Deep Emotions, Useful and Otherwise

Whether it is called a moral, ethical or spiritual matter, messing around with substances tends to affect our inner beings. This is where animal experimentation around the problem runs into a snag. In “Addiction: The View from Rat Park,” Prof. Bruce Alexander pointed out, as a basic premise, that rats are rats, and went on to ask,

How can we possibly reach conclusions about complex, perhaps spiritual experiences like human addiction and recovery by studying rats?

Surely, some critics must have asked him what on earth he meant by that. What does shooting up in an alley have to do with our interior spiritual selves? Only everything! Dr. Pretlow has written,

Disordered overeating and obesity in youth appears to be a psychological problem, suggestive of an addictive process. Disordered overeating and obesity should be considered an eating disorder and treated by psychologists/psychiatrists.

He is not the only expert to have noticed that in these cases, psychological factors are inevitably at work. Be that as it may, the sad state of affairs is that mental health professionals who specialize in treating obesity, whether child or adult, are rare.

An essay titled “Shame and Addiction” by an uncredited Gateway Foundation author outlines the symptoms of shame (perfectionism, low self-esteem, people-pleasing, and guilt) and also lists the beliefs that someone may be led into by a sense of shame. These include convictions that the self is bad, defective and unlovable, and a failure undeserving of happiness.

Counterproductivity

The article says that shame “can trigger a dependency on alcohol or drugs as a method of escape,” which of course is no help at all when dependency on a substance (or on behavior associated with substance use) is the underlying problem in the first place. Dr. Pretlow often speaks of vicious cycles, and this is one of them.

The article goes on to specify how the addiction recovery process is impacted by shame. The person may keep quiet and hide the truth about matters that would better be explored aloud. Shame can destroy a person’s sense of worthiness, and convince them that their dreams can never be achieved. To get better, the person needs proper guidance and a safe, supportive environment. But those side effects are the very factors that prevent so many people from seeking help.

Then, the Gateway Foundation includes instructions for healing, which can be accomplished with proper guidance in a safe and supportive environment:

Recognize shame
Face the root of your shame
Accept self
Make amends and let go
Be kind to yourself
Find a safe space
Develop a support network

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Addiction: The View from Rat Park,” BruceKAlexander.com, undated
Source: “Shame and Addiction,” GatewayFoundation.org, undated
Image by CPSU/CSA/CC BY-SA 2.0

Painful Emotions Complicate the Problem

Rightly or wrongly, moral baggage is carried (or not!) by most humans in their every interaction with the world. Many people spend their lives drowning in guilt and shame about something or other, and that is a problem in itself. Now, what about spiritual or moral qualms regarding one’s attachment to a behavior, like compulsive overeating, for instance — especially if it is identified as an addiction?

Regret is probably the mildest sort of moral reaction to one’s own actions. Dr. Pretlow and co-author Suzette Glasner, Ph.D., addressed this in “Reconceptualization of Eating Addiction and Obesity as Displacement Behavior and a Possible Treatment,” saying:

Activation of the (irrepressible) displacement mechanism may explain why individuals feel compelled to overeat or binge in the face of a rewarding cue yet feel substantial regret afterward. Regret felt by individuals after a binge episode could also be, at least in part, due to social pressure, diet culture, and potential effects on body weight. Regret would not occur if it were simply a matter of reward.

Many professionals in the field of disordered eating have remarked on these emotional quandaries. According to neuroscientist Dr. Billi Gordon, who was morbidly obese for most of his life,

Holiday binge and compulsive eating, like drug addiction, causes guilt, self-loathing, and psychological distress. There is consistent and considerable co-morbidity between compulsive overeating and substance abuse. Hence, the predisposition for compulsively overeating voluminous amounts of food, suggests an underlying neurobiological process similar to addiction.

In “The trauma behind the addiction,” counselor and therapist Sam Coleman discusses the many studies through which Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, have been linked to substance misuse in adults. For most addicts, their journey into darkness begins with the simple effort to self-medicate the bad memories out of existence. The secrecy they had to maintain throughout their childhood added an extra burden, and by the time they grow up enough to be able to reveal those dark secrets, it is of course far too late to do anything about the abuse. The person gets all wrapped up in layers of self-judgment and self-condemnation.

