Addiction is a (Bad) Coping Mechanism | Sober and Unashamed

Addiction is a coping mechanism.

It is not weakness or a moral failing. Addiction is not a choice, although with rare mental and behavioral health education, we can avoid making lifestyle decisions that set us up for disaster. Addiction has very little to do with genetics, and much more to do with generational trauma and familial patterns that can result in a family tree dripping with alcoholics.

That first paragraph is thick with stuff it took me over a decade to learn. You don’t have to understand it all. But if you can’t reject the fallacy that addiction is about willpower, genes and morality, then you’re stuck, and none of the rest of this is going to make any sense.

Every addiction has an underlying cause. In most cases, including mine, we should use the plural (causes) when looking for tangible incidents, mindsets and influences. If we think of underlying causes as one or a series of stories, we can find the cognitively graspable things for which we use alcohol as a coping mechanism. When it comes to identifying underlying causes, some people, unfortunately, have an easier time than others, because the “thing” is objectively traumatic like child abuse or sexual abuse or the unprocessed death of someone close. But for many of us, the underlying causes are more subjective. There wasn’t…