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Addiction & Grief

Grief isn't something you live through.  It's something you live with.  Unfortunately, a lot of people learn to live with by trying to numb the pain through alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, risky behaviors, etc.

Doing this, however, can only buries the feelings and extends the length of time it might take to heal and adapt a healthy way to live with it.

Research and experience have shown that there is a strong connection between substance abuse/addiction and complicated grief or persistent complex grief disorder, which are disabling and debilitating responses to grief.

Grief is one of the core issues to be addressed in treating substance use disorders (SUD). Often times,  grief comes before the addiction, and other times, the substance abuse or addiction is intensified by a loss. The combination of trauma and grief can be powerful. Left unprocessed, it eats away at us and can make our lives miserable.









When grief is compounded by an addiction, whether it's a substance or a behavior, before someone can achieve recovery, or continued recovery, the feelings of grief, and its damage to their mental health, need to be examined, and a healthier way of dealing with the pain needs to be established. 

This can be difficult because the addiction is what (in their mind) helps them handle the pain.  Their addiction is what has provided them comfort at a time when they feel raw. They have unknowingly created a relationship with their addiction as it is the one they they can count on to make them feel better, if only for a short time. 

So in addition to grieving the loss of a loved one or whatever caused their grief, the person now has to grieve the loss of another relationship...the relationship they have with their addiction.