatment you put on it because their brain chemistry is going crazy when they're in active addictions you cannot resolve the trauma when someone's in active addiction. So If you're not sure which is which I can tell you that there is a way of going at it you have to address the addiction first or at least simultaneously, but I would say First and I don't mean like you have to be sober a year before you can deal with that stuff That's not what i'm saying.
But I am saying like you have to get stabilized like psychologically relationally, financially, like you gotta get on some solid ground before you go tromping in that territory over there, right? Now you can do that pretty quickly after but you're wasting your time if you're trying to get yourself or your loved one to talk about these traumas.
In fact, you're making it worse when you're doing that.[00:15:00] You're literally like poor, like opening the dam for them. So be. Careful and you're thinking about this be strategic in your thinking about this I see it all the time like people call me up. They tell me all these things They tell me like it's because of this and this and it's funny because family members Have a more of a tendency to do it than the actual person does and I think it's because family members are really like trying to understand why like desperately like Sometimes the family member feels some kind of guilt, and they feel like something happened and it was their fault.
Most of the time it wasn't their fault, and sometimes it could be. Most of the time it isn't, even if there was a bad thing that happened. And so they, they get, that guilt causes them to make bad choices in how to deal with the situation. That guilt causes them to try to be like we just need to get them to fix this, talk about his feelings about the divorce, that happened when we were kids, all that stuff.
And you just You're just barking up the wrong tree, I guess is what I'd say. All right, look at that. All right, let's take some questions
all right What [00:16:00] advice do you have for trying to reconnect with an ex girlfriend that is going to be in rehab for a year? She's still technically in a relationship with her dealer who has a warrant out for his arrest Is it possible for her to realize that he has bad news? She is codependent and clings to anyone that makes her feel safe And she's been in for about a month now, but is enjoying it jesse What are you doing?
I believe you, Jesse. I know you feel for this girl. I know. I believe you when you say this guy's bad news, leading her down a bad path. Hey, I 100 percent believe you but you're, you probably need to look at your boundaries because this is an ex that's in rehab that's still with someone else. And I feel like you're trying maybe to force something.
I don't know. It feels like maybe you're pushing too hard. You're going to have to step back and let, This person's brain clear and possibly, if the rehab is working and they're enjoying it, then it's probably working Then they might come to their senses If you're actively trying to find strategies [00:17:00] to get this person to see that the other person is bad news and they're in rehab I just think That's probably out of bounds.
I think that might not be on your side of the street. I hate to be the one says that But I think it needs to be said if anybody else has any advice for Jesse, you can put it up there But that's what I got.
Let's see here
Hi, amber, my 32 year old heroin addict who has severe head trauma started pacing all day and didn't sleep or eat symptoms of stimulants. I'm just saying that for youtube algorithm He says that he didn't use is it possible that he's detoxing? If his substance is stimulants, then if he were detoxing and then withdraw, you would more likely see sleepiness, hungry, depression, lethargic no motivation, no energy.
You would see almost the opposite of that. So you might see pacing as a withdrawal symptom for something else. I'm not saying he's not withdraw, but I'm not sure if that's coming from that particular substance. I can't say for sure, but that's my guess.
Let's see here
Here's a [00:18:00] question. Hi amber. I am helpless. I don't know how to help my non functional boyfriend He doesn't have a job threatens me and his family to give him money for drugs and he only Wants to sell them But We have given him the money and we don't have any I have i've tried for a little bit being nicer to him because I was mean But he only remembers the mean times not the good times help So it sounds like this person is holding you hostage with saying I want more money So when they say that to you instead of saying what you want to say I don't know what you want to say, but I know what I would want to say what I would want to say was like Dude, i'm broke Like we can't even pay our bills because I've gave you all the money and you know what happened to it?
Nothing. You're flushing it down the toilet. Like I'd want to say all those things. I don't know about you. That's what I would want to say. That's not going to be helpful. Then you I might say something like like how am I supposed to come up with more money to give you? And say it, not mean, not sarcastic y, but really like you're asking the question and make them come up with [00:19:00] these answers.
