Self-Love - the only solution to opioid addiction. Anyone have a prescription?

 Time and time again I find myself circling around the question of how to fill the gaping hole that I find in my life when I stop using opioids. Doctors recommend opioid maintenance therapy, of course. I've had some success with kratom. But ultimately, those are just placeholders.

The only substitute for the warmth of opioids is love. Timothy Leary's 8-circuit model provides an interesting explanation for this: opioids are believed to activate the first circuit of consciousness, that which is primarily engaged during the earliest moments of infancy wherein we are completely nurtured and nourished (ideally) by our mothers. Our every need is met, we're kept warm, fed, watered, and sheltered with minimal effort.

That basically describes the sensation of being on an opiate. And thus it makes sense that replacing an opiate addiction would involve recreating that sensation.

Love, though, can be a tricky beast when it comes to overcoming an addiction. It's far, far too easy to fall into codependency. Granted, that's preferable in many ways than addiction. But it's still a substitute, which leads us to the real solution: self-love.

The only permanent solution for an addiction is to learn to generate a self-directed, compassionate sense of nurturing and supporting one's self. But if you're like me (and I suspect a fair few of you are), you haven't got the slightest effing clue how to do that. This "self-love" part of our childhood education was conveniently ripped out of the textbook, and when we first stumbled into an opioid high, it gave us everything that we were missing.

In that sense, we aren't really replacing the opiates with self-love. Instead, the opiates are filling the void where self-love should have been in the first place. You may be familiar with the rat study that showed rats in community (aka rats who are shown love and support) are less likely to drink morphine-laced water compared to rats raised in isolation. The same is true of people. I can even notice this on a micro-level: when I'm surrounded by friends, my desire to use dope drastically decreases. Being around children or being with a loving partner is just about the only thing that can keep me from even thinking about opiates for several hours.

Why? Because in those moments there is an underlying current of unconditional love. It circumnavigates the addiction and fills the very same void that the opiates fill. But when it comes from an external source, just like opium, it's only temporary. It must become our chief duty to fill that void ourselves.

I wish I had a step-by-step list to offer you guys to help you do exactly that, but I don't. Rather, I was hoping that some of you might have some wisdom you could share with someone who's lost and alone, albeit for the company of the Lady H who I have long since grown bitterly sick of.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Releasing Global Judgment

Image
The next step for many of us seems to be detaching from the judgments that we have placed upon the world, upon society, and upon others. This is the only logical step because the truth of the matter is that when we judge another we're really just judging another facet of ourselves. That's for a different discussion though. Who of us haven't found ourselves gawking in disgust, horror, or anger at the news? Who hasn't at least had a passing thought about how they hate war, about how things are so terrible, or about how evil the people perpetrating these atrocities are? If we didn't at least some anger toward the things happening world, well, we'd be pretty darn apathetic. But now it's time to let these judgments pass, for that's all they are. Judgment only serves to further separate us from others - even a so-called 'justified' judgment, such as claiming that we're better than someone because we'd never do the same things as ...
Read more

Releasing the Mind & Body

Image
It usually hurts to release something. Getting rid of something - a habit, an emotional trait, a belief - almost always hurts because it feels like you're trading  something for nothing. No matter how healthy or unhealthy the behavior or habit is, be it an addiction or a tendency to smile when you see birds, releasing anything can be tough because, at least for a moment, you feel like you have less than you did before. One trades the sensation of fullness for the sensation of being empty. For this reason, many have a hard time 'letting go' of things like unhealthy relationships, addictions, or habitual behavior. After a time, they begin to identify with it and tend to protect or deny it. The important thing to recognize here is that releasing something creates room for an infinite multitude of possibilities. Sure, when you release something, you're left feeling like an empty void. In that void, though, lies the unlimited and unmanifested potential of your min...
Read more

A Devolving Culture

BREAKING NEWS: Humanity rapidly devolves into a primitive herd mentality, completely suspending free speech and critical thinking for fear of being exiled from the global community Perhaps the most disappointing and concerning experience I had this week during my trip to Fairy Creek actually had very little to do with the protest itself. Rather, it was a confrontation that I had with two local seniors who combined forces in n effort to both belittle me and validate one another's fragile and baseless worldview. Most likely you've all seen how quickly out of hand arguments can get on controversial Facebook posts. Trolls, as they're called, tend to spew unfounded claims, accusations, and senseless drivel. Uninterested in having a productive conversation or learning anything new, their sole purpose is to assert a single, rigid viewpoint and shove it in as many people's faces as they can, even when their claims are disproven, their 'facts' are corrected, and their a...
Read more