I can't believe how present the temptation is to "dismiss my ability to contribute in loving ways to a crumbling world."

This guy's writing has been so helpful to me, to remember these kinds of things:

http://drkellyflanagan.com/2014/07/09/why-i-dont-believe-in-grace-anymore/#more-2796

"...I stand in the kitchen with my bad mood and my wife’s grace. And the brilliance of her love quickly becomes clear. Her attack would have only rooted me deeper in my anger. Instead, she has given me acceptance in the midst of my anger, the space to feel it and experience the fullness of my self.

I still feel grumpy, but I discover there is something else there inside of me: I want to apologize.

I go to the bedroom and I tell her I’m sorry, and her response is quick and her grace is complete:
 “You had a long day, you’re allowed to be in a bad mood, and you’re a good man, I knew you’d apologize.”

My wife saw my goodness, even in the midst of my junk. She believed in my light, even when all she could see was darkness. She believed in who I am and who I can be, even while I was being something else.

I used to say I believe in grace. I don’t say that anymore. Now I say I have known grace, and what I know is this: grace believes in me.

How Grace Finally Changes Everything

The healing power of grace does not end with the embrace of our darkness.

When we find pockets of grace in this world—when our true self is finally allowed to the surface—we discover all sorts of beautiful things entwined with our darkness. Like dragging the ocean and coming up with a bunch of seaweed. And some invaluable pearls.

As grace calls our true self forth, we discover magnificent parts of us we didn’t know were there—passions built into us, a purpose sewn into our DNA. Our identity is washed clean and we begin to see ourselves for what we inherently are: creators of beauty, order, and abundance. We no longer dismiss our ability to contribute in loving ways to a crumbling world. We take the grace inside of us, it becomes our guide, and we become it.

We quit dead end jobs and risk our family’s financial security to earn a teaching degree. We stop drinking and we start coaching. We quit living at the office and we invest in the life of our family. We trade in fear for boldness. We quit hiding in our homes and we start risking in the world by uncaging our ideas and our creativity. We stop waiting on perfection and we start wading into the mess.

When we quit seeking change and begin to seek grace, we let go of our frantic effort to be like someone else, and we discover a blessed peace with who we are. Finally.

This was great

http://drkellyflanagan.com/2015/01/14/the-unspoken-reason-for-every-failed-new-years-resolution/#more-3213

"Our New Year’s Resolutions don’t fail because we lack willpower. They fail because we have too much willpower. They fail because the thing we want most is the thing we never say aloud…

...Most therapy clients want to change.

And most therapy clients don’t want to change.

When I supervise a young therapist and tell them this, it can come as a bit of shock at first. After all, clients come to therapy of their own volition, take time out of a busy schedule, pay good money to be there, and express a desire to change in very specific ways. It seems like a green light for mutual collaboration. And it is.

For one part of the client.

But no human being is monolithic. We all have competing interests and desires. While one part of us has goals for personal growth, another part of us has questions:

What is the cost of changing?

If I really get quiet, will I be able to handle all the loneliness that rises up in me?

If I truly get healthy, will I still want to stay married?

If I start using my voice, will my friends still want to be with me?

If I finally get a job and move out, will I still have a place to come home to?

If I set better boundaries with my kids, will they love me less?

If I’m no longer depressed, will everyone stop taking care of me and stop caring about me?

If I change this about me, how will it affect us?

If I change this one small thing, what cascade of change will it trigger?

Do I want that much change?

The job of a therapist is not to force change, but to make space for the reasons we don’t want to change. The job of a therapist is to ask questions, too. Questions like: What is the benefit of not changing? What old things will be lost if new things are found? The job of a therapist is not to love the part of a client that wants to change and shame the rest of the client into compliance.

The job of a therapist is to welcome both parts into the light.

Maybe that’s the job of a dad, too.

...This year, instead of being hard on ourselves, maybe we can have a little compassion for ourselves. Maybe we can embrace the part of us that wants to change and the part of us that is afraid to change. Maybe then, even our failed resolutions will be the beginning of something new and good and beautiful."

Are we safe?

