Frank, let’s say hypothetically I or a friend has a cocaine addiction. How, hypothetically, would one go about fixing that?

Avatar

I am no expert on dealing with drug issues or drug addiction in particular, and it is possible I may not have the most up-to-date (or correct) views. (My drug posts were made years ago, as were my posts on addiction.) I'm going to try to keep this general and avoid specifics.

When I was in school, I had an issue with substance use that my mother and I have discussed openly in the past. As I'm not sure I've talked about in those posts, a certain portion of the time I was also drinking, which led to various issues. If you've read those posts, you can probably get a sense of what I was going through.

To make a long story short, what helped a lot was the approach of not allowing yourself to keep using alcohol or drugs, and taking the time to figure out why you use them, what they accomplish in your life, why they are such a drag (for me, the answer is that I drink in large amounts with my friends and family, which is socially pleasant but has negative effects on my body). You need to know these things not because of "science" but because it helps you know what to do in the future and figure out what your needs are. You may want to use some sort of evidence here, but again, I'm no expert on this stuff, and I was never particularly good at taking action based on evidence.

Anyway, I was still heavily drinking on weekends, and the more I would drink the more I would drink. On some nights, I would get so sick from drinking that I was unable to get out of bed the next morning. I used to have a drinking partner whom I had a very deep, intimate and loving relationship with, but this eventually ended. (A big part of my problem is that I tended to feel I owed her this, but I think she ended up realizing I really wasn't capable of fulfilling a "friendship" role for her or anyone.)

Once I figured out this stuff, I didn't just stop drinking -- I started to drink in smaller amounts to keep the effects of alcohol in check (this is when the cocaine thing came up). Some of the drinking was also accompanied by an increasing use of amphetamines -- I still took amphetamines in college, but I later found that amphetamines were causing me some serious problems and I stopped them.

As far as I know, this was basically the right approach. At least for me, it's not the kind of thing you can get through a "treatment plan," it's the kind of thing you have to gradually work out, but you can probably get pretty far along in terms of "I'm no longer drinking to excess."

I've also heard from several people (e.g. from the person I just linked) that they got sober by seeing a "treatment plan" that involved them giving up drinking all together (with no substitution, like "take these pills"). This was not for me -- drinking is still not a good idea for me but, having reached the point where the problem was "I'm too drunk," I didn't take it as a serious treatment plan.

And then there are the people who don't drink at all, which is fine for them, but that's not for me.

(For the record, I've found that a mix of two things helps a lot. First, being very very very honest with myself about what alcohol does to my body and how it makes me feel. I also try to make sure to keep myself in a situation where I know I'm going to drink no matter what, or I can stop drinking with the effort of a single step -- a sort of "no drinking plan" for the next several days, where I try not to drink if I know I'll be doing so anyway in an hour or two.)

This all was probably way too long to answer the question you're actually asking. Sorry, I really can't be any more specific here.

Avatar