I recently went to a conference about addictions care which deeply changed my thinking. I challenged my assumptions, some of which I didn’t even realize I held. One o the biggest of these was that although I understood the role of pain in addictions, I still understood addictions to drugs as largely a choice. I realized my discomfort in this area was problematic as I tried to clarify a scientific from a societal view and a spiritual one, but this conference unified those for me. One of the speakers spoke about her own experience to recognizing how her background led her to have some stigma in her mind and her realization that it is ok to admit we were wrong in our thinking and realize that we can change our minds and grow in a new direction with our thinking. Even if our assumptions are not intentional and we do our best, they still pour into how we treat others. This contradicts what Guru Nanak Dev Jis taught us about loving all because we belong to God, about our practical teachings of langar. Creating a black and white “good and bad” world does not allow us to accept all in our hearts. Guru Ji helped those who were outcasts and ostracized from society because those were the people who needed the most loving and healing. I cannot treat a person equally if I am holding some deep assumption about them. Thus, we need to first realize and recognize these beliefs that we do hold, on whatever topics and start to address them. It is a process of learning and I have a lot to learn, but it is a great start to this journey.
Dr. Gabor Maté is a family doctor who used to work on the Vancouver Downtown Eastside, an area where a massive number of people live with addictions on the streets. He also understands trauma from the perspective that he was born as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Budapest. He spoke at this conference and I’ll share some of what I learned from him. He defined an addiction as “any behaviour in which a person finds temporary pleasure, relief, and craving, but suffers long-term consequences and there is an inability or refusal to give it up.” Thus, an addiction is not just physical to a drug or alcohol but also exists for food, internet, video games, shopping or work. From his work and research, he describes that addictions are not simply a choice, nor simply explained as a genetic disease or mainly a disease of the brain (inheritance can cause a predisposition), but rather it is the attempt to solve a problem. Examples of these problems are “the problem of emotional pain, of overwhelming stress, of lost connection, of loss of control, of a deep discomfort with the self” (1). These are rooted in trauma. Hence one of the most important questions to ask is what this addiction does for them, what positive things are they getting from it that keeps it going. We can ask ourselves the same things of our own addictions. He writes “And universally, the answers are: ‘It helped me escape emotional pain… helped me deal with stress… gave me peace of mind… a sense of connection with others… a sense of control’”(1). Thus the addiction addressed the problem they were trying to resolve. The piece about trauma is important because we are used to recognizing trauma as abuse, but many other things are traumatic including bullying, spanking as a child, or parents with a mental health disorder. He states,
“Finally, a word about childhood trauma and its relation to addiction and the use of opioids. When people see this word, they often— perhaps naturally—assume that we are speaking of terrible events, such as abuse, sexual exploitation, the death of parents, violence in the home, and so on. And surely, as the research abundantly shows, the more such experiences a child has to endure, the exponentially greater his or her risk of addiction. But trauma is not restricted to horrific experiences. It refers to any set of events that, over time, impose more pain on the child than his or her sensitive organism can process and discharge. Therefore, trauma can occur not only when bad things happen, but also when the parents are too stressed, too distracted, too depressed, to beset by economic worry, too isolated, etc. to respond to a sensitive child’s emotional need to be seen, emotionally held, heard, validated, made to feel secure. Such is the reality behind many a story of ‘happy childhood.’ In fact, the denial of one’s pain, the splitting off of distress from conscious memory, is one of the outcomes of trauma. As the astute trauma pioneer Peter Levine has written, ‘Trauma has become so commonplace, that most people don’t even recognize its presence” (1).
This point is vital because for my generation for example, anyone whose parents immigrated can understand that of course our parents were stressed trying to learn how to operate within an entirely different culture and raise their children, they were worried for us, and they did have concerns about finances. As a society we have also suffered much trauma in a post-911 world. Dr. Maté talks about how the body has an implicit memory influenced by its past, things we cannot recall but our body remembers for example we are influenced by the time we spend in our mother’s womb. Moreso, he explored that trauma is a reaction to an event, rather than the event itself, it is the disconnection from ourselves that occurs. So he explains that although saying no helps a proportion of children stay away from drugs, another group will not listen because they are sensitized from their trauma and the approach needs to be different.
The most moving part of Dr. Maté’s talk was actually an understanding that a person who is addicted is therefore a person who is in pain and is seeking a normal life- pleasure, love, comfort, joy, and to ask them to simply say no is to ask them not to have all of these things in their life. How would we ask someone to remove their love and comfort, especially without any coping strategies to deal with the overwhelming pain of what they wish to avoid. Instead, the stigma and jail time isolates and shames people wish pushes them further into their addictions. Furthermore after the horrifying number of deaths in this province from Fentanyl and the tears of the families that pour over their loved ones, one of the doctors explained how stigma also “hampers the public’s will to help.” How would we be acting differently if this was some sort of communicable disease spreading amongst the population instead of an overdose? This is a very sad reality and one of the reasons I wrote this post to share what I learned with others so we can all advocate for those lives, the very lives that are in our own homes.
In “Alcohol in Punjabi Culture vs. Sikhism” we explored how our population is vulnerable due to addictions from traumas such as discrimination, language barrier, differences in values, as well as our intergenerational traumas from major events like the partition or 1984. We discussed how religious involvement is a protective factor to prevent addiction and help an individual out of it. In Sikhi we learn how to address our root of suffering, our separation from Waheguru, as well as coping strategies. These strategies are very much connected to what we discussed above about addressing trauma, as well as about the importance of destigmatizing, compassion and connection. Guru Ji relates “I cannot live for a moment, for even an instant, without my Beloved, like the opium addict who cannot live without opium.” This relates a deep understanding of addictions and how difficult they are to come out of. It also relates that we can have such a deep love for God. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is our ultimate way to bring ourselves out of shame because we are all worthy of being free of pain and the disconnection from self that occurs in trauma. We are all worthy of joy, connection, love, and pleasure in our lives. If there's something I could pass on I would say do not deny your trauma, identify it and work on it. Gurbani heals from deep inside, the habits and things from many lifetimes that we carry with us, that we think are impossible to get rid of. When we address the underlying problems and what feeling is achieved from the addiction, we can get that feeling from elsewhere and the best place to get it from is Naam. Our youth are vulnerable and it is important to employ the best preventative strategies for teaching them coping skills and giving them connection in their lives as well.
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