This category of experience, whether caused by simple violence, sexual abuse, or even sustained and inescapable emotional abuse, tends to breed in the victim a sense of shame and an inner conviction of unworthiness. They feel isolated from what they perceive as a normal society made up of people who are not haunted by such demons.

This is one reason why even the most basic forms of group therapy can be helpful, at least as a beginning step. It is often a revelation to learn that other people are coping with similar difficulties. Coleman says,

The word “addiction” derives from the Latin word which means “enslaved to”. Anybody that has suffered with addiction will fully understand this. You become a slave to the drug of your choice. It fills your thoughts and everything else fades into the background.

We will be talking more about the two emotions of guilt and shame, because people who know about these things have taken the trouble to carefully differentiate between the two. Briefly, shame is like being shackled, while guilt can actually be the key that unlocks the chains.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Reconceptualization of Eating Addiction and Obesity as Displacement Behavior and a Possible Treatment,” ScienceGate.app, 2020
Source: “Christmas Cookie Blue,” PsychologyToday.com, 12/06/13
Source: “The trauma behind the addiction,” Medium.com, 02/13/20
Image by Anthony Easton/CC BY 2.0

Moral Factors in Addiction

How does DSM-5, the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, define addiction? In the simplified addiction criteria, there are four subheadings, one of which encompasses social problems. This includes such matters as the neglect of relationships and their ensuing responsibilities, like keeping the rent paid and taking care of the necessary life tasks at home, or in educational or employment settings. Maintaining an addiction will cause a person to give up the activities they used to care about unless purposes can be combined. A parent who can score dope at their child’s sports event has exceptional life-management skills.

Another whole category of “tells” concerns ignoring risk in the pursuit or use of the addictive substance. Getting a supply from another parent at a park is not quite the same as driving to a bad neighborhood at night to meet a stranger. This escalating behavior includes not only dicey environments but stubborn persistence in the destructive habit even though it causes obvious problems.

Similarities

It is easy to picture a heroin addict doing any of those things. But with just a bit more imagination, it is also possible to conceptualize a food addict making the same mistakes — perhaps not on such a large scale, and not with large consequences like prison — but still, life-damaging bad decisions.

Indeed the consequences may seem, to an outsider, trivial and even ridiculous. Friends make fun of each other’s eating habits, often as a caring gesture, because it is one of the few acceptable ways to address another adult’s potentially destructive habits. But to the person burdened by those habits, it is no joke. Here are some excerpts from a piece by Anita Badejo, in a series of confessional articles by people with eating disorders:

Eventually, my mom realized I was sneaking food and she started hiding sweets in the kitchen in hopes of curbing my steady weight gain. Instead, I became an expert at climbing on countertops, calculating how much I could eat of something before she would notice, and burying wrappers in the trash. Often, I’d throw away the balanced, nutritious lunches she’d pack me […] in favor of pizza and curly fries.

This was obviously someone who did not suffer from insatiable hunger, but selective hunger. Otherwise, she would have consumed both the healthful lunches and the fat-filled and fried meals. By climbing on kitchen counters, Badejo risked a fracture or a concussion. That her mother would be disappointed or angered by the lies (and the wasted good food) did not faze her. But what really caused her to focus on the idea that her behavior was not normal was the realization that “I thought more about what I’d eat when I got to my friends’ houses than the time I’d spend with them.” Then,

I hoped going to my dream college would somehow absolve me of my lack of self-worth and, with that, my eating habits. Instead, I spent much of my freshman and sophomore years […] feeling like a fraud and making full use of my unlimited meal plan by stuffing to-go containers and eating alone in my dorm room.

This was both a social problem and, in terms of health, a calculated risk. Very close to the end of her essay, the author admits,

I’ve come to realize I eat the same way I hit my snooze button every morning: just a little bit more. Tired when I should feel energized, so empty despite being so full. Food is still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. I still spend much of my time trying to hide just how much I eat it.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “DSM-5 Criteria for Addiction Simplified,” AddictionPolicy.org, 08/20/20
Source: “I’m Mending My Broken Relationship With Food,” BuzzfeedNews.com, 02/26/15
Image by airpix/CC BY 2.0