Addicted

 Hi, My name is Angela and I am an addict...

The following content is not mine to claim.  If you are interested in anything I share today you can search for Dr. Gabor Mate on YouTube and if you do... you're welcome.  I just did you a huge favor.  

Also if you are my family don't take anything personally, this is NOT about you, but me.

Now back to me.  I am an addict.  I have been an addict for as long as I can remember.  I have been addicted to many things for many reasons.  

I am also an over-comer.  I have overcome many addictions, many times, only to find myself gripped tightly again in an addiction that I had overcome in some other season on my life. 

There is so much to say about addiction that won't be said in this post.  Things we've all read or been told, because the truth is that we have all been in a relationship with an addict at some point in our lives.  For some of us the relationship we have struggled most with is ourselves.  

I think probably my addiction to babies gives the clearest insight into what I want to say today.  I had (mid-life worked this one out on it's own) an addiction to having babies.  I LOVED having babies.  I LOVED being pregnant and nursing.  I LOVED holding babies and sleeping with babies.  I very much would forsake everything else in my life for the opportunity to hold my babies.  

Babies are wonderful and cuddly and adorable, and babies ADORE their mothers.  Babies also offer oxytocin and prolactin to mommies that help in bonding and feeling emotional closeness.  These two very powerful chemicals help the mommy to relax and snuggle into a rocking chair in peace while the worries of the world melt away outside the bedroom door.  

For me having babies was the first time in my life that I felt a continued sense of devotion and pure unaltered love.  It was the first time I felt loved just for being me.  It was the first time I felt peace and calm without a substance to "take the edge off".  It was the first time I ever really felt good about myself.  I was a good mommy (to babies).  

The very powerful and visceral response that my mind and body had to nursing actually kept all my other unhealthy addictions at bay.  While I was having babies, pregnant and nursing I was pretty content.  Everything felt right in my world.  What I didn't know then that I have come to discover now is the oxytocin and prolactin were working together to make me feel connected, wanted, needed.

Connected, wanted, needed...  words that have unconsciously ruled my life since I was an infant.  

I had felt the opposite of that for my whole life... unwanted, unneeded, and disconnected.  

I have learned that the death of a parent in early childhood is one of the worst traumas that a child can endure.  My mother died when I was a baby.  I have a mother wound that has been raw and festering for decades.  There has never been a day in my life or very many moments in my day that I don't think about the fact that I was a "motherless" child.  

Disclaimer for my family's sake...  My Dad remarried when I was 3 and provided me with an angel that I called mom for 33 years.  She was for all intents and purposes my mom and she was extremely good to me and I adored her.  But the day that she went home to be with Jesus, a pandoras box of pent-up childhood anguish over the loss of both a biological mother and an adoptive mother, threatened to destroy my whole world and 12 YEARS LATER I'm just now cleaning up the debris.

When I was young I internalized a message of rejection, and I carried that with me into adulthood.  With our brilliant minds ability to create an algorithm to confirm what we already believe to be true I found plenty of evidence to confirm my conclusion.  I was in fact defective and not worthy of love.  Throughout the years I found many ways to numb this ache in my soul and as addictions go I found even more trouble to pack into my suitcase of trauma.  

But the strangest thing would happen in my late 20's and into my mid 30's...  for close to a decade the only addiction I suffered from was chubby cheeks and baby feet.  

My favorite Dr. says, "We shouldn't ask why the addiction, but why the pain."  To get to the root of the problem we can't start with the addiction, it's just a symptom, we have to address the pain.  We have to ask the question "what is good about the addiction?"  What is this thing providing you that you don't have or better yet that you didn't have in childhood?  

Which brings me to my addiction with babies... how is it that I could trade in all the unhealthy addictions I had before, to numb and sooth the pain, when I had a little baby to hold in my arms?  My pain was soothed for short periods of time by this little angel that needed me and adored me and helped me feel connected.  

Addiction is just our way of meeting some need that we haven't been able to meet any other way.  Addiction is self-soothing and attempting, albeit in an unhealthy way, to relieve some kind of internal pain.  

I don't know if you struggle like me with addictions or if you know someone who does, but I hope that by sharing my heart someone out there can begin the process of healing.  I know addiction has caused endless shame and guilt in my life and it has hurt people I love and through sharing my experience I hope to encourage others to reexamine not the why of the addiction, but the why of the pain and to begin to process of healing.  We are hardwired as humans to have certain needs that are inescapable...  Unconditional love that we don't have to work for, attachment to a safe and happy adult and a sense of belonging to others in families and even the greater community at large, as well as a purpose and a way to share our light in this world.  Addictions form because somewhere along the way we didn't have access to one or more of those things.  

There is no one to blame.  No finger to point.  Life happens to us all and the for the most part the people in our lives did the best that they could.  It's no shock to anyone for me to say that you can look around and at the generations before us and tell that there is something amiss in our culture.  Something wrong that won't' be easily righted... but, in our small circles and in our families, we have the opportunity to make some changes that will have positive ripples now and into future generations.  

Addiction has always been a factor in any society...  In ours addiction is a plague destroying many millions of lives every day.  It's time for us to stop condemning the addict and start addressing the pain.