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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2500 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 27, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.

I find this claim appealing, but it's so poorly-defined as to be impossible to test. "Emotional component" is a placeholder - it might just as well be phlogiston or black bile.

There are three categories of emotions (per Triessentialism): Identities, Roles, and Imperatives.

  • Identities can be stated in first, second, or third person, singular or plural, and carry positive (towards) or negative (away from) polarity. “I am an American” is an example identity of mine, a positive emotional component atop the bare fact. “I am white” is not an identity I have, positive or negative, despite its factuality, but “I am a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims” is.
  • Roles in perceived relationships can also be singular or plural, positive or negative. Unlike identities, they come in pairs which are either peers or unequals: student/teacher, boss/employee, husband/wife, lover/lover, brother in arms, brother/sister, etc. Roles have duties, explicit or implicit, which if neglected or denied will crater the relationship.
  • Imperatives are best stated as wants and needs. Wants are for something, needs are to avoid something unwanted. I want dessert because I want the positive experience of eating it. I need food to keep my blood sugar up to avoid a crash, my metabolism churning to avoid a slowdown which would cause me to gain even more weight, and my organs nourished to avoid their dysfunction or death.

Each of these can drive compulsions in search of fulfilling or self-validating those emotions. The specific ones are so subjective to each individual's experiences and history that even guessing would be foolhardy.

Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.

I'm still struggling to understand what claim you're making about the nature of alcoholism. You stress that wants and needs are (imperative) emotional components. So is it just that people stop being alcoholics when they stop wanting/needing to drink alcohol? But that's almost tautological.

Alcoholics generally don’t drink because they “want to drink,” they drink to fulfill one of the behavior functions (attention, escape, access, and sensation) because they can’t fulfill a different emotion elsewhere in their life.

Somewhere in their past, someone else made a bad choice which not only impacted their lives negatively, it also injured an instinct: the choice made them believe their world wasn’t how it should be and they’re just going to have to live with being personally screwed by a bad deal. It could be a bad identity: they’re born with the wrong skin tone or genitals. It could be a bad relationship: their teacher cares more about homework than understanding. It could be a bad imperative: they didn’t get something they needed because someone neglected them. Often it’s because one of their caretakers was neglectful or even abusive.

What’s key to understanding alcoholism is the compulsive nature of the disorder: they feel driven to drink, and they haven’t had the tools, the technique, the time, or the teachers to help them find and disarm the emotion which compels them.

Alcoholics Anonymous gives all of these things, in an atmosphere of nonjudgmental camaraderie, patience, and mentorship where people who realize they need help can find it. The program was so successful (compared to other things) that it became the model for recovery from other addictions, such as narcotics, sex addiction, and life drama addiction (CoDependents Anonymous).

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