On Being Yourself vs. Being Addicted

Posted on June 12, 2005 in Psycho-bunk Psychotropics

Twelve step groups can be a hazard to those suffering from mental illness because of the too common confusion about the differences between addictive substances and medications. I have known more than one sufferer of bipolar disorder or other mental illness to complain to me about being hounded inside 12-Step groups because they took their meds as their psychiatrist told them to.

The logic works like this: If you take, say, lithium to ease your mania and stop taking it, you will have a violent reaction. The mania will return with a vengeance. This has to be a sign of “withdrawal” that you would not have experienced if you hadn’t started taking the medicine in the first place. This logic reminds me of the Fundamentalist minister in Victorville or near there who told the parents of a diabetic that they could rid him of his illness by prayer alone. He did not need the insulin. The whole household prayed as the boy stopped taking his medication and, inside of 24 hours, the boy died. Therefore he was addicted to the insulin, right?

There’s another theory. Medicine comes in the form of pills which must be ingested or liquids which must be injected or powders that must be inhaled, etc. Addictive substances enter the body through similar avenues. The gratification for addictive substances is instant. Therefore, the former users conclude, the gratification for all psychoactive medications must be instant, their effect nothing more than a high off the drugs.

Here is where I step in to explain the difference. First, let me acknowledge that there is a set of mind which expects instant gratification and highs from pharmaceuticals. It is not confined to the use of recreational drugs: aspirin has a fast effect on our headaches. We expect that it will work right away. But it does not make us “high”. (Users of psychotropics sometimes stop taking them when the medication has “fixed” the problem.)

Second, I note that addiction is the state of need for a foreign substance. You shoot up with heroin for a few times. The body grows used to it. Heroin becomes part of the body’s running of itself. The organs, the cells, the brain become dependent on the refined grease of the opium poppy. When you get off it, the body jumps. Where is it? Where is it? Every organ, every cell panics. The whole body shakes and shudders. When the body gets over its mourning for the bad lover, however, it functions fine for the most part (except for any damage the drug caused). The withdrawal period for drugs such as meth takes longer than that for heroin. Some cycles — such as that for alcohol — can actually have fatal consequences. This is the nature of addiction. The substance makes it so that the body wants and wants it.

Medications, on the other hand, seek to address deficiencies in the body not caused by themselves. Insulin introduces us to the concept: your body produces this hormone naturally. In diabetes, the pancreas stops producing it or the body becomes immune to its effects. This means that the sugar in your blood can’t be processed. You grow listless, lose energy. Injecting insulin into a severe diabetic gives that substance back to body which authentically needs it.

Most people accept insulin use. They do not question the use of medications for asthma, heart conditions, renal disease, etc. Our worship of the human soul, on the other hand, gets us into trouble when it comes to psychopharmaceuticals. Emotions Anonymous, for example, starts out its version of the 12 steps with:

We admitted that we were powerless over our emotions and that our lives had become unmanageable.

The believer who yearns to be free clutches that and declares jihad on any who declare the doctrine of the whole body as physical. If you are mentally ill, the reasoning goes, you are weak. You have a want of character. If you take medications to manage your emotions, you are addicted to them.

Psychotropics scare us because they work inside the brain. Certain natural chemicals called neurotransmitters exist either in excess or in deficiency. Psychiatrists prescribe medicines so that these chemicals will become balanced, so that we will not sulk in bed or rage majestically in the nude at the sun or see visions of angels performing lube and oil jobs on our cars. We return to a range where we can function and communicate with other people. To stop taking our medications means to return to imbalance. Our depression, our mania, our hallucinations return just as stopping his use of insulin led to the death of the boy that I mentioned earlier.

e.e. cummings said “To be yourself in a world that is striving day and day to make you someone else is to fight the hardest fight any person can fight and never stop fighting.” I think that each of us who takes medication to return our brains to a balanced state knows the truth of that. There are those who want us to stay sick to satisfy their own world view and there are we who have learned the truth about our bodies, who strive to exist in a state where we can make wise and conscious decisions.