The Brain Changes On The Journey To Recovery

Your brain and mental health changes when you start your journey into getting clean and sober. 

Transcript

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I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at DocShock, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for. It is intended for entertainment and informational purposes, but not considered help. If you actually need real help and you're in need of help, please seek that out. If you're in dire need of help, you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them. But don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help. It's not. It's just a podcast it's for entertainment and information only so let's keep it in that light all right have a good time learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional Wow, man, that intro was very dramatic. So there's a thing that happens when people go into rehabs, and that is that they go in crazy. So you check into your rehab and you're out of your mind. Many times the people that I have taken to rehab, they usually are high as a kite, drunk, crazy, out of their mind because of their addiction. They're using their drugs of choice and, man, just out of their minds. So it's hard to say what's going on because they've become so, so dysregulated and they're so out of control because they're high on whatever their drug. of choice is because that's their last hurrah. That's the thing that people usually do is they get their last high because this is it, right? I'm giving it up. And so then they quit using. And so they're going to use everything that they possibly can at the very end. And in fact, what happens is you're crazy. You're acting crazy, right? So is the crazy the drug of choice or is it you? Like, are you actually mentally ill? Now, there's a lot to say about people who have mental illness. They tend to self-medicate if they can't get proper mental health care. And in this country, in the United States, we do a really, really poor job of that. And we don't give people the avenue, the options to be able to seek out that help. And it's sad because we throw them out on the streets and say, hey, you know, we shouldn't be imprisoning you in some kind of institution. So we're going to let you run around on the streets just crazy out of your mind and getting high on drugs or alcohol because that's all you have. And so that's what happens. So we see the outcomes of that in Kensington. outside of Philadelphia and in Los Angeles and San Francisco, places like that, we see lots of homeless people. And by lots, I mean tens of thousands of homeless people. And every single one of them has some kind of mental health issue. That's probably why they're homeless and they're untreated. And so their version of treating themselves with the discomfort and the mental illness is through drugs and alcohol. that they get that they're using. So you see somebody and they're homeless and they're drunk. Just keep that in mind. If you're not in that world or you're not familiar with it and you see people that are homeless, understand, man. They're probably really suffering and they're not getting treatment. Treatment's not even available to them a lot of times. And then they're not going to avail themselves of that treatment because that's not where their head is, right? So... In any case, so you come into rehab, you check into rehab, or you go into a hospital, and you're high or drunk or both, and you're acting crazy. So you get a mental assessment, a mental health assessment. You can do the assessment for usage of drugs and alcohol. You can do a blood test or a urine test or something like that, and you're going to come up with positives for different drugs and alcohol. Yeah, okay, that's easy, right? But mental health is a whole different thing. because there's no blood test for that. There's no breathalyzer for that. So you're going on the opinions of evaluating clinicians, whether it's a doctor, psychiatrist, or even a medical doctor for that matter, but a psychiatrist or a psychologist. And then we start moving our way down the line, and we get to where a social worker is doing a mental health assessment And, you know, it's like, you know, you can get specialized training for that, but unfortunately many times those clinicians are not given that training, and yet they're given that responsibility. So whether you're a licensed professional counselor or a social worker or a licensed marriage family therapist, whatever the case may be, you may or may not have had enough formalized training to accurately diagnose. But even then, my argument is that even with that, If the person is taking drugs and alcohol, you're not seeing a real picture of who they are. So when you go to rehab or you go into a rehab or some kind of recovery setting and somebody is doing an assessment of you, what you're going to run into is you're going to get a diagnosis. And the diagnosis is going to be something that's probably not complementary to you. So you might get bipolar disorder or psychotic or something like that. And it's like, wow, that just scares you. Because he's like, I did all these drugs and I was drinking. Am I really now crazy? Did I do that to myself? And so you get on a bunch of medications. Now, if you're in a rehab setting, they're going to say, the prescribing physician, and it's almost always a