The Addiction Identity Crisis

In this episode of Doc Jacques: Your Addiction Lifeguard, we tackle a sneaky problem nobody warns you about: getting sober… and then getting stuck in the identity of being “the recovering addict.” With a few lifeguard analogies and some straight talk, Doc breaks down the “Addiction Identity Trap” and shows how recovery isn’t the finish line—it’s the doorway to building a bigger, freer life.

Transcript

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Time again for Dr. Jonathan, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jonathan Burkhurt, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help, try to get your life back together. Join me here at Dr. Addiction Life Guard, the Addiction Recovery Podcast. I wanted 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 the 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, alright? Have a good time, learn something, and then get the real help that you need from a professional. You know, a lot of addicts successfully stop using. They get into recovery and they're there. But they unknowingly replace the addiction with this unhealthy attachment that they've got to the identity of being an addict. Sometimes we call that in the uh recovery community people that are um addicted to the 12 steps, right? They get addicted to it. Um so what do you do when that's happening, or how do you even know that's happening? Recovery can become the identity of the person that that uh is in recovery rather than its foundation. Um you don't want to stall out your your healing, right? You still want growth, you want freedom, but there's a there's a limit to what that recovery uh identity is. I guess the analogy would be like if I was on the beach and I rescued somebody from drowning in the ocean, and you get them out of the water, and then they build their house on the beach where they almost drowned, and they just kind of stay there. And and so the the problem that people run into is they think that sobriety is the finish line. That's the point where they stop, but they don't really understand that it's the doorway to rebuilding a much fuller life. Um some people unknowingly remain psychologically kind of tethered to that addiction long after they're stopping the substances of their abuse, their drugs of choice. And we can get stuck in our recovery. So that's why I'm calling this the addiction identity trap. You're getting stuck. You're in a trap. Addiction destroys your identity. If you ever have known anybody who is an addict, or if you are one yourself, you understand how much of a different person you became when you were an addict. You're lost. You you don't you don't have the same thoughts, you don't, you're not around the same people. It just replaces your authentic self. You're no longer you. It narrows your identity down to basically one role, which is like the user, the addict, uh, and then in recovery, the survivor. Um can it becomes the organizing idea of your existence. It's at your soul, right? That's it. It's just you're out there dr seeking your drugs of choice, and then all the mayhem and everything that comes with it, and that kind of becomes what your identity is. So in early recovery, adopting the identity of recovering addict, that's necessary. Like you can't go anywhere without thinking about the fact that you are the addict. You have to be cautiously moving around, step, steptoe or tiptoeing around all the time because you're trying not to fall back into uh full-blown addiction. You might have an accident or something, but you have to be vigilant. But it's meant to be a temporary thing, it's it's not permanent, it's not the permanent permanence of your identity. So early on in recovery, you're definitely going to be protecting yourself with that necessary identity. But later on, there's another thing that happens. So I, you know, when you're when you're building a building, you're scaffolding on the outside of the building. That's that's helping you rebuild the building, but nobody leaves the scaffolding in place. They take it down because then they get to see the beautiful new building. How does this happen? How how do these traps occur? What what how does this occur where you get stuck in this trap? Well, it's about safety, really, if you think about it. Recovery is the identity that feels safe and it's structured. Maybe you go to meetings, you uh you have selective social circles you're encountering that reinforce that identity. Constantly retelling of the addiction stories, you know, that's what we do in meetings. We we sometimes will tell the stories about how bad we were and what was happening, and and that becomes your identity. Moving forward is is kind of fear-inducing. You you really do feel afraid to move forward because that's you're moving into the unknown. Maybe you've been an addict for 10 or 15 years, 20 years, and you've lost everything that you were. Maybe you don't even know who you are anymore. Like you, maybe you started your addictive behaviors in your late teens and you didn't get into recovery until you were in your 30s. So you're only going to know you as an addict. You're not going to know yourself in any other way. So the idea of trying to change that structure, it doesn't feel safe. But the being the recovered addict, that becomes your new safety. It helps you get away from the idea of like, you're not what you used to be, but this is what I am, and this is safe because now I'm not just self-destructive. So