 After my EMDR session with Carol I found some ideas to help Joan "digest" her own memories of cutting her pinkie off. I sat down with her this week while Verity napped and Sophia was at school and asked what she remembered from the accident, and we went through the whole thing together. She smiled and spoke matter of factly through the whole thing. I said, "Lets draw what we want to remember about that hard time that we had." First she asked for a black, red and "skin color" crayon and I thought I was in for a bloody pic but then she stared at the paper for awhile and said, "Nahh I just want to watch you draw yours." Cracked me up. So here was mine. That is me hugging her inside of a heart and I told her I drew it that way because I wanted to remember that even during our hardest times we can feel safe if we reach out to each other and hold each other close.

 

And then per the "helping children's brain process traumatic memories" advice that I read, we took turns clapping our hand on each leg while we chanted in time to our left and right rhythm, "We are safe! We are safe!" She just loved the whole thing. Ate it up. Didn't grimace or avoid any of the talk about the paper cutter cutting her finger or blood everywhere or me yelling or doctors stitching her up or IV's with morphine. Nope she just rolled with it and then chanted, "We are safe!" with all her little heart.  I put the picture up on the fridge and we went on our way.  

When we sat down for dinner that night Sophia glanced over at the fridge and did a double take. "What? WHO wrote that!? Why did someone put that up there??", she demanded. And then she jumped off her chair and turned it over so we couldn't see it anymore. I was like, "Umm I did. I wrote it 'cause Joan and I were talking about when she cut her pinkie off and remembering that we can feel safe even during scary things if we reach out for each other...why?" And Sophia says, "Because it makes me think of monsters and robbers and...it DOES NOT make me feel safe, it reminds me that there are scary, bad things that make me feel NOT safe! I don't want it up there ever again."

It also made me think of these first eight minutes from this webinar starting at minute 3:00 and going to 11:48. http://carriecontey.com/intentionalparentingwebinar (p.s. up to the 38 minute mark is all incredibly helpful if you have time to listen to more!)

This science that she was trying to explain - that children come to us already who they are, but that the wiring process of their brains happens in relationship with their caregivers in childhood was so well explained by her. It made me think of a definition for what good parenting is that I heard once,

 "...the extent to which a parent responds to a child's signals appropriately and promptly, is positively involved during interactions with the child, and provides a secure base for the child's exploration of the environment."

That moment when Sophia freaked out about the "We are safe" picture just about summed up Sophia's temperament for me from day three of her life on. From her infancy that included screaming for hours, intense separation anxiety until three years old, the year of her toddlerhood that she had a regular bruise on her forehead from banging her head on the ground during near hour long tantrums, the rages she gets into now when she is confronted with loss or difficult emotions in herself.

I spent almost the entire last session with my therapist talking about Sophia. About how at every stage of life I have observed these kinds of descriptors about how secure she feels in the world: feels all emotions deeply, easily overwhelmed, hyper vigilant, sensitive, difficulty learning self-soothing, feels attacked or threatened by difficult emotions or circumstances, and underdeveloped nervous system. And I told Barbara I am done sitting around hoping her problems will just work themselves out. I liked how M. Scott Peck put it,

"...There is much that parents can do to assist their children in this maturation process. Opportunities present themselves thousands of times while children are growing up when parents can either confront them with their tendency to avoid or escape responsibility for their own actions or can reassure them that certain situation are not their fault. But to seize these opportunities, as I have said, requires of parents sensitivity to their children's needs and the willingness to take the time and make the often uncomfortable effort to meet these needs. And this in turn requires love and the willingness to assume appropriate responsibility for the enhancement of their children's growth."

And,

"Parents are executives, and despite the fact that they are usually ill-prepared for it, their task can be every bit as complex as directing a company or corporation. And like the army executives, most parents will perceive problems in their children or in their relationship with their children for months or years before they take any effective action, if they ever do. "We thought maybe he would grow out of it," the parents say as they come to the child psychiatrist with a problem of five years' duration. And with respect for the complexity of parenting, it must be said that parental decisions are difficult, and that children often do "grow out of it." But it almost never hurts to try to help them grow out of it or to look more closely at the problem. And while children often "grow out of it," often they do not; and as with so many problems, the longer children's problems are ignored, the larger they become and the more painful and difficult to solve.

 

So this is where I'm at. I am learning that problems thrive in shame and secrecy. I am committed to living out a life that seeks the opposite. On Thursday I took Sophia for an intake to get her a therapist. In the most truthful and developmentally appropriate way possible I want to help Sophia understand this about her difficulty with feeling safe in the world:

 

 

 

As I once heard someone in the helping profession say, "The truth is we have to teach people how to live with their anxiety. The truth is there is no security."

