The Link Between Addiction and Mental Health

Thereare many reasons families don’t immediately take action when a loved one isexhibiting signs of addiction. A lack of education about what addiction is (andisn’t) is a contributing factor. And so are feelings of shame.

Inour society, there’s an undeniable stigma around addiction. We still cling tothe false belief that addiction is a character flaw or a lack of willpower.It’s not, and the science is clear on this. As Harvard Health writes:

“Todaywe recognize addiction as a chronic disease that changes both brain structureand function. Just as cardiovascular disease damages the heart and diabetesimpairs the pancreas, addiction hijacks the brain. Recovery from addictioninvolves willpower, certainly, but it is not enough to ‘just say no.’”

Inour experience, if we look deeply enough into a family tree, we are almostcertain to find at least one person with an addiction of some kind. A PewResearch Center study released in August 2017 showsjust how widespread addiction is. It found that 46 percent of Americans have aclose friend or family member who has been addicted to drugs. Keep in mind thatthis study focused on drugs and not alcohol. Add alcohol to the mix, and weimagine that the number would be close to 100 percent.

Howis it possible that every family is somehow connected to drug or alcoholaddiction? We believe the link is mental health. We’ve helped hundreds offamilies through the addiction-recovery process, and what we’ve learned is thatin almost every case of addiction, there is also an underlying mental healthconcern.

In some cases, these mental health conditions are acute: there may be a bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. More frequently, however, addiction is related to the much more common issues of anxiety and depression.

Let’suse the example of a high school student who is experiencing high levels ofanxiety and stress. She may even be depressed. Like many teenagers, she triesalcohol for the first time and feels immediate relief.

What’sshe’s feeling is less stress, but she doesn’t recognize it as that. She justknows she feels better after she drinks alcohol.

The question is, what was actually driving her high levels of anxiety and stress? If the answer is an underlying mental health condition, she’s at risk. The drinking may have started as a harmless, innocuous way of letting off some steam. But at some point, it can cross from a social activity to a dependency. It becomes her solution to treat her underlying mental health condition; one she didn’t even know she had.  

Noone knows exactly when the switch flips from social use to dependency, but onceit switches, the addiction becomes its own individual issue. The brain has beenaltered enough that the disease of addiction takes over. We are now facing twoseparate issues: a substance use disorder, as well as the underlying mentalhealth condition that drove the substance use.

Whenwe start working with a family, we must first prioritize the addiction that’spresent in a loved one. As a society, we understand this portion of the processclearly. We know that without long-term sobriety, there is no healing fromaddiction. That’s because addiction is an immediate danger, and we’re seeingthe evidence of this continue to mount through the opioid epidemic. How manygreat stories of recovery were never even started because of a pill that was,unbeknownst to the user, laced with a lethal amount of a chemical likefentanyl?

It’s not the removal of a substance that creates healing, however. In fact, it often makes things worse. Recovery Coach Thatcher Shivley describes that dilemma beautifully in his article, “The Difference Between Alcoholism and Heavy Drinking.”  As he writes, ”We have to make sure that people suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction are able to address their real problem.”

Whatis this real problem? It’s different for each individual, but we like toexplain it this way. It’s said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety;it’s connection -- social connection, family connection, the connection to purposein life, etc. These are the pillars of mental health.

Wehave to remember that no one sets out to become addicted to drugs or alcohol.Something has driven a person to this way of coping. It’s our job at FeinbergConsulting to help an individual who is addicted to drugs or alcohol understandwhat exactly happened, and why it happened.

Of course, we can’t start there. Typically, families are coming to us in the midst of an addiction crisis. We need to interrupt the addiction cycle. That usually starts with an intervention and a recommendation for the appropriate addiction treatment.

Once again, it’s not enough to simply take away the substance that an individual turned to for comfort from what likely seemed to be an insurmountable challenge. We have to work with the person to develop the tools, skills, habits, and healthy coping mechanisms they need to overcome their unique challenge. But first, we have to protect these individuals. We have to help them stop using drugs and alcohol and keep these substances out of their system.

Remember it’s never too early to get help for a loved one who is struggling. And when we think of addiction as a mental health condition rather than a character flaw, it makes it so much easier to make the right choices. We start operating from love rather than shame. When we do that, the chance of life-long recovery is so much higher.