Day: June 23, 2015

An Addicted Brain but a Recovering Mind

Posted on by alcoholicsguide

This blog used excerpts from

Do I still have an “Alcoholic Mind”!?

 

When I first came into recovery I used to get frightened by other abstinent  alcoholics proclaim that they were so glad they did not get the “wet tongue” when they saw alcohol or people drinking alcohol.

I used to feel ashamed as I did have an instantaneous “wet tongue” or mild salivation (Pavlovian response) and still do  years later when I see people drinking alcohol. Is this a “craving” for alcohol, do I still want to drink? Do I still have an “alcoholic mind?“. Did I do my steps properly?

It used to churn me up, these so-called alcoholics who had no physiological response to alcohol-related “cues”. By “cues” I mean the sight, sound and smell of alcohol and alcohol  related  stimuli, like wine gulping , glasses clinking, people having a good time, etc.

Part me also thought it was linked to addiction severity, how bad or chronic one’s alcoholism become, how far down the line or how low your rock bottom was? There may some validity in that observation.

It was partly because of mixed messages from alcoholics that I decided to take matters into my own hands and do some research into my alcoholic brain.

What I have discovered is that I have an “alcoholic brain” and not a “alcoholic mind” and there is a huge difference.

I found there is a difference between by addicted brain that has been altered by chronic abuse of alcohol and drugs and my recovering alcoholic mind, that  essence of me that is dedicated to recovery from alcoholism and addiction. These are very distinct – let me explain – on a daily basis I use my mind to help my brain recover.

For example, I meditate, I ignore the incessant chattering of my “illness”.

Both these are the function of my mind affecting the neuroplasticity of my brain.

In other words my mind is in control of my brain, the brain’s functions and structure can be shaped by my mind.    This is in effect, recovery.

For example, meditation can strengthen my control over emotional states, especially negative emotional states, by building yo the neural “muscles” of brain regions which regulate emotion.

Hence my mind and brain are distinct from each other, one effects the other.

So if there are people out there relatively new to recovery, listen up.

For chronic alcoholics there is an automatic physiological response when we see cues such as other people drinking. Mild salivation, quickening heart rate etc.

These are automatic, habitual, these responses happens to us rather than us wanting or willing it to happen. It happens unconsciously without our say so!

If you get a “wet tongue” i.e. you mildly salivate, then this is what happens when you have crossed the line into chronic alcoholism.

Loads of studies have shown there is this automatic response and have also shown there is also an attentional bias to alcohol cues. We notice alcohol cues in the environment before anything else. They have a heightened “noticeableness”.

Have you ever been in a new town and counted the number of drinking establishments automatically or had a heightened awareness of half drunken bottles of alcohol lying in the street? This is an attentional bias, we notice alcohol related stuff before anything else.

Some researchers in science call this a craving. I disagree.

I call this a physiological urge, distinct from craving.

I think a craving is more akin to a “mental obsession” about alcohol.

Alcohol has only had ‘luring’ effect on me while very emotional distressed or in the early days of recovery I was very scared that  I would drink but, looking back, I never had any desire to.

It is hugely important for recovering persons that we distinguish between urges and craving, in a clear manner that science seems to have been unable to do!

Lives can depend on this.

We are so vulnerable in early recover that we need sound direction on what is happening to us automatically and what we are encouraging to happen, consciously.

An urge for me is a physiological response to cues, external and internal (e.g. stress). A craving is different but interlinked.

Let me explain.

If I have an urge and it becomes accompanied by automatic intrusive thoughts such as a drink would be nice, and maybe a suggestion on where to get this drink, this does not mean I want a drink.

It is simply automatically prompted intrusive thoughts, the type of thought I used to get all the time and so became habitual, stored away in an automatized addiction schema or addiction action plan.

If I realize this and simply let these thoughts go, i.e. do not react to them, then they lessen and dissipate altogether.

This is not a craving. I have not consciously and emotionally engaged with these intrusive thoughts (although we often do in early recovery when they scare the life out of us!).

If I consciously engage, emotionally react, to these thoughts either because I want a drink (elaboration of these thoughts as in embellishing a desire state) or the thought scares the life out of me (averse reaction) I can end up in a mental obsession.