 

I want her to know that some people through no fault of their own feel more of that that anxiety and less of that security than others of us.

 

And that these truths are the other side of that coin when we face her genetic, biological constitution that she will carry with her the entirety of her life:

 

As was preached in last session of General Conference:

 

"Acknowledge and face your weaknesses, but don’t be immobilized by them, because some of them will be your companions until you depart this earth life. No matter what your current status, the very moment you voluntarily choose honest, joyful, daily repentance by striving to simply do and be your very best, the Savior’s Atonement envelops and follows you, as it were, wherever you go."

- Elder Jorg Klebingat

Said another way by a therapist friend:

 

"One of the fallacies we all tend to buy into is that we "are" a type of person. In reality we exist in a range of possibilities. We have the capability to be great and horrible within the spectrum of who we are."

 

Or, said in a way that made me print it out for my fridge:

"The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing, or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As can I, too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you."

— Mary Oliver

 

This is what I can throw myself 100% behind. This is what I will never give up on. I will never give up believing in and seeking out hope, change, growth, love, and healing.  

 

Dear Sophia,

 

Life is often hard and scary. It is natural to feel like hiding in the face of injustice and undeserved pain. But watch the sea with me. If the sea never stops its waves of changes, then no doubt, I can and you can. All we have to do is never stop reaching out to each other.

 

 

 

 

Life is difficult

I'm reading The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck and it is seriously changing my life.  I rave about it to myself or anyone who will listen every chance I get. This is the first page of the book:

"Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Most do not fully see this truth, that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?

What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration of grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we can call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct." It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems."

And then later he writes:

"Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live." 

Those ideas combined with this post that starts like this have really shifted something in my head for me:

“When I was thirty five, I looked up one day and realized that I hadn’t had a life. … I had a hint of what I’d been missing. Laundry. And not just laundry, but what laundry gives us: an honest encounter with ourselves before we’re freshened and fluffed and sanitized. Before we have ourselves put together again.” – Karen Maezen Miller

When I quit my job to work at home, I was perplexed by the chores that swelled up to fill my every waking moment. “I can be on my feet every second, never stopping, and still the house is a disaster,” another mom lamented to me. I nodded. My boys are gifted at making messes. Recently, when I left the room for thirty seconds, they managed to cover every inch of the living room with a couple of board games — tiny tokens and piles of cards and fake money strewn everywhere. When I first started at this mothering thing, it was tempting to dream about hiring a housekeeper or paring down our wardrobes to two pairs each or replacing all of the dishes with disposables. But soon I realized that the chores were like any other problem. What they needed was my attention.

My feelings about the daily chores have transformed remarkably over the years. They’re messy and monotonous and always there like a gnat buzzing around your head. But as Karen Maezen Miller so beautifully points out in Hand Wash Cold, they are life. And they are incredible life coaches. It would be silly to trek across the world in search of the meaning of it all or to hire an expensive life coach when we can likely find all of the answers we need right here in the dishes and laundry."

It's like a switch has been flipped in my mind. I've always known I had a problem with procrastination, but I just kind of chalked it up as "me", not really a flaw, just how I was. I remember being little and avoiding cleaning my room at all costs, or being in college and thinking, "Well, it'll sure be great to get out of school where it won't matter as much that I'm a procrastinator!" Makes me laugh, but seriously I really did think that! And it's carried over into my adult life - I would rather read and write than do the dishes, nothing wrong with that, just how I was wired, we each have our strengths and weaknesses, right? But to hear it put like that,

"Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live."

It just made so much sense. This is a skill I can choose to learn and if I choose to learn it it will make my life so much better? Of course! Geez, what have I been doing all these years?

And so I've started to look around my house and ask myself, "What of these top three chores that need to be done do I least want to do?" And then I march myself over and purposely start that one first.

It's changed how I talk to the girls too. I have started bringing it up in conversation whenever I can, and speaking of it like that, like it is a skill that we can choose to practice and get better at and being really matter of fact about it, "Sophia, do you know what skill will most decide how good of a life you'll have? Of aaaaaaaallllll the things the skills out there that make life good do you know what will help you the most to like your life? It's how well you learn to choose the hardest thing first. Every time something hard comes in front of you you have two choices: face it or distract yourself from it. If you learn how to face the hard things instead of ignore them or run away from them, then you'll feel soooooo much better because your problems will get solved! It's that awesome! Solving problems instead of them always being there, weighing you down like rocks in your backpack!?" I ask them what is hard for them to face right now? What problems at school or home or in their heart or with friends do they try to avoid? It is one of my favorite conversations lately, listening to their perspectives on their life in this way.

