Alcohol and other addictions
If you are wondering if you (or someone you care about) are an addict or not, below are the 8 questions that doctors may use to make a diagnosis. Although aimed at substance abuse, the questions apply equally to gambling and other non-substance addictions.
You are classed as an addict if three or more of the following features are present:
- A strong desire or sense of compulsion to take the substance.
- Difficulties controlling the substance-taking behaviour in terms of when it occurs, and/or being able to stop, and/or being unable to control the amount consumed once started.
- A physically unpleasant withdrawal state when not consuming the substance.
- Further substance use to relieve or avoid the withdrawal state.
- Evidence of increased tolerance (increased doses are required to achieve effects originally produced by lower doses).
- Progressive neglect of alternative pleasures or interests because of substance use.
- Persisting with substance use despite clear evidence of harmful consequences.
- Narrowing of a person’s ‘personal repertoire’ or lifestyle – i.e. taking the substance becomes more important than anything else.
Seeking help
It is rare for someone to deliberately set out to seriously damage or destroy their own life and the lives of others in doing so. People become addicted to something because it gives them pleasure or prevents them from suffering pain… and it develops through repeated use. In their mind, what they get from doing it far outweighs the consequences it has for them afterwards. Normally the time someone seeks help for an addiction, whether it is alcohol, gambling, smoking, shopping or drugs, is when they have gone beyond denial and reached the point when they realise that their addiction is beyond their control.
Reaching the point of accepting you have an addiction and wanting to break free of the dependency, is seen as an essential first step in the process of change. There has to come a point when someone says “enough is enough”, and means it, for real change to occur.
Sadly, this point usually occurs when the self-destructive behaviour has already caused significant damage to life – health, wealth, relationships, career and self–esteem. Strong feelings such as self-loathing, guilt, anger, self-pity and hopelessness also contribute to keeping people trapped in the vicious cycle of their addiction.
People also find an addictive, compulsive habit difficult to break partly because they may also have often tried to quit and failed. And when people keep trying but don’t succeed it can lead them to believing that they’ll never be able to overcome it.
Addictive Personality – Fact or Fiction?
There is also a notion that there is a genetic cause for the addictive behaviour, an ‘addictive personality’ type. This term ‘addictive personality’ is used so commonly in our culture that few of us question whether an addictive personality type exists…yet any search on the internet will show that most doctors and psychiatrists believe it is a falsehood. There is little scientific evidence for an addictive personality as such – quite the reverse. Personality is also complex and the role of personality in addiction is uncertain.
In my view, not only is the “addictive personality” notion unproven, it is also very unhelpful – to believe that you are as you are because you were born that way becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that can stop someone from taking action to change.
I subscribe to the cognitive model of addiction – cognition is the process by which we attain knowledge and awareness of the world i.e. an addiction is not inherited but is learned behaviour. The more one consumes the substance, the more likely one is to become addicted. Addiction can thus happen to anyone.
However, that said, you do not need to subscribe to the cognitive model for hypnotherapy to help you change. You may instead prefer to think of an addiction as an illness or disease yet also recognise that the mind plays a significant role in the process of breaking free and enjoying life without it.
My Approach
What matters most is that someone is motivated to change his or her behaviour, is prepared to help themselves to be better and wants the change to happen urgently… if that is the case then hypnotherapy can help as hypnosis enables someone to access their unconscious mind and activate their potential for changing a certain habit, way of thinking and feeling.
For overcoming addictions, my approach involves helping someone to:
- Develop a strong belief that he or she can quit and overcome cravings if and when these occur.
- Visualize themselves being the way he or she wants to be, getting a sense of what it would look, sound and feel like to be in control and entirely free of that old habit:
- Build determination to succeed, to keep going along the right path and feel compelled to do things differently;
- Develop new helpful habits
- Be free of the addiction and remain so.
Depending on the addiction and the person, treatment would typically involve 3 or 4 sessions and I also provide special recordings to be used between sessions that support the work we do together.