Put the problem that you're having in his lap to solve that forces the other person to see things from your point of view, and he might get irritated and huff and puff, but he will have to think about it. Like, how am I supposed to do that? Like, where am I supposed to get that money from? Like, how am I supposed to pay these bills?
Literally take your problems and ask a question in a way, not in a threatening way. That forces them to have to think about the problem from your point of view.
Question. Do you know if you are enabling or just being supportive? How do you know? I like this question. The reason I like it is because I have a solid answer for you. I have a formula for it too. Two formulas, two ways of figuring this out. One thing is if someone's helping their self and you help them.
Then you're helping, right? If someone's doing something to dig themselves out of the hole they're helping themselves and you're coming alongside them, you're helping. And the other way you're going to know that's the case is you're going to feel good about it. When you're doing something for someone else and you're actually helping always makes you feel good, okay?
You're going to leave with a good feeling in your heart. When you're enabling,[00:20:00] You leave with resentment in your heart because what's happening is like you're doing something for someone that you don't want to do, but you feel like you have to do. So to me, that's how I know the difference. When I'm doing it and I don't want to, and it takes me off and I'm mad at him.
I'm mad they put me in that position and all these other things. I know I've crossed over to the line because when someone's helping themselves out and then you're helping them and you're seeing these improvements, you feel good about that. So that's the difference to me. Hope that helps. Hey Robin, glad you made it to the live too.
RH says my husband has been reliving past trauma particularly a trip back home that didn't go well. How do I get him through this? Are they intoxicated when they're reliving the trauma? If they're intoxicated when they're reliving the trauma like that like they're drunk or something and they're just like going on about it There's not a lot you can do in that case but if they're bringing up past hurts and stuff, even though i'm telling i'm glad you said this because I Should have said this, but I didn't even though I'm telling you guys this what I do not want you to do this information is say Don't be using that as an excuse.
That's not why [00:21:00] you do not do that. So don't do that Okay, I should have said that at the beginning Don't do that. This is just for you to know and understand not for you to throw in someone's face Not for you to argue with someone about okay so if they're not intoxicating they're bringing it up then I would listen to their feelings And hear what they have to say because it's actually, and don't argue with them and don't say you should be grateful of this or you contributed to it because of this don't try to get them to see it reasonably.
What you try to do is just, you're just trying to make them feel heard and understood. And the purpose of that is to build your credibility, build your trust and build your influence, which you're going to cash in at some point. So build it up. It's like building up the bank account.
Crystal says, oh, my gosh, this makes total sense. It's like they re trigger the trauma every time they drink. Yes, I actually had a client one time tell me it was a young guy who's alcoholic. He's super smart analytical guy. So he like did a lot of thinking about his thinking. So it's like pretty deep.
He would just lay it out. He'd say, Oh yeah, I get wasted. So I can cry about my ex girlfriend like I just want to feel my feelings so he was pretty insightful. Like he knew that [00:22:00] was what was happening.
He was triggering it on purpose. Oh, , this is a good one. Natalie says, I have diagnosed C PTSD from all my son's destructive behavior. Yes, Natalie, and you are not alone. And that I'm glad you said that because I should have said this too. That's another reason why I think we have to be very careful about this like over empathy because you can't let someone's addictive behavior can't let them off the hook because they had something bad happen to them even if it really is why the addiction is happening because Their addiction is re traumatizing everyone around them.
And so we cannot keep letting whoever it is over here off the hook because something bad happened to them because literally all these other people are having trauma too and then They're going to end up in a mess. So glad you said that. That's right on point.
What if the addicted loved one says they are no happier when sober for a significant amount of time, nine months. So why bother? That's they're just trying to talk themselves out of being sober. I once had a person tell me that. A few months back, they [00:23:00] said I got sober. I got sober for six months. You know what?