But I'm not saying I think talking about it with them is the key to helping them learn it, 'cause I really do believe this too:

“All I am saying ... can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” ~ John Holt

When I'm reading these simple lines like, "Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?" I feel like a little kid in a classroom on the edge of my seat waving my hand in the air like, "Pick me, pick me M. Scott Peck, I want to solve them! Yes! Solve. Them. I'm ready for the decent way to live, thank you so much for asking!" Trusting myself to be able to learn even the things I'd really rather never think about.

Have I mentioned I really like this book? The number one rated review on Amazon for it cracked me up!

445 of 468 people found the following review helpful

Good Book

By A Customer on November 11, 2000

"I am a therapist. The two books I recommend to my clients that seem to produced lasting results are The Road Less Traveled and An Encouter With A Prophet. I also recommend both books to all of my friends and relatives."

It's just so true.

It makes you fearless

"After her daughter, then 23, disappeared 12 years ago, the likely victim of sex traffickers, Susana Trimarco began a search for justice that continues to this day. She has also helped numerous others in the process, becoming a guardian to 129 survivors of sex trafficking and helping to make sex trafficking part of Argentina's national agenda. For her trouble, Susana has had her house set on fire and has twice escaped being run over. But she will not give up. 'The desperation of a mother blinds you,' she said. 'It makes you fearless.'" - via Half the Sky

This makes me want to start journaling by hand instead

"The benefits of handwriting — though it's a disappearing skill — have been documented by lots of educational psychologists, who have found that handwriting engages parts of the brain that typing neglects, especially areas associated with memory formation. For these reasons, the arguments go, kids come up with more ideas when they're writing in cursive versus typing.

So, as French psychologist Stanislas Dehaene told The New York Times, you may want to step away from the keyboard.

"When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated," he said. "There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain, it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn't realize.”

The result?

"Learning is made easier," he concluded.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/handwriting-helps-you-learn-2014-12#ixzz3PwOaA1m7

Is the cause of addiction simple?

When a girlfriend posted this article last week I had wildly conflicted feelings after reading it. Luckily for me I have insightful friends and got to sit back and read their super thoughtful responses (or responses they found elsewhere).

The original post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

Responses from round the web:


***

"...I also found out that it's easier to quit substance abuse than inner thought demons borne out of habit or choices like gossip, self righteousness, greed, lust.... THAT is the real addiction that ought to be dealt with! Usually, people who practice those self indulgences call themselves 'sober' ... gosh, the lives they destroy unwittingly, ill fated by denial. Substance abuse/pain pills is not too far for these people."

****

"If you still believe, as I used to, that addiction is caused by chemical hooks, this makes no sense. "
 Actually, this makes perfect sense. In the end, joy and contentedness boil down to a defined set of neurotransmitters. If you can get them from non-drug sources, you can get them from non-drug sources. If you can't, you are very ready to get them from drug sources.

However, you can also use drugs in such a fashion that you get so many "positive feeling" neurotransmitters that it's tough to adjust to a normal life again because you are used to over-stimulation. So if drug users can, in fact, simply return to normal life in a normal environment will depend quite a bit on case by case specifics."

****
This article is scapegoating by also blaming whatever normal people may be in the life of the addict.
The fact is, even the above statement "addiction is an adaptation. It's not you: it's your cage" is purely illogical and pseudoscientific. We're physical beings. The above statement uses the word 'adaptation'. This means the clever among you should be asking, "What adapted to what?" Answer: the brain to its environment. It is the essence of mental illnesses, including addiction, that the brain is not adapting to its environment properly! So stop this childish attempt to redefine words to suit the agenda of the exploiters. It IS you, and you need help. The second you think it's your "cage", you are emphatically delusional and addicted. This entire article simply reinforces common psychotic delusions often induced by substance abuse, and what a shame if victims read it."