If in recovery, we try to suppress these thoughts then they will come back stronger than before which will raise  already high stress levels and recruit a whole host of memories of why I should drink, with who, where, and how much I will enjoy it.

They will also activate an Alcoholic Self Schema (different to the recovery self schema still being formed in early recovery).

Then I have a memory Hydra effect where attempting to suppress this terrible flowering of desire based memories or to cut off the heads of these thoughts and memories leads to them increasing and increasing.

 

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Then there are lots of these memories driving you crazy and scaring the life out of you.  And this is in someone who does not want to drink but wants to remain in recovery!!?

The other guy who is embellishing these thoughts is kinda thinking about drinking or toying with the possibility, so but again he is reacting cognitively and consciously to these intrusive thoughts. He is elaborating on them. He is using a different more cognitive part of the brain and a different memory system to those activated when he was simply having unconscious, habitual, automatic intrusive thoughts. He is now involved in this process rather than it simply happening to him.

So what I am saying is that there is no simple urge state that automatically leads to drink. We have to cognitively and emotionally react to it.

In my time in recovery, I have rarely heard of or witnessed  someone lured siren-like by a cue to a drink and when I have it is because he wanted to drink really, was testing their alcoholism, or he was in huge emotional distress and went “to hell with it!”

As we will see in later blogs,  there has to be a  cognitive-emotional reaction which mediates between an urge and a relapse!

If you have urges of a “wet tongue” accept this fact, that it is because you are an alcoholic. Non alcoholics are bedeviled with these things, only alcoholics are.

Thank the heavens you have had this reminder of your alcoholism. I used to replace this urge states with gratitude, and thank God for giving me another insight into my condition.

 

The Nightmare of “Drinking Dreams”

Posted on by alcoholicsguide

This blog uses excerpts from “In dreams…an illness that never sleeps!”

 

A main purpose of this blog  The Alcoholics Guide to Alcoholism is to provide some explanation or answers to the experience of early recovery form alcoholism and addiction.

To provide some insight into  the sometimes very difficult days of early recovery.

The initial days and weeks or recovery were for me some of the most challenging in recovery and I found that recovery got better and better after these at times exasperating and at times frightening and confusing first weeks.

If we can hang in there, we find things get better and fairly soon.

So here I will blog for the next week on some of the issues that very much bothered me in early recovery.

I want to give some answers that I wish had been available to me at the time so that you do not have to agonize over psychological processes which are natural, automatic and sometimes unavoidable to the early days of recovery.

I want you to know you are not alone in feeling what you are feeling, experiencing what you are experiencing in early recovery.

Hopefully this week’s blogs can be a guide through some of the issues of early recovery.

We have all gone through what you are going through, and came through as you can too!

Let’ start with “drinking dreams” – having dreams in which I was drinking alcohol was very common in the first weeks and months of recovery.

They used to terrorize my sleeping hours. I would fortunately  always drink to drunkenness in these dreams and rarely at “one of two” and left it at that, although in later recovery I have had this type of dream too.

I would either awake from this drinking dreams, terrified by their content, or would awake in the morning extra tired that I had had  a number of these drink-based dreams in the night.

They greatly troubled me – why was I having them, did I really still want to drink?

Was I actually committed to recovery at all? Was I kidding myself, did I simply just want to drink?

And not want to be in recovery?

Talking to my sponsor and other recovering alcoholics reassured me I was not alone and made me realise that drinking dreams were very common to alcoholics especially in the early  weeks and months of recovery.

In later years I still have the odd drinking dream but this is usually when I am very anxious or worried about something and my anxiety goes and ketches the symbols I am most frightened of, which is my fear of ever drinking again.

In the last year, I have come across a great article to help newcomers in early recovery with understanding “drinking dreams”.

According to this study – drinking dreams in recovering alcoholics is not a sign of wanting to drink again but the very opposite – drinking dreams are the sign of being completely motivated not to drink and stay abstinent and in recovery!

“It is often said that we have an illness of addiction that never rests..

In the early weeks and months (years) of recovery I often had “drinking” dreams  in which I would dream about drinking alcohol. In early recovery these used to scare the life out of me and confuse me greatly. Did I still want to drink?