psychiatrist, he's going to say, okay, well, you need to take some Risperidone, you need to take some Wellbutrin, and you need to, you know, and so then you're medicated with, you know, three, four, five different medications. And that's pretty common. And when I'm working with my clients who are going to rehab, I warn them about that. I say, hey, look, man, they're going to give you a bunch of medications. But understand that what they're trying to do is they're trying to treat the presenting symptoms, right? They're trying to treat the symptoms, which is an indicator of your diagnostic condition. In other words, they have to put something down and it's based on verbal statements that you make and then their observations of your behavior. And so they give you some medications. And you're going to be on those medications. And they're going to address the presenting symptoms. They're going to calm you down. They're going to flatten you out. They're going to keep you more stable while you're in a clinical setting like that, a hospital or a rehab. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that you are bipolar for the rest of your life. It just means that you're... You're acting like that and you're making statements and you've been living like that based on your description. It doesn't mean that that's what you actually are for sure. It just means that's what that is in that particular time and space and setting. So what I have happen is my client goes in or somebody I've done an intervention with and I've done a lot of interventions where the people are just really out of their mind crazy. in that moment. So you go, you get the assessment, they figure out, okay, yeah, you can come in and then you get the diagnosis. And we need you to start doing these medications. And then you discharge from that facility. You get out, right? You leave the treatment program and you leave with a handful of prescription medications that they've given you. And usually it's a 30, maybe a 60 day supply of the medications, right? Hopefully, if they are a competent, well-run facility, they will have already worked out an aftercare program with you, and you already have identified a psychiatrist to then go see when you leave the facility. And you must do that. You've got to do that. And you go see the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist says, hey, okay, you're on these medications. I'm looking at your report. We're going to keep you on those, and... And then because you've been off of these illicit drugs that you've been taking and the alcohol, those symptoms go away, which is kind of puzzling to people because it's like, wait, I thought I had bipolar disorder. That's a very common one. No, you're sleeping normally now because you're not using... cocaine all the time you're not super paranoid you're not really agitated and hyperactive hyper vigilant because you're not doing cocaine anymore so you seem kind of okay like you're you seem to have calmed down quite a bit and you're eating food you're not super paranoid you're not staying up for days at a time and so now if you if i were to look at you after you've discharged and after you've been living a clean life for a couple of months, I'd say, yeah, there's no indication whatsoever that you are bipolar. And so maybe we need to take you off the bipolar medication. uh, or titrate you down. So what I try to get my clients to do is to listen to their psychiatrist. But I also, as, as a clinician, I will, it is my responsibility to reach out to your psychiatrist, uh, who's prescribing the medications to give my impressions of what I'm experiencing with you on a weekly basis for an hour or two or three, sometimes with my clients when they're in their recovery. And so hopefully, um, me as a clinician if I was your therapist I'm able to give my impressions my clinical impressions of what you seem to be experiencing and I will work with the psychiatrist to help you either to titrate down off your medications or or to perhaps change the medication to fit more of what the profile of what you're presenting with. And so it's a team effort. And I'm telling you all this because I want you to understand, no matter where you are, even if you're in another country listening to this podcast, listen, man, your mental health changes when you get into recovery. It just changes. Your mental stability changes when you're in recovery. You are not the same person. Now, That's not to say that it's always a positive thing. Sometimes if you are using some drugs, they can alter your personality permanently. PCP can do that. LSD can do that. There are different drugs that have some permanency to the changes in the brain, and it's not always for a positive. On the other hand, if you are off the stimulants regularly, You're not going to be stimulated. You're not going to be, like I said, staying up for days at a time. You're going to be eating food. So you're not going to be anorexic. So your health changes. So I can promise you in recovery, once you have stopped taking a drug of choice and you're getting clean, you're getting sober, you will change. And you will change most likely for the positive. I usually see... almost exclusively positive changes in people. They become more aware. They're more focused. They're more present. They have cognitive functioning they didn't have before. Their sleep has changed. It's improved. Their