you attach to it. So you've your fear of moving forward starts to kind of set in. Growth feels uncertain. You're not sure. You're not you're not certain of of which direction to go beyond recovery. In other words, the the I don't use anymore, so I'm clean or I'm sober and I can use that label. It's been a few years. I've been in the recovery community and I'm there, and I I know what to expect, and I know where I can go when I'm afraid, or I'm feeling urges or temptations, or whatever. You go into that recovery place where those people that you know them. But growth does feel uncertain. An addiction and identity feels familiar. The identity of recovery is also the thing that becomes very familiar. So there's this neurological imprinting. Like your brain, it gets these messages in it and it imprints on the brain. Self-identity is one of those. If you if you talk to a kid who um he's kind of quiet and he keeps to himself, and then he joins some kind of a team, let's say it's a sports team, he starts to identify with that team. That's who he is. He goes to he goes to high school and he was never really very popular. He was just kind of quiet. Nobody really paid much attention to him. And he gets on the golf team or the tennis team or the baseball team or the soccer team or football team, basketball. His whole identity starts to move around that thing that he's attaching to. And so that's imprinting on him the identity of self. I had a client one time tell me that they played a sport and they played it at uh an elite Olympic level, and they were supposed to be trying to learn to comp you know, they're going to be competing in an Olympic level at that point. And that person quit the sport uh at that point in college because they were only that sport. They they felt like they had become only identifiable through that sport and as that athlete. And this person had an addiction issue because of it, and they quit. They quit the sport, they didn't try for the Olympics. They should they would have made it. But that was so dissatisfying. The only thing that they were identified as, both themselves and by external uh people, the people around them, not just within themselves, was that they were identifying with that. That is what happens to us in recovery. We that that neurological imprinting of the addict for years starts it really makes an imprinting of that messaging on your brain. So identity reconstruction away from that into recovery takes time and intentional effort. It takes a lot of effort. And so when you're trying to become the recovered person, many times that transition from addict to recovered, there's a point where you start to realize you've lost self-identity in that process. And so what do you do? Well, you start to identify as the recovered addict, and everything then is imprinting neurologically on your brain that you are a recovered addict. This is who I am, this is what I am. And you know, it's uh what I find is that people will go really deeply into that, which I'm not saying is bad. That's a very good thing because it's not destructive like an addiction is at all. But they'll get the recovery tattoo. They'll wear the recovery jewelry. They want to tell their story. They're proud of it, which is the opposite of what you were when you were an addict. You were not proud of being an addict, it was shameful, and you felt it. But that identity reconstruction from addict to recovery takes a lot of time. Year and a half, two years, you're working on it. Now your brain is telling you, hey, this is what I am. And you've soaked in that message and you've become the recovered addict. Well, now there's another step beyond that, and that is to be free to be a whole person who is not identifying as recovered addict, but is identifying as who they are, whatever that is. And maybe you didn't have a chance to figure out who you were before you got sucked into addiction, or maybe you were solidly attached to an identity, you were a professional, you owned a business, you were, you know, a nurse, a doctor, a fireman, a policeman, and that's that's what you were, but you lost that in your addiction. So you're you're having to reconstruct. So how do you know when you're stuck? How do you know when you're stuck in that identity trap? There are some warning signs. And there's I'll give you a few examples. Um every conversation you have somehow revolves or centers around addiction. There's something you throw in there all the time. You cannot imagine yourself beyond that recovery context. You can't, you can't even see yourself as somebody that is anything other than. You have a fear of pursuing goals unrelated to recovery. Like, I'd like to have a family, I'd like to, you know, I take, I'm I'm gonna pursue a new career. I'm gonna go train in this new career. I'm gonna go to uh the mechanics uh uh the MMI. Um, oh my gosh, I'm I'm forgetting what the Mechanics Institute of America. Um and or you or you want to be, well, I don't know, fireman. Let's say you want to be a fireman, right? You you you're fearful of doing that because it's not related to recovery. You can't even put the two together. Like you can't even tell yourself somehow this is connected to your recovery. Um another word, another warning sign, uh, emotionally. You have this, you have this fragileness uh with your emotion. And and even though you've been sober for years, so you get this this emotional fragility that sets in, or your identity defined primarily by past