The study (1) we cite today shows the opposite that “that alcoholics would have more drinking dreams if they wanted to stay sober and that to dream of drinking was a good indicator of continued abstinence.” 

The drinking dreams, I later realised,  would normally occur when I was fearful of anxious. They were fear based dreams not appetitive, i.e. they were not about wanting to drink but about being afraid of drinking again.

That would appear to my greatest fear so when I was anxious about something in my daily life, at night I would have dreams about drinking alcohol.

In these early days, fortunately, in the drinking dreams the drinking would have dire consequences and I would get out of control drunk.

Now if I have the odd drinking dream I simply use it as a prompt to look at what is going on emotionally in my life. I have to say that my dreams have increasingly used other symbols of fear and anxiety in recent years, like buildings collapsing, having to save people’s lives etc etc.

I must also be rigorously honest here and state that many of my fear based and drinking dreams occur when I have not done my step 10 properly or thoroughly. A way to a sound sleep is a sound step 10!

Anyway this study (1)  from a few years ago which looked at the dreams of alcoholics. It showed that the self esteem issues that sometimes plague alcoholics in recovery are also present in their dreams although these lessen as time in recovery increases.

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“This study focused on people who had self-labelled themselves as ‘Alcoholics.’ They all had a previously previous history of severe alcohol use, but were currently abstinent and recovering in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Moore (1962)  found that alcoholics often dreamt of themselves as victims.

Scott (1968)  found alcoholics reported significantly more dreams about drinking, often associated with guilt.

Scott concluded that alcoholic’s dreams depicted problems, conflicts, insecurity, and sadness…alcoholics were “unable to use their dreams therapeutically as do controls … alcoholics incorporate their feelings of helplessness whilst controls are able to integrate strength into their dreams” (Scott, 1968, p.1317).

Cartwright (1974) predicted that the ‘psychologically healthy’ would have greater continuity between their waking and dreaming life. This is due, in part, to the assumed internal emotional and mental equilibrium that exists in individuals with assumed psychological balance. This early literature suggests that alcoholics in early abstinence, or during hospitalization, may report dream content which is more unpleasant in terms of emotion and themes.

Studies have begun to focus on the reason why drinking dreams appear in alcoholism (or other substance misuse disorders).

Choi (1973) compared those who experienced drinking dreams at 3 months, with those who did not and found that 80% of those who had drinking dreams were still abstinent compared to 18% of those who did not.

He concluded that alcoholics would have more drinking dreams if they wanted to stay sober and that to dream of drinking was a good indicator of continued abstinence.

Denzin (1988) points out, using anecdotal reports from AA members, that drinking dreams are usually fearful, and this may reflect waking preoccupation with the fear of returning to active alcoholism, rather than a desire to return to drinking.

 

The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous provide a program of self-help where addiction is ‘accepted’ rather than ‘abstained’ from.

The difference between ‘acceptance’ and ‘abstinence’ is the same as the difference between being highly motivated to not drink and being highly unmotivated to not pick up the first drink or drug (Colace, 2004; Berridge, 2001).

This difference would be clearly observed in the self-construal of the ‘recovering’ alcoholics who took part in this study. If drinking dreams are indicative of where the person is in their recovery process, then wanting to drink intermittently is arguably the most natural of states that an alcoholic may find themselves in.

Drinking dreams are not predetermine indicators of relapse: how they act on may be. Rather, the occasional presence of drinking dreams which are accompanied by unpleasant emotional affect, including guilt and remorse are a common part of the recovery process(Marshall, 1995).

Knudson (2003) suggests dreams are seen as indicators of either the past (retrospective), or the present moment (concurrent), but includes a further prospective function used to make positive change.

Using this model, drinking dreams can be seen as indicators of needing to take prospective action, such as increased access to support, talking about these dreams in AA meetings, or with sponsors and therapists (McEwing, 1991; Marshall, 1995).

 

References

1. Parker, J., & Alford, C. (2009). The dreams of male and female abstinent alcoholic’s in stage II recovery compared to non-alcholic controls: are the differences significant?. International Journal of Dream Research, 2(2), 73-84.