I have a friend whose health has been wrecked by multiple addictions and ignorance. I was lucky enough to have my own addictions removed before my physical health suffered much—my mental health was undermined enough to get me into treatment. That’s a long story, and I’ve told it elsewhere, but since the last conversation with my friend, I’ve been re-thinking the whole process and came up with a new slant which I’m hoping might be helpful.
I got clean and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I think one of the key aspects of the program is making amends to people who have been harmed by our actions—whether they were drug-related or not— “except when to do so would injure them or others.” When I was 11—when sugar was my only drug—I shoplifted the occasional candy bar from the gas station where I picked up the newspapers for my route. At the age of 40 I sent the station owner a check as part of making amends.
That might seem too trivial to bother with, but since I remembered it as something I had felt ashamed of, both then and later, I thought it worth doing. By the time I finished the process of making amends I felt cleansed, absolved, guilt-free. I no longer had to get high to feel good about myself, although my transition to the straight and happy life was far from over.
Few of us reach adulthood without having harmed someone along the way, and despite our tendency to rationalize all our unsavory acts, I think there is a memory of transgression at some level of brain machinery that is unreachable by rationalization. Research with dogs, monkeys—and perhaps other animals I’ve missed—indicate that even they have a sense of fair play. No doubt the roots of our own run deep, right down to the DNA.
We certainly note when someone treats us unfairly, but it’s likely that we also note our own acts in violation of that sense as well—whether we want to or not—and that they undermine our self-esteem at some level. We are not as nice as we’d like to think.
When rationalization fails to immunize us against our bad opinion of ourselves, drugs and alcohol may be more successful. Dopamine levels rise, pleasure centers are stimulated, and all is right with the world, no matter what we may have done. The brain compensates for increased neurotransmitters by decreasing sensitivity in one way or another, and addiction is under way.
If we get to the point that the addiction is too painful to continue, stopping then involves two problems: the lack of self-esteem which the drugs temporarily eliminated, and the changes the drugs made in our brains.
While our lack of free will means we could not have done other than cause the harm we did, and therefore we lack ultimate responsibility, the fact remains that harm was done, and our organism was the agent of that harm. Eleven-year-old Norm could not have done other than steal those candy bars, but adult Norm is capable of paying for them, plus interest, and can’t help but feel better for having done so.
My earlier take on guilt was that it was a cultural mechanism that had evolved for promoting social conformity, but I had not considered that social necessity might have selected for fair-playing/guilt-prone organisms. I had not considered that my understanding of natural causation in itself might not be enough to counter those built-in genetic tendencies, that they might demand satisfaction on other than a strictly intellectual level.
Perhaps it will take more than diet and exercise to put my friend on the road to better health. Perhaps he needs to understand the nature and origin of his addictions, and the necessity of undoing, in so far as possible, the harm his organism has done on its naturally programmed journey. From there he can begin rebuilding non-drug activated pleasure networks. (Smiling helps.)
It occurs to me that there may be a parallel between making amends and the blood sacrifices of our primitive ancestors. Although there are no supernatural gods to appease, perhaps our current selves must of necessity make some sacrifice to undo the harm caused by prior selves; to appease the mechanisms of DNA—the “gods” within.
Refurbished Pleasure Centers
