Title : Creative exploration of the complexity of the pre-lapse experience in the addict to add retrospective insight
Abstract:
In a pre-lapse the addict may be triggered by an event, a feeling, or some sensory input, such as being around others who are using drugs or being offered drugs. Some addicts report a strong connection between an activity, such as attending a party, and drug use. This associative pattern becomes locked into the persons mindset. Impulsive actions lead to the person being willing to act on the impulse. Even though the person may have developed healthy coping strategies, these are not always utilized. Instead, the loud voice of the addictive brain screams out for the drug, desiring the coveted endorphin rush. As at attempt to resolve the demand, the re-introduction of the drug of choice (or substitute drug) satisfies the immediate craving and sets the person’s recovery back to day zero.
As an alternative therapeutic approach to the usual lecture on consequential thinking, inviting the person to write about the pre-lapse may serve to unlock repressed thoughts, hidden feelings, and unaddressed concerns. In doing so, the retrospective writing may awaken realizations of truer needs that the use of drugs to mask emotional pain. For example, a person suffering from trauma may write about the traumatic event and develop new meaning from the ways they suffered and draw new strength from the process of sharing by writing and, perhaps, reading what the wrote to others. It is the vulnerability of sharing where great new strength can be found. When a person shares deeply held locked up pain in a group what often follows in significant expressions of love and support from others in the group. I have witnessed women hugging a woman who shared her trauma leading to therapeutic break though as the pain, now shared, becomes the subject matter of healing. The writing does not remove the trauma per se, but the person may develop renewed optimism that the past suffering was, in fact, in the past, and that she is a newly fortified, resilient, and very worthy person moving forward in her life.
In a therapeutic setting, a man used letters between himself and his younger brother who drowned to resolve the decades long pattern of horrible nightmares, self-blame, self-loathing, and ensuing drug-use to mask the intolerable pain. Once the writing became a flowing torrent of feelings, the negative consequence of memory evaporated and the man was internally healed of his pain.
The anecdotal results of the workshop addressing the thoughts, feelings, and concerns before, during, and after the pre-lapse/relapse/post-lapse experience show new awareness of the root issues to pre-lapse and, from this awareness, new coping strategies are developed.
