by Chris Grosso
Once I saw how I had disconnected myself in this way, my next question to Gabor was, How can we begin to reintegrate the disconnected parts of ourselves and start healing them? I’ve talked a bit in this book about the twelve-step fellowship work I’ve done and its value, but what became clear to me with my relapse was that this work doesn’t address the underlying traumatic event. Twelve-steppers help you get clean and sober, ask for forgiveness, and move forward with your life, but they don’t clearly help you address the various traumas of the past.
Gabor agreed with me. “It may come up, it may not come up, but there’s nothing structurally present in the twelve-step programs that allows people to deal with their trauma. It’s all behavior related and substance related. That reconnection or reintegration is what is missing. Unfortunately, rehabilitation centers, medical education, and addiction counseling programs, for the most part, leave out the trauma element. And even when they focus on the trauma, it’s only overt or extreme, not the actual experience of a child who is ‘just’ in emotional pain.” Though, in all fairness, it does seem that this is beginning to shift, thanks in part to the work that Gabor and others like Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk are doing.
So how can we integrate trauma and reconnect?
“Before you can heal a disconnection, you have to realize that there is a disconnection. Before you can integrate childhood pain, you must recognize that childhood pain. It shows up every day in people’s lives; they just don’t see that it’s showing up.”
If we become more aware of this dissociated material daily and the ways it might be manifesting in our relationships, what did Gabor recommend next? I’d learned that trauma can be held in our bodies on a cellular level and even influence our genes, so how would we address the mind-body connection?
Once again I was creating a schism where Gabor saw none. He explained, “There’s no distinction between working with the mind and working with the body. Mind and body can’t be separated. Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score, or my book on physical illness When the Body Says No, or Babette Rothschild’s book The Body Remembers all show trauma is in the body, so at some point the attention must be brought to the body. There are many ways of working in both mind and body, but it should be in a unified manner. Trauma has psychological aspects and physiological aspects, and you can’t separate the two.”
If you’re reading this, and it’s new for you, because perhaps you’re rooted in the twelve-step fellowships—which, as Gabor says, for the most part don’t cover the trauma aspect—what can you do to take that unitive step forward, bringing mind and body together to uncover and release trauma?
Gabor’s advice is not to rush into things, but to build a deep foundation of understanding—not just intellectually but the nitty-gritty in relation to our own lives. He suggested more resources: his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice, and Bessel van der Kolk’s books and videos.
Once we understand the foundation of our addiction, then we can move forward and decide what works for us. “There are many modalities out there, but it’s got to begin with the recognition that ‘I’m traumatized, and that traumatization results in a disconnection from myself and all kinds of emotional pain that I don’t know what to do with. That trauma is not my fault, it’s not my parents’ fault.’ Even if parents did their best, their best was conditioned by what they received in childhood. It’s not about blaming anybody or saying it’s anybody’s fault, but if we want to heal, we have to recognize what happened and how that affects us now so we can integrate and heal.”
Gabor suggested techniques to facilitate that healing. Maybe it’s therapy, maybe not. Maybe it’s a trusted friend or a structured meditation practice. Maybe it’s bodywork, somatic experiencing, yoga, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), or maybe it’s a psychedelic modality—
What the fuck? I did psychedelics like they were going out of style in my younger addicted years, but never in any sort of healing or spiritual context. Psychedelics then were about having fun, or maybe they were an escape and I just didn’t know it at the time. But psychedelics to work through addiction? Fascinating. I wanted Gabor to tell me more, and he did, but first he gave me a serious warning.
“Psychedelics are not for everybody. They’re probably not even for most people, because most people won’t be able to access the right context and guidance to do them. The last thing that I want to advocate is that people start taking psychedelics as a form of self-treatment. That’s not the way to go.”
Then he got to the interesting part. “I understand the argument that ‘I was substance addicted and now I don’t want to do another substance to change my consciousness.’ Okay, then don’t. But here’s the reality—it all involves context, guidance, and intention.”
That phrase bears repeating: context, guidance, and intention.
He explained that when I was younger and tripping my brains out on acid and mushrooms while watching Blue Velvet or listening to the Dillinger Escape Plan, I had no guidance and no context. “It’s very different when you do something in a traditional context where there’s a real culture behind it. Where there’s compassionate and experienced guidance to help you through the difficulties and surprises that may show up. Where there’s clear intention, then it’s not an escape, but a path to realization. Then psychedelics become a way of mind-manifesting—psyche to mind. Our minds are very deep. They are multilayered. There’s a lot of unconscious material. Psychedelics just help you get to it. That’s all.
“By the way, psychedelics are not the only way to get there. They just happen to provide, with the right context, guidance, and intention, a very quick way to get there. They’re not a requirement for recovery, and ultimately I never talk anybody into that kind of thing. Either you’re called to it or you’re not called to it. In terms of addiction, I’ve seen extremely good results, results like you don’t see anywhere else. For example, psilocybin mushrooms in the treatment of nicotine addiction. MDMA in the treatment of PTSD. Ibogaine and the treatment of opiate addiction. Ayahuasca and the treatment of all kinds of addiction. These results are indisputable and certainly not simple panaceas, because the outcomes are considerably better than what you usually get with the normally available treatment.”
