In early stages of treatment it’s likely that you’ll hear and/or be warned of cross-addiction, maybe even getting the seasoned “Whack-A-Mole” allegory. Is this an inevitability? Can you/we escape the cross-addiction quagmire? What do/should you watch for, and what support can you reach for if you fall into cross-addiction?
To dismantle these questions, it is necessary to assess need and motivation. Dopamine is a primary suspect to be sure. Dopamine, the pleasure neurotransmitter, is a key player in addiction. It feels good, really good, and we all want to feel good regardless of addiction proclivity. What about oxytocin, the “cuddle neurotransmitter?” To be sure, it shows up in sexual activity alongside dopamine and others. Maybe we can look at it as a gateway to connection and intimacy. And few conditions are more isolating than active addiction.
Whether you’re in active addiction or crawling your way out of the morass (or trucking along in your recovery and mental health), your neurochemistry is a shit show in all probability. To be fair, everyone’s is, at least at some point. But if you want to regain a center of balance, it’s vital to know what to expect - and what you can do. That relentless drive for pleasure is not likely to dissipate. It will do whatever necessary to find alternate trajectories. Anticipate this and evaluate trajectories that work for you and against you. Work your support. Embrace mistakes and slips. Does addiction ever fully disappear? That’s hard to quantify and operationalize. Yet, as we’ve seen time and again and continue to see all the time, the human capacity for resilience and growth is nothing short of incredible. So much of recovery is guided by cognition - as much as we can’t stand platitudes: conceiving is believing.
For more information on addiction and recovery, check out:
Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior by Carl Hart and Charles Ksir,
Drugs, Behavior, and Modern Society, by Charles F. Levinthal,
Mindfulness and the 12 Steps by Therese Jacobs-Stewart, MA,
Erotic Intelligence by Alexandra Katehakis, MFT,
The Porn Trap by Wendy Maltz, LCSW, DST and Larry Maltz, LCSW,