diet's changed. It's improved. They begin socializing and they begin to exercise. All the things that like, and I'm using my little finger quotes here, normal people do. And they find that their lives are improved for the better. So I think the expectation that when you get into recovery that life's going to go back to the way it was, I'm here to tell you, man, it's not going to be like it was because what it was before was a chaotic mess. If you really do take your aftercare seriously and if you take your recovery seriously, I always worry about the people that it's generally the weed... and the alcohol people that bounce back and forth between the two drugs. So they're an alcoholic, but they still smoke weed. And they say, oh, yeah, no, I'm sober. And I'm like, no, you're not. Or they're smoking weed all the time, and then they start ramping up the drinking. And they go, yeah, man, I'm so proud of myself because I've cut back my weed usage, you know, and I'm clean. And I'm like, are you? I don't think so. No, you're not. Because all you're doing is just filling that space, that void of one drug with the other. But again, depending on where you live in this country, the state may have deemed weed as legal. And alcohol is as legal everywhere. There may be a dry county here or there where there's no hard liquor, but there's always beer and wine. Um, unless I'm mistaken about that, but that's been my experience. Um, so all, you know, it's like, yeah, but it's legal and, you know, it just kind of helps me through. And I hear that a lot from the weed people. So had, have they changed? Uh, not really. Um, there's still, there's still issues. Uh, they still got the cognitive issues and the, presenting as a different kind of person issues. And, you know, so getting, getting there means that you're going to be changed. Now there's a lot of debate and question that everybody has. And I have it clearly in my practice. It's always, there's like the idea of, but I don't like being on medications. Okay. Um, and why? Well, because I don't like the negative effects of medications or I don't want to be dependent on it, which is that one always gets me. That makes me laugh every time because you were an alcoholic for 12 years and now there's a medication that can help stabilize your mood for the next year or two and you don't want to be dependent on it. What happened to that thinking? I, where, why didn't that apply with alcohol or weed or what? You know, it's like, seriously, are you kidding? Um, so that, that, I just always laugh sometimes out loud, sometimes only in my head, but I'm always laughing when I hear that. Um, in any case, the, so I don't like the effects. All right. Well, and I, I've said this in the past in these podcasts, whatever I've done, 120, 130 of them. Um, Listen, medications that are mental health-oriented medications typically are not meant for lifelong usage. There are exceptions, of course. If you have schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, if you have OCD, no, you're probably going to be on that forever. And that's okay. that's fine uh that's that's like having a heart medication or you had an organ transplant so you have the the uh the anti-rejection drug you know you wouldn't bat an eye at taking those but you know god forbid you should be taking you know lithium uh to help you so that you don't go spinning off and writing a manifesto and throwing it over the fence of the white house can't do that you know no no no i don't want to take that forever which is crazy um And you see what I did there? I said crazy. So it's like medications help, but they're typically not meant for long-term usage. So I don't want to be on this forever. Okay, well, you're probably not going to be if you have a doctor that actually buys into the idea that mental health is one of a consistent change. And so... Medication is meant to stabilize so you can treat. It's not the treatment. It's the stabilizer so that you can go through a therapeutic process to improve your situation. So it's not long term. But again, you know, it's about change. So when you enter into treatment, you've begun a process where you are kind of out of your mind, maybe really out of your mind. Maybe you're hallucinating. You know, maybe you're Hearing things. Seeing things. Maybe. Maybe you can't sleep. You know. It's like that can drive you crazy. Try staying up for four days in a row. But you're probably very very mentally unstable. That doesn't mean permanently mentally sick. Or ill. But you're unstable. And so what we're going to do when we treat you. Is we're going to stabilize you. And then we're going to treat you. And so the treatment is. As if you've been listening to my podcasts and many other podcasts and places where you can get recovery information and have this recovery is a year and a half to two year long process. So we're going to enter into a phase where you're going to start changing mentally, but it's going to take a year and a half, a year minimum before you start realizing how different you are, but a year and a half to two years before you're actually there. You're at the point of, I feel like I'm in recovery. And during that time, there's going to be a lot of mental health changes. The other thing that's quite interesting is, I've found this interesting when I'm treating people, is that they will come in and there will be a hidden mental health