I got where he was coming from. I’m friends with a group of people who’ve been doing ayahuasca explorations—which is to say, ingesting the medicine under the guidance of a shaman in a sacred context—for several years now. One of these friends specifically comes to mind. Before participating in these ceremonies, he was depressed to the point that I feared he might kill himself. This group of friends engage in the ceremony four times a year, and over the course of his first year, I saw a profound change in this particular friend. It was incredible. I kind of wanted what he had, and I’ve been invited to participate, but I’m afraid of relapse, reactivating the pleasure center in my brain and using a substance to treat substances. Alcohol was always my drug of choice, though I loved pretty much everything, and some of my relapses began with pills or marijuana. So if I ingested ayahuasca, would it revive my addiction? Would it reactivate the pleasure center in my brain?
Gabor reminded me that the brain’s pleasure, reward, incentive, and motivation centers and the circuits in the brain that regulate impulses are physiological entities that don’t function properly in people who are addictive. These centers are dysfunctional because the brain develops via interaction in a specific childhood environment, and when that childhood environment does not provide the responsiveness that the child needs, these circuits will not develop properly. “Therefore, when addiction comes along and it motivates you and it gives you pleasure, those centers are feeling, ‘Oh boy, now I’ve got what I want.’ ”
He understood my fear and proceeded to shed some very interesting light on ayahuasca in relation to the brain’s pleasure center. “The last thing you’d say about an ayahuasca experience is t
hat it’s pleasurable. First, the stuff tastes awful. Second, it makes you puke. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a purging of whatever you need to purge. But ‘pleasure’ is not a word you’d ever ascribe to an ayahuasca experience.”
All this got even more interesting. Gabor pointed out that in countries where the ayahuasca plant is legal and has been studied in controlled groups and used by hundreds or thousands of people, the risk of addiction, depression, and mental illness decreases. “I’ve done ayahuasca, and I work with it. I don’t crave the experience. I don’t look forward to it at all. I shudder at it because of the taste and sometimes the nausea, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about learning to do something important for myself. Don’t do it because you feel like doing it—that’s not a good reason. Don’t do it if you’re afraid, because then you’re not ready. Do it or don’t do it, but don’t not do it for the wrong reasons, like because you think it’s going to somehow activate your pleasure center.”
When it comes to the pleasure center of the brain, what’s the difference between someone like me who has struggled with addiction and someone who hasn’t? When some of my friends are eating, for example, they stop when they’re full, even if there’s still food on their plate. It’s hard for me to understand that ability to stop, especially when there’s a sugary dessert involved. Or when I go out to dinner and someone leaves the table with wine or beer still in their glass—I just don’t get that. For addicts, it’s consume, consume, consume—drugs, alcohol, food, whatever—until there’s nothing left. What’s happening there with our brains?
According to Gabor, our earlier circumstances and perhaps some degree of genetic sensitivity prevented our pleasure centers from developing adequately. “They are unsatisfied. The impulse regulation of your brain that says, ‘I’d like a bit more chocolate cake, but I’ve already had two pieces, and that’s enough for me’—that part of your brain didn’t develop properly, and giving yourself pleasure that way brings tremendous activation of the incentive circuitry. ‘I want it. I have to have it right now.’ It’s a setup. You can overcome that. You can heal that, but it takes time.”
He explained that there’s a difference between abstinence and sobriety. Abstinence is self-restraint or self-denial with regard to using something. Sobriety is not having the impulse (or not having more than a mild impulse, one that can easily be dealt with) to use something. Although Gabor has never been addicted to drugs or alcohol, I was intrigued to learn that he had dealt with other addictive patterns, even one that was close to my heart—purchasing music.
“It’s not that I was addicted to music—that’s not an addiction, that’s just a love of music. The purchasing is what I was addicted to. It was having to get one thing and immediately having to go back to the store to get a bunch more, and as soon as I got home, I was already thinking about the CDs I didn’t buy, and then I’d go back the next day and get them. So there was a preoccupation with the acquisition—a preoccupation that took me away from being emotionally present with my children or my spouse, that led me to lie about it and spend much more money than was reasonable. That’s the addiction. For me it had to do with not feeling alive enough. It was a kind of deadness that had to do with my childhood. The way I survived my childhood trauma was to suppress my feelings. When you separate from your feelings, life feels empty, purposeless, and kind of boring. I’d found something to excite me and to live for outside of me—the motivation centers of my brain were highly activated by the thought of purchasing music. For some people, they’ll be activated by the thought of compulsive sex, shopping, drugs, or food.”
Food—even now that I’m sober, food still comes up for me. I do my best to eat well, but let’s say there’s a day I allow myself to have a little treat, and I then say to myself, “Well, you already had that, so why not have more?” Totally addictive, compulsive thinking similar to that I manifested when I was using drugs. The only difference is that I can stop those eating behaviors the next morning and start over, whereas if I have a sip of alcohol, I’ll be off to the races and drinking again.