**** 

"Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. It reminded me of a time when I met with a board of educators about where my younger brother should go to school. They wanted to send him to a truancy school and I tried to argue that he should go to a regular school. My argument was that if you send a truant to a truancy school the people they meet will be those already dealing with bad habits, and they will just influence him to do more of the same. It didn't work. I guess the fear of "bad tempting good" was to high. It was B.S. and I definitely think that there should be better systems in play to help addicts. I actually think there are a lot, but they are pricey, and to be honest a person doesn't recover unless they want to no matter how much love and support they are given. It takes a lot of work and in my experience some people don't want to do the work. I also had a problem with the definition, or lack of it, of love. Love doesn't mean you allow an addict to hurt you over and over. Love includes not allowing someone to hurt you. Because when they hurt you they are also hurting themselves. It also neglected to mention the people who grow up in "perfect" supported environments and still end up as addicts... according to the article that is an unexplained phenomenon."

****

"Nicotine has a half life of only two hours, so using something like a patch only extends our withdrawal period.. you face withdrawal instantly when you stop smoking, so every time you take even the smallest dose of nicotine, you are restarting that cycle. "Phasing down nicotine exposure" is one of the most stressful and least effective ways to quit smoking, they aren't designed for you to quit though, being made by Cigarette manufacturers, they know that extending the duration of your withdrawal period and addiction reduces your odds of actually becoming freed from it."

****

"I can assure you as a smoker who quit that nicotine is the least of the addictive substances in cigarettes. Vapor cigs simply don't produce the same urges as cigarettes. A real cigarette tastes of nothing but chemicals after you stop smoking for a while. I've decided they purposely add the chemicals to cigarettes to get people addicted, there's simply no other reason to add arsenic and such to them. Arsenic, for example, was used in the 1800's as a cocaine type drug and is highly addictive."

****
"All this is is an article pushing Bruce Alexander's "Rat Park" claims. There's a reason why his studies were rejected for publication by both Science and Nature and he eventually published it in the Psychopharmacology journal, which is largely considered to be pseudoscientific crap.

There were a number of flaws with his studies and he was not backed up by later experimentation, no matter what he and his little group of people continually claim. They're just like any other pseudoscience group, pushing the handful of crap studies they have against the overall scientific consensus."

****
"Fascinating article. I think the author's main points are right. Addiction is an intimacy disorder. That doesn't mean that someone who suffers from addiction doesn't have an emotionally available or loving spouse or that they didn't have emotionally available or loving parents/families, but it does mean that for some reason they didn't learn how to emotionally attach and receive love from their main attachments. I've also been taught that although connection and love is necessary, in some way, to heal addiction, what the author doesn't address is the necessity to keep yourselves safe, set healthy boundaries, from the damaging nature and abuse that is caused by someone suffering from addiction. Sometimes demonstrating self love, which contains self worth and self respect, is the best way to also show love for someone suffering from addiction. So, ultimately I believe that his basics are generally true but an addiction can't be healed by love alone.

The bottom line is- if you or someone you love is suffering from an addiction, reach out, get support.

You deserve it.

****

"There's so much about this article that is flat-out incorrect that it's difficult to know where to begin, so I'll just touch on three points:

First, the statement that "loads of people should leave hospital and try to score smack on the streets, to meet their habit. But here's the strange thing. It virtually never happens" is simply nonsensical. My hometown of Staten Island, New York, is currently plagued with an epidemic of heroin overdoses, from people who became addicted to opiate painkillers while undergoing medical treatment, and then turned to street heroin when their prescriptions ended, rather than face withdrawal. There have been quite a few newspaper articles on the topic if the author would care to look.

Second, there most certainly are chemical hooks at a craps table: the endorphin rush produced by risk-taking. To disregard this is to willfully ignore an inconvenient fact that doesn't fit the author's thesis.

Third, I can speak from personal experience that while the nicotine patch is useful for overcoming the psychological components of smoking, the person trying to quit will experience the same physical withdrawal from nicotine when they discontinue the patch as if they had quit smoking cold turkey without it. I was able to get through it, and have been smoke-free for 20 years, but don't try to tell me that physical addiction is "only a minor part of a much bigger picture"; it's *by far* the largest component.

****

"This article is extremely frustrating to me, as someone with a LOT of first hand experience with addicts. There is a huge difference between addiction and drug dependency/drug abuse. We already know the cause of addiction, and it is not what this article states. Addiction is a genetic disease of the prefrontal cortex. Simply put this means the inability of the brain to make proper moral decisions. Addiction manifests itself in behaviors and thought processes and is passed down through generations as unhealthy behavior is reflected onto children. Addiction can be activated by outside events, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how loved an addict is or how happy their environment may be, an addict will only maintain true sobriety if he fixes his own behavior. If you dare to question me, spend as much time as I have at AA, Al-Anon, ACOA, and various medical center programs and you won't have any more questions. I recommend the DVD "Pleasure Unwoven" for an excellent scientific explanation of addiction."