issue that they didn't know was there. Imagine you're like 15 years old, 14 years old, you start smoking pot, then you graduate to something else and you're dropping acid and you're doing cocaine and you're smoking weed and you're drinking and you're, you know, 14, 15. And I have these clients that come in all the time like this and they're 14 and 15 when they start. And so your brain is, you know, continuing to mature and develop and change from that point until you're 23, 24, 25 years old. And they come to me and they're, they're like 34 and, And they've never in their life as an adult or an older teen ever not been under the influence of something pretty consistently. And they get off and there was a hidden mental health issue that was masked by their use of drugs. And it was never diagnosed because it was never understood that it was present because it was constantly, you know, you're constantly under the influence of something enough where it was not real clear understood that you have actually like OCD tendencies or you have a depression. You've got like legitimate depression, but it was all hidden. bipolar disorder that was hidden and it then suddenly starts manifesting when you start getting into recovery and that can be really unsettling and make my clients really unhappy because it's like man I'm just depressed all the time and I you know and now I've got now me as a clinician I have to figure out how do I get a treating physician a psychiatrist or somebody else to listen to that and see it for what it actually is which is this is a legitimate mental health issue that was not brought on by the drugs of choice, but masked by the drugs of choice. So perhaps when you get done with your treatment and let's say a year goes by and you just are really feeling whatever it is you're feeling, right? And you're kind of paranoid or you're mildly depressed all the time or you're anxious, right? You just, you have anxiety. You just feel it. And it's not, you know, you thought it would go away and it didn't. So now you're, you know, coming into a year into it and you feel that way. It's okay. You know, I mean, that's kind of where your brain was, you know, even without the use of drugs and alcohol. So it's okay that you're at that place. But that does happen. And then, you know, which, depending on how you look at it, like, oh, wow, you, you know, you were masking it with the drugs and alcohol or whatever you're doing, and now it's there. Now what? That's terrible. That's terrible. No, actually, it's really good because now you can treat the thing that was there before that you didn't know, and maybe the thing that you're treating actually is making your life now better because you're treating something that was underlying. I mean, it was co-occurring, and it's separate from the usage. That's a good thing. It's kind of like somebody, you know, they, I don't know, they get in a car accident and in the middle of, you know, going to the hospital, they've got a, you know, shattered leg. The doctor comes in and says, well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news is we were able to, you know, repair your leg. But the bad news is we discovered you have cancer. And it's in the early stages. Had you not been in that car accident, you would never know that you had cancer. Certainly not something you really want to hear, but you do really need to hear that, right? So it saved your life. And I think the same thing is true with addiction. It can uncover things that you didn't know were there, that were hidden. And I think in the recovery process, it's good to have that revealing because now you're getting your life in order, right? So the tragedy of one thing can lead you to the success and the revealing of a life-threatening something else. And that's okay too. Listen, getting into recovery is not for the weak. You really got to be a strong person to be able to go through recovery. And if you're being hamstrung by the idea that everything should be fine because you just stopped using your drug of choice and now everything's great, that's not how it works. And I don't know how many times I've said that in these podcasts, but it's true. Things get worse before they get better. They don't go from really bad to just an upward trajectory. It's usually they get worse, then they start getting better. And I think the revealing of underlying mental health issues that were hidden or masked is one of those examples. But the other one is, hey, when you go into that, you have lost your mind and you are not of right mind. And so getting off the drugs and alcohol allows you to get back onto even, stable footing. Well, that's this episode of Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you have, like, subscribe, comment, send me some information about you or what you're going through, and let me know if I can help you. If I can, reach out to me through my website, wellspringmindbody.com. I've got to get a Doc Shock website. But send me a message. Let me know what's happening with you. And get help. Go to rehab. Go to a hospital. Get some help. It's not worth ending your life because you're trying to save your addiction. It should be the other way around. Like, save your life by ending your addiction. Do it the other way. But please, get the help. And if you need help, I'm there for you. But in the meantime, until next time, this is Doc Shock saying, see ya.