Observations... Have We Been Looking At Opiate Addiction Backwards?

 I know some people will read this and think, "duh." For those of you who have already realized this, hopefully it's been helpful for you and perhaps you could further chime in and shine some light on how this could be applied in the lives of us who are still struggling. The others who I know will read this and think, "a-ha!"

I often struggle to understand the compulsion that drives me back to opiates again and again. I can write a list of pros and cons, come up with twice as many cons anspros, and then find myself on autopilot an hour later going to score. During these autopilot moments, I occasionally retain enough awareness to recognize that my body is carrying itself somewhere that my mind is urging it not to go. Sometimes I can stop it for a while, but inevitably those moments of grace are overwrought by the same cyclical driving force that triggers the lock-step following of my cravings.

With other drugs I've used, this would usually be the time in which I'd rationalize my actions."It'll help me get my work done, or help me feel social, or let me finish this project, or whomp my anxiety."

Sometimes that still happens, but my and large, with opiates, though, there's no rationale. I know that the cons outweigh the pros and that there are better substances for all of the above things. And yet something keeps driving me back. Failing to understand this driving force, this overwhelming power that subsumes my reason and will, this predator that forever lurks in the darkness impugned against all of my tricks & defenses.... failing to understand it is a huge source of frustration, shame, indecision and confusion. It has also made it impossible to communicate the reality of my addiction to others.

Today I realized that one of the fundamental ways that we approach opiate addiction is, in many ways, backwards. We tend to look and assess the experience in terms of the "high" it provides. This only makes sense: most drugs are characterized by their highs, by the supplemental feelings and experiences that they provide. By their positive symptoms.

In clinical terms, positive symptoms are traits/experiences/characteristics that arise in addition to those that the average person experiences on a regular basis. It has nothing to do with the quality, or "positivity" of an experience. For example, schizozphrenia is typified by positive symptoms such as hallucinations.

Drugs are generally assessed in terms of their positive symptoms. What they add to the human experience.
Negative symptoms, on the other hand, are more difficult to identify and even describe. A negative symptom is described as the absence of a trait/characteristic that is naturally present in the average individual. For example, a lack of facial expressions during communication is considered a negative symptom.

Drugs are rarely typified according to their negative symptoms, and when they are, it's usually because they negate a profound positive symptom (such as anxiety or depression). But I believe there are much more subtle negative symptoms, and I believe that opioids unleash a whole slew of them. Like vacuuming fur off a persian rug; you might suck up hundreds of bits of fur and never be able to specifically pinpoint exactly when or where you've done so, but overall, the vacuumed image looks cleaner. Likewise, the negative symptoms that opioids suck from our daily lives aren't easily pinpointed, and yet once the opioid takes full effect, the image (or life experience) feels much cleaner, much smoother, much safer and more complete.

I belielve that opioid use is primarily characterized by negative symptoms rather than positive ones. When looked at in this light, I realize that the opioid experience is mostly one that takes away from the everyday experience: it removes anxiety, pain, racing thoughts. It removes the need to conform, and inhibits the natural impulse we have to match the body language and expressions of others. It inflates the sense of self to such a degree that we lose the ability to empathize and embrace others without sustained effort. Eventually it takes away everything else in our lives, but I dunno if "lost girlfriend" and "lost house" would count as symptoms.

I think this distinction is really important to make. A lot of people do experience positive symptoms from opiates. That's easy enough to tell by checking in an opiate subreddit and seeing how many people cite the blissful experience. But oftentimes this blissfulness only occurs during the early phases of opiate use and fades into apathy later on. Apathy being a state entirely devoid of feeling is very different than bliss, and yet by this stage usage has become entirely compulsory.

A lot of addicted people struggle to identify exactly what it is that draws them back to opiates. This has led to a lot of scientific study into changes in the brain's reward pathway, the production of delta fos-B, etc. This is all well and good. But I believe that there is still a hugely important psychological component that needs to be taken into account, and this involves assessing the negative symptoms of heroin addiction.

It's these blemishes and scratches that adorn the surface of our lives that most people have grown up with and come to accept as part and parcel with reality. The first time someone predisposed to opioid addiction catches their first buzz, these blemishes and scratches are immediately buffed off. You may not have even noticed they were there in the first place. Or that they're no longer there. But they're there, and everything seems more clear, more authentic. You can trust in your vision, your sense of self, your beliefs, because you're no longer hindered (or so one feels) by the various pockmarks and scratches left by childhood trauma and growing pains.

When people ask me about heroin, I often tell them that it "took away problems that I didn't even know I had," and that's still the case. I still don't know entirely what it's taking away from my daily experience that makes it preferable to be a slothed-out friendless junkie than to be a sober individual, relishing the freshness of each day as I breathe in the love and light of the world. But for some reason that just sounds terrifying.

And yet that's certainly one thing completely devoid in the life of an addict: love and light. We crawl back to the Lady Opium, knowing that if we elevate her upon the altar of worship she will demand their constant sacrifice. Few things so certainly assure the destruction of the holy and good, the loving and kind.

Perhaps that is why we are compelled to return, again and again. We fear the light in that it may expose us for all our misdeeds, and through our misdeeds we believe ourselves to be unworthy of love.