OR CAUGHT IN A STAGE OF EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Which is it? How about both.

It’s been said that people with substance abuse and dependency disorders are stuck in the stage of development they were in when they started using, depending, or both.

And it makes sense, really because when that happens, when a person’s first true love, first reliable source of coping and satisfaction is a drug, then psychological development, something that depends so much upon socialization, meaning, depends upon people and healthy relationships, is going to suffer.

So a therapist gets a good psycho-social addictions history and at some point in the treatment will be working with the patient on what didn’t happen, as opposed to what did, during those vulnerable years.

There’s the idea that people who have addictions remember exactly the first time they really got drunk or stoned. That narrows down the time line for a professional. If the first high came at 13, then those psycho-social tasks one needed to work on at thirteen and onward might have been neglected.

In early adolescence (and I chose 13 arbitrarily) but even at twelve, children begin to carve out their own identities, separate from their parents. Their parents aren’t their heroes anymore, although they can still be considered pretty cool. But kids are a little bored by their parents by age twelve, just because they know what to expect of them.

Friends, on the other hand, are an entirely different universe, and what they have to offer is an awesome entry drug to happiness. Different, to a twelve year old, is happy.

So if my friend has a new Ipod and I have an old Ipod, my parents are the problem, not as good as my friend’s parents, and I’m not as good as my friends. The temptation to be with those friends (who may be wonderful, don’t get me wrong), to learn from them and to spend more time with them than with my parents is normal and good.

Parents who recognize this still have to set limits for children, sometimes limit their socialization, for better or worse, and this can lead to deceptive behavior on the part of the child that functions to help him or her separate. Healthy families cope with their kids’ deceptions, with the lies. They absorb them, challenge them, address them, and eventually the child stops lying, understands that a liar is not the person he or she wants to be.

When a child is already someone with an addicted brain, however, the necessity to lie to get to one’s drink and drugs can win. The cat and mouse game goes on interminably. What should have been normal separation and individuation developmental drama becomes a desperate effort to stay stoned. The liar can’t stop; the lies keep coming.

I think this is the reason that people who suffer from substance abuse and dependenc disorders are by necessity stuck in the age of the onset of the love affair with the drug. All of the normal behavioral processes, including some stretching of the truth, that should lead to healthy emotional separation from parents are detoured, directed elsewhere.

Where is anyone’s guess.

therapydoc

For a little more reading on deception (only one of the symptoms of regression in addiction) read About those 8 Ways to Spot a Dishonest Date