****

I think I've figured out why I'm so angry about this post. It's because I completely agree with him about social services response - that our government should put addicts in rehab not prison. As a society we should agree that the most helpful way to decrease drug addiction is to offer therapy and rehab to anyone who wants it.

But instead of using all his time and effort toward that end the author instead created an overly simplistic, feel good piece that would sell his book and get shared like crazy on social media. If this author really dived into all things addiction he would know it is not simple like he's made it out to be. Like how he spoke of the heroin addicts and rat park and the patch as so clear cut when each of these examples are fraught with controversy and evidence to the opposite. HE HAD TO KNOW THESE THINGS AREN'T SIMPLE. Which made me think he went this route anyway for the money. "If you want to see citations for assertions made in the article, buy my book?" Makes sense, since selling the book appears to be highest on his list of goals. Which pisses me off because he had some really great insight that is now going to hurt as many as it helps. If you really want to help addicts, then call it like it is - a complex brain disease with genetic and neurological components, an element of choice, and often a good helping of trauma or neglect. I agree, Johann, "the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection." Since you understand that, it makes your click-bait premise even more offensive to those whose loved ones don't get better. To end like that:
"We should have been singing our addicts love songs all along"?

F*** you, you "addiction expert", I loved my addict all the way to her grave. You know what might help others not have to do the same?

Ethical journalism.

****

"This is shaky ground, at best. I am, as some would define, an addict. Alcohol, several "hard" drugs, even cigarettes have all had their hooks in me. Only a supreme commitment to not drink and use keeps me falling back in that hole. I'm not talking about an agreement I made with myself to quit, I'm talking a 24 hour, nonstop vigilance I can never give up. I can taste that next smoke, that next drink, that next high, every waking second, even after so many years, and the pull to give in to those yearnings is always with me.

I have had my highs and lows, like everyone. I've been social and I've been solitary. I've been comfortable and I've been homeless. None of this mattered when I was drinking. Only the next drink and the shame of not being able to control myself.

As for Vietnam and the heroin use, my personal opinion is those people were not addicts, they were using recreationally and when it was no longer available, and possibly not needed as a coping mechanism, they just quit, like most people can go and have a couple drinks after work then stop and go home. Addicts can't "just quit". The compulsion to get that feeling again is too strong.

I am going to look into these studies further, but I can tell you from MY personal experience that nothing I read here comes close to describing true addiction, and it scares me that something like this can get traction when there are thousands in need of real help, not social psychobabble."

****
"It reads like someone who is desperately trying to figure out "why" and unhappy with the answers and so he creates his own feel-good answer because the truth is too complicated."

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"Here's my take, it is simplistic to say that love fixes everything. Far too many parents have loved their children implicitly, and they have still ended up as addicts, far too many spouses have been loved unconditionally and still been drunks and addicts - far too many parents have been loved by their children and yet they are incapable of accepting that love - human connection can only happen when the reasons that the addiction is necessary are out of the way and the addict is refraining from using the substance that keeps human connection at bay. The steps help us to figure out how to reconnect with other humans - the addiction is in the way of that - it's not other people connecting with me, it is me having the ability to connect with them - and a higher power - I can love or be loved as much as either I or another is capable. When I was in the throes of my addictions I had no capacity to be loved, love myself...

His naivete regarding chemical hooks saddens me - the chemicals are in my body - it is the rush I receive from even thinking about my addiction and planning a binge. Yes, some addictions do add their own chemical highs, but it is enough to have my body crave and respond to its own chemical concoction that feeds my addiction.

I find far too often these "new evidences about addiction" are just ways to keep people from having to work the steps and have a relationship with a power greater than they are. So much of this is beautiful, but the underlying problem is not that addicts need more love and connection - it's that they need to understand why they can't and clearing things out of the way so they can, and keeping them clear so they don't relapse. It's work people, plain old hard work. It's not easy, but it is simple. I would challenge his main thesis, and yes, far too many addicts think that the opposite of addiction is sobriety - it's not. That isn't recovery. The opposite of addiction is serenity - and that allows me to connect on all levels of my being - physical, emotional and spiritual."