I didn't feel any better. Tell me that at the beginning of the consultation and then later I said to him I was like You really didn't feel any better like when you're sober that long and he like immediately when I said that Which is just a mirroring statement, by the way he said Actually, I did. I'm not really telling you the truth.
I did feel better, but they convinced themselves. It's almost like I make myself angry, depressed, and irritable to give myself an excuse. That's a monster mouth talking. If it really truly is that they really did not feel better, and there's some kind of like for real deal mental health, then they need to go get that addressed.
Because other than that, people feel better physically, emotionally, they get better. If nothing else, they get better sleep, and that makes them feel better. So if that's true, then you need to get it addressed, but my guess is it's relapse warning signs.
Bonnie says She agrees. It turns you into a different person. Yeah,
let's see here.
Dawn says You are describing my son to a T. He's an alcoholic constantly brings up the past this all [00:24:00] started with a girl He was obsessed about and they broke up. It's been the alcohol the anger the violence since yeah when people especially if it's drinking man If people are using or heartbreak or something like that.
Dude, it's like they never get over it. It's not like that. Like they don't ever get over it until they stop using. It stays fresh. It stays. It's not just there. It gets like worse because you relive it. And the tail is like the fishing story. The fish gets bigger every time. Like that story you're telling yourself and you're reliving gets bigger and bigger every time you're reliving it.
Let's see here
How often does mental health play a part in addiction because of self medicating. The research says it's a lot. And I believe that, but I also think that if. If you have a an addiction, especially a substance abuse problem, you will create a mental health problem, multiple mental health problems.
So it's really hard for me to differentiate and say that it's the mental health causing the addiction [00:25:00] because There's no way around it. If you have a substance abuse problem, you're going to have all kind of things. Depression, anxiety, sleep disorder. You're going to seem ADD. You're going to seem impulsive.
You're going to seem bipolar. It creates a mental health problem. It's a chicken or the egg question, here's a good question. Can counseling benefit an addicted loved one who's still using substances, but recognize they need recovery, but trying to sort through all methods of recovery, which aren't working? Absolutely, but it but it has, but it needs to be a certain kind of counseling. It needs to be someone trained to work with people in the early stages of addiction.
A lot of addiction treatment centers or counselors are like, Hey you come when you're ready, right? Like when you're ready to do what I tell you to do, then you come and I'll help you. There's a lot of that attitude out there. So you definitely don't want to do that because if you put your person in front of an attitude like that, it's going to.
Make it worse, right? You want to find somebody who's trained to work with somebody in the early stages of change. You can look for someone is changed and trained in something called motivational [00:26:00] interviewing. And you can even get some training on motivational interviewing. We have a little mini course on it.
It's called motivation masterclass. If you want to start doing it at home, because you can use motivational interviewing to motivate them and to go on to see a counselor, but you want to find someone who's okay with working with someone in those early stages of change. A lot of counselors and true, since they just get bent out of shape and they blame the person and you know why.
I'll tell you a secret. The reason they do that is because it makes the counselor's self esteem bad if the person's still struggling. And instead of recognizing, it's almost like it makes them feel like a bad counselor. It makes them feel like their efforts aren't working. It makes them want to give up.
And so instead of dealing with that, they put it on the client. They're just not ready. There's something not like they just push it back. And so you have to have a strong sense of understanding about what addiction is and what your role in that is And as long as you have that and you understand it, then you tolerate that very well.
All right. We got somebody's going to testify for us here spot on I wallow in [00:27:00] past shit when i'm drinking. It's a perplexing disease You can't deal with the trauma until you get sober But then again the trauma makes you want to drink and use vicious cycle. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is a vicious cycle A hundred percent, but it's like, it takes a while.
It's not like immediately gets over. It takes a while for those brain chemicals to stabilize back out. Cause you're going to feel more anxious, more irritable, all those crummy feelings for a minute.
All right, guys. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. More resources in the description.
