The Spectrum of Addiction: You can Ignore it, but it Won’t Go Away

I took a writing class with my favorite instructor over the weekend. She asked the writers to picture a particular irrelevant scene in the future, and imagine how that made us feel. The specific scene is irrelevant to what you are reading here, so I’ve spared you the details, but it wasn’t irrelevant to me. Not at all. In fact, quite to the contrary, it was very important, and the emotion that flooded my body upon considering the situation my writing coach suggested was complete and total relief.

I immediately recoiled and broke into a cold sweat. I’ve recently designated “relief” as a dirty word in my vernacular. Relief is what I chased with alcohol. I’ve used sex and food and work in search of that same soothing relief. Relief is the dangling carrot of addiction.

I have been listening to Russell Brand’s audiobook about the twelve steps. He describes addiction as a spectrum, and he explains that those of us on the severe end of the spectrum are fortunate because we are kind of forced to address what’s going on in our lives. He’s right, too. It’s not the first time I’ve heard of addiction described that way. In fact, Laura McKowen’s new book is titled We are the Luckiest referring to the blessing of health that comes from actually attacking our demons rather than letting them slowly gnaw at the core of our…