Gabor pointed out that although we make distinctions between types of addictions—alcoholic, heroin addict, shopaholic, gambler—the basis of addiction is all the same. The same brain circuits are involved in all. Physiologically, it’s that same discomfort in the body. Psychologically, it’s the same emotional pain and emptiness. Spiritually, it’s the same disconnection. Historically, it’s some variation of trauma. “In other words, there’s a universal addiction process, which is characteristic of every addicted human being on the planet. So to think that there’s one kind of addiction here may be true in terms of the outward behavior, but it’s not true in regard to the underlying dynamics.”
What about a drug addict who has been abstinent for ten, fifteen, or twenty years and then goes back to using? I’m talking now not just about those who take drugs, but about anyone who has struggled with some form of self-defeating behavior, been free from it for several years, and then returned to it. And let’s say that these are people with ways of coping—a meditation or yoga practice, a psychotherapist, or a spiritual teacher—but they return to behaviors fully aware of the harm they can cause. What’s happening there?
Gabor reminded me that one of the circuits in the brain that doesn’t develop well under adversity is the stress regulation circuitry. Stress happens, but by the time we reach adulthood, our brains need to be able to process it. An infant’s brain cannot deal with stress, but the adult brain should have learned to handle it through healthy development and adaptation. That regulation does not develop fully for an addict, so when we’re stressed, we’re prone to relapse. He said, “The default setting is to go back to the addictive escape from the stress.”
That made sense. We pick up a drink, binge on ice cream, or return to whatever behavior harmed us; we’re back in detox or rehab, or we’re back to an old eating disorder. Then what? Many of us have recovered and relapsed again and again. And each time there’s more shame, stress, self-loathing, and other negative feelings. How is a person supposed to deal with this?
Gabor reminded me of something that many other spiritual teachers I spoke with emphasized: compassion. He employed a phrase that was new to me: compassionate curiosity. He used my relapse as an example. “I could say to you, ‘Why did you relapse?!’ or I could say to you, ‘Hey, Chris, let’s inquire. Why do you think you had a relapse?’ Do you notice a difference between the two questions?” As he mentioned this, it made me think of Tara Brach’s RAIN process. I found it pretty cool to see how the insights and teachings from people with different backgrounds and viewpoints were already complementing one another.
In other words, rather than condemning me with the first question, he was asking me to explore what had happened in a gentler and more open way. The first way is not a question, it’s an accusation. The second way is just an exploration. When you relapse, you need to approach yourself not with “Why did I do this?!” which is a statement that you’re an idiot, you’re faulty, you’re morally weak, you’re unworthy. Instead, you can approach it like, “Hmm. Here I am, committed to recovery, committed to sobriety. I’ve suffered a lot because of my addictive behavior, and despite my commitment and all that I’ve learned in the past, I relapsed. Huh. I wonder what happened. What is it that this relapse came along to teach me? There’s still something about myself that I don’t know yet, that clearly, some part of me needed to show me. Huh. Well, let’s look at that.” Isn’t that an interesting question? And once you ask it in that way, then the answers will start coming, because the reality is that each relapse can be interpreted as a learning experience. Not that one chooses it deliberately—“I’m going to relapse so I can learn.” Don’t worry about that. Life will bring it along when you need it. But once such an incident does come along, it’s a learning experience. Purely and simply. A learning experience that will help you recover more completely.
“The word ‘recover’ is one I never get tired of saying.
It means to find something you’ve lost. And what is it that people recover once they’re recovered? Themselves. That’s the disconnection, and it’s healing. A relapse helps you find yourself.”
We weren’t quite finished yet. I wanted to know about family members who are dealing with addiction. What can they do for a loved one who’s caught in the grips of active addiction? Because when people are that deep in addiction, they’ve lost themselves—they’re gone in a way. I know I was. I know there was nothing my family could have done no matter how much they wanted to.
Gabor didn’t agree with me. “You don’t know that. What you do know is what they tried didn’t work, but you don’t know that there’s nothing they could have done. In one sense, you are 100 percent right: There’s nothing they can directly do to change your mind. There’s nothing they can directly do to change your mental status. There’s no way that they can talk to you, advise you, control you, beg you, accuse you. That does not mean there’s nothing they could have done. Imagine if your family had come and said, ‘Chris, here’s how it is. We recognize that your addiction is not your primary problem. Your primary problem is that you’re in a lot of pain. And that pain is not yours alone. That pain has been carried in our family for generations. And we’re as much a part of that pain as you are. You’re just the one who’s soothing it with that behavior. In fact, you’re the one whose behavior shows us how much pain there is in our family. Thank you for showing that to us. So we’re going to start working on you, because we realize that we’re as much a part of it as you are. We’re going to take on the task of healing ourselves. We invite you to be there if you feel like it. And if you’re not ready, sweetheart, then just do what you need to do right now.’ ”