One of the things my clients ask me the most about is: “How do I know when I’m done?”
As in, how do I know when I’ve quit successfully?
It’s a hell of a question, because the short answer is, “As soon as you’ve stopped using.” And the shorter, but much longer, answer is, “Never.”
Not because an addict is always an addict—I don’t believe in that. But because the brain is such an incredible machine. It’s a bit confusing. Let me explain what I try to tell my clients, and what I’ve come to believe over my years of getting trapped by and then escaping from different drugs.
So the short answer: “As soon as you’ve stopped using.” I truly believe that the moment of your drug recovery begins the moment you’ve taken your last dose. Addiction, like all habits, is an action. Therefore, the cessation of an action is the beginning of the end of a habit. For someone who successfully quits an addiction, i.e., who never uses a given drug again, there will always be one last dose. The successful quit began the instant after that last dose was taken.
This is good news if you are struggling with addiction. It means that you have the potential to successfully quit after any upcoming dose. Really. If you see yourself being sober one day, then by definition, there is a last dose in your future. And unless you’re a fortune teller, it follows that any future dose could be that last dose.
And from the body’s perspective, every dose is the last dose. This is because the body hates drugs that interfere with homeostasis. From the moment you finish a dose, your body begins working to rid itself of the drug. The body is the smartest thing in the universe, and knows immediately whether or not what you’re taking is nutritious or not. Too bad the conscious mind, which enjoys the euphoric effect of the drug, isn’t so wise, but that leads us into the short, yet much longer answer to the initial question of when we know we’ve quit for good: “Never.”
Neurologically-speaking, no one ever truly finishes with addiction. This does not mean that former addicts can’t lead happy, healthy, sober lives until they die. What it does mean is that the smartest thing in the universe—the human body—doesn’t yet know how to dispose of bad programming.
It’s an incredible irony that the same features of the brain that allow us to daydream while doing intensive work (driving on the highway is a prime example) allow us to slide into addiction. The human brain evolved spectacularly to automate complicated endeavors, as long as those endeavors are repeated. What began as mentally involving and fatiguing quickly becomes rote. Boring. Easy to do. This is on purpose. The brain can only afford to expend so much mental energy on tasks at hand—the vast majority of the brain’s energy instead going to keeping the body alive and well-regulated. Cell respiration, heartbeat timing, breath rates, digestion, etc. Stuff the thinking brain just isn’t designed to do.
With addictive drugs, the brain first gives as much mental energy as it did to something like driving a car for the first time. It becomes fascinated with how it feels and how to do it. But through repeated use, the fascination wears off. After many uses, the brain just automates the drug use: go here, get the drug with this much money, take it over there, wait this long to feel the effects, enjoy the effects, go get more, repeat. Just like how driving used to take all of our attention, but eventually took almost none, drug habits become “baked in” to our brains. Our brain puts it on autopilot. Not out of masochism, but out of the need to conserve mental energy for keeping the body alive.
I believe the brain never evolved to know the difference between good habits and bad habits, and this is a huge factor in why anyone, and I mean anyone, can become an addict. Because it’s beyond their control. Addictive drugs feel good. They unlock our chemical reward pathways and delight us. That’s why they’re addictive. So we keep using. And the brain does what it’s programmed to do: automate repeated actions. In no time, drug use is a habit, not a fascinating event.
The kicker is, by automating an action, aka, developing a habit, the brain physically wires reward pathways inside itself to smooth the process of completing the action. Again, as with driving, the only reason we can sing along to Led Zeppelin while driving 80 mph down a highway we’ve never been on before is because we have a hard-wired mental pathway that is so strong, it knows exactly how to manage the road and the drivers around us. Red lights? Slow down.
Cop car? Slow way down.
Drug habits are no different. Through repeated use, a physical pathway in the brain is created, which drives the addict to use with as little friction as possible (with as little mental energy as possible). That’s why it’s so hard to control the action of taking the drug. You become programmed to take it: mentally and physically programmed.
And even if you quit and stay quit until you die, that pathway will remain in your head. Once it’s built, that pathway doesn’t ever dissolve. Even when you’re 100 years old. Still there. Old habits don’t die hard. They don’t die period.
That’s why “quit for good” can begin both immediately after the last dose is taken, and not at all. No one ever quits a habit in the physical sense. It’s not possible: the brain has already wired itself to perform the habit with minimal mental effort. That wiring will always be there.
But that’s the semi-sweet beauty of being a human: we have the strength in us to bypass bad programming and live happy, healthy lives. And not later. Now. Remember, recovery begins as soon as the last dose is taken. Which means that recovery begins every single day. How long it lasts is up to you. If you’re struggling with addiction, and you’re wondering how to enter recovery, don’t worry—your body has made that decision. All that you have to do is follow through.
As soon as the body begins cleaning the drug out of its systems, you’re in recovery. Which is excellent news.
As for that bad programming? That physical pathway that forever makes it easy for you to take that drug? It can be bypassed by forming new pathways. New habits that supersede the old ones. This is why you see former addicts become incredibly fit. Or suddenly become successful entrepreneurs. Or becomes a superparent. They find a new habit, and they go all-in, just like they used to do with drug use. And it feels amazing. Once the bad programming is bypassed, it can be tossed in the mental basement with memories of the girl that broke your heart in 7th grade or the bully who stole your lunch money. Painful memories, but reflective of your past—not your future.
All this to say: if you’re struggling with an addiction, your recovery starts every day, multiple times a day. And, every day, you have the opportunity to move your bad habit to the “yuck” pile of your memories. Where it belongs.
Every day.
You got this.
