I’m Trying
It was an interesting intersection between two conversations this weekend.
First conversation: Someone reached out for support. They wrote, “Why can’t I do the things I really want to do? I’m trying so hard! I’m motivated, very motivated! But when it comes down to it, I just bail.”
My answer: “Trying is only half the battle, and likely not the biggest part. You need the right tools as well. You said you want to do these things very much. I believe you. But you could want to cut a tree down with a butter knife and you wouldn’t complete that either. Whatever tasks you’re trying to complete, focus on the process or tools and you might find some traction. There’s a tool that fits every job.”
Second conversation: A dear friend gave a talk at a Recovery event over the weekend. During the talk, he shared one of his frustrations from his earlier attempts at sobriety. He had multiple interventions, followed by relapses. Rinse and repeat. He said he was trying so hard in those early days, but many people, including clinicians, would link his relapse with a lack of commitment. He and I spoke afterwards about his experience to compare notes on that time period. 15 years ago? I was seeing individual clients for mental health and substance use issues then. If I had a client that was attempting sobriety and they relapsed, I would frequently refer them to a higher level of care, reasoning that obviously what they were doing wasn’t working, so they must need a more intense therapeutic environment. That was a pretty common belief pattern among clinicians. See what I did there? I took a faulty belief system, a clinical error in judgment, and justified it by saying everyone was doing it. The honest truth about those early referrals is this: I referred many of those clients out because they made me uncomfortable. The were a fleshy version of my failure. My inability to help them reach their goals. And I wasn’t mature enough to be uncomfortable yet. And I hadn’t fallen down enough to learn how to ask for help.
That was lazy therapy. The client was telling me they didn’t have the right tools for the job. Instead of walking with them in that difficult space to find the right tools, I would send them to another program. A program that also wasn’t interested in helping them find the right tools. Programs in those days focused a lot on willingness. If a client relapsed, or struggled, we thought they just wen’t willing enough. Or they hadn’t surrendered enough, or they hadn’t admitted they were powerless enough. That’s such horseshit, which, by the way, is a new clinical term in the DSM.
I stood at a wall with my friend today, and in front of us were hundreds of pictures of people who had died of overdose. Behind us were hundreds of people drawing breath, walking around, people in recovery. People who have recovered. People who had evaded the fatal overdose. What separated these two groups? Why did one group survive and the other group die? Did the living try harder? It’s doubtful. Were they just more lucky? I don’t think so. I know it wasn’t that they were “made of stronger stuff.” What seems likely to me (as I know some of the living and some that haven’t been as fortunate) is that the living were able to identify the tools they needed and then (big key) those tools were accessible to them. Denied access to the right tools is the same as not having the right tools.
I was in a car accident once with my wife. We got hit head on by a van. The airbags went off and it lifted our vehicle up into the air. When we came to rest I had two thoughts: “I smell smoke and this thing could blow up at any minute.” Then I thought, “I have to get my wife and I out of this car.” Once I got us to the side of the road we looked back at the mangled mess of a totaled vehicle. I don’t remember trying to get us clear. In fact, whether I was able to move us to safety or not didn’t have anything to do with trying. In a survival situation, the brian goes into autopilot. There’s not cognition that resembles: “OK, Larry, let’s get in there and get this job done!” I didn’t need a motivational speech by a coach to get me pumped up. By the way, here’s why coaches have to give speeches before games: Every person on that field knows the truth. That the game’s outcome doesn’t really matter. Different story when your life is on the line.
If you know anything about addiction, you know that the late stages of this condition are very similar to being in a car that could explode at any second. Those in the grips don’t need to try harder. They don’t need to make better choices. They don’t need to pull their head out of their ass. They need to discover the right tools and then they need ready access to those tools. Period.
Thomas Edison was trying with all his might to invent the lightbulb. It wasn’t a matter of intelligence or resolve. Yet, he failed 2774 times to meet his goal. My friends with SUD don’t have the luxury of failing to meet their goals 2774 times. That’s how you end up on a wall at a recovery event.
Can we abandon the idea that a relapse is about weakness? Or moral failure? Or laziness? Can we embrace the idea that a relapse is a call to go back to the toolbox and find the wrench that hasn’t been used yet?