addiction instead of present life, um, can't get past. And this this taps into that idea of rec of uh forgiveness and recovery. Um you can you just can't define yourself in any way other than I used to be a heroin addict, and it's it's paralyzing to you. Maybe you're living in in maintenance mode instead of growth mode. Maybe you never even considered that. You know, a lot of times people come into my office and I say, you know, recovery is only really about the uh halfway point. If you can say I'm I'm in recovery, that's about halfway. You're halfway there. And they look at me like I'm crazy. They can't believe that I would suggest that there's some place beyond being clean and sober. And I'm like, no, there's addiction, then there's being clean and sober, and then there's free. Well, what is free? Right? That's because they look at me like free, free, free from what? So recovery is supposed to give you your life back, it's not supposed to become your life. You you get into recovery to live your life. You don't get into recovery because that is your life. That happens sometimes when you go to a meeting, and and there's uh some meetings I've been to where people say, you know, you you have to go to meetings because if you stop going to meetings, you're gonna relapse. And they really firmly believe that, because perhaps they would. And that's fine if you want to, you know, if you want to live in that place where it's safe, and you need that. But there are many, many people who get into recovery and they start feeling guilty because they wanted to live a life. And I say to them, Well, wasn't that the point of getting into recovery? To then live your life? So recovery is not supposed to become your life, it's supposed to give you something that you can build a life on. So the stalling in that healing, um there's there's some some identity roles that uh you can you can start to develop that maybe you've lost. Um if you're limiting your personal growth, maybe you were a creator or a leader, or a parent. Maybe you were a professional, or you had a license or a state-issued something, a you know, bar, a barred a lawyer, or a medical doctor, a nurse, um, an engineer, or builder, you know, your identity, you lose that. How do you what what do you do? Do you do you do you go back to those? Or maybe you were so destructive that there's not a possibility for that. That's a real thing. Um it prevents full psycho f I'm sorry, I can't speak, full psychological freedom. You lose your freedom. Uh it maintains your fear-based thinking. You know, if you're stuck and you and you just are constantly focused on I'm an addict and I must be in recovery, as opposed to I'm I was an I was an addict and now I'm free. Um, it keeps your brain essentially focused on the addiction framework, and it's anchored in that. And that's that's that's problematic if you're trying to grow beyond it. So the goal of recovery is about expanding yourself, expanding your identity, not identity replacement. You are not saying you're abandoning recovery practices if you move towards freedom. You are not. But what you are doing is you're be it's it's exploring the idea that recovery is the foundation for your life. It's not a prison, it's not the end point, right? So the anchoring is like, you know, it's like concrete and it's set in concrete. It's not set in concrete. Recovery should become the foundation that you could then build upon. You didn't build a prison. You didn't go from one prison of addiction to the next prison prison of recovery. That is the point where you can then start to build your life. So maybe, um, I don't know, I'm trying to think of examples. Maybe you're a father and you you uh were an alcoholic, and you were raising children, and you were an alcoholic for years, and that's that's what you were. Well, maybe you're now a father who happens to just be in recovery. Um maybe you were a business owner. How about you're a business owner who happens to be in recovery? I know this sounds kind of repetitious, right? Or maybe maybe you're just maybe you just got to the point where you're not you're not sick and destructive physically. Maybe you're healthy and you happen to be in recovery. You're not a recovering addict who occasionally lives your life. You're not a uh a recovering addict who happens to be a father. You're a father who happens to be in recovery. Um when when I'm working with my clients, I will ask them, so what's next? And they just kind of look at me. You know, they've got shattered lives. Well, what's next? I maybe you're gonna be that person who um is so so invisible in that the recovery or the uh the addiction. Like you can't you've worked so far past it, nobody really understands that you're in recovery. It doesn't get talked about, nobody you're so far from it. Crazy heroin addict, and now it's 15 years later. And you've been in you've been clean for 15 years. I tell my clients, you know, one day you're gonna be the person that is married, you have a couple kids, one of your neighbors is gonna come to you and be talking, and and you know, you've noticed that the police have showed up a few times at their house, but you're not really sure what's going on. And the person that you're talking to is that neighbor, and they just kind of look at you and they go, gosh, you know, I don't know if you've noticed, but the police have been over a few times, and my kid, I just I I don't know what to do. Um yeah, my 17-year-old son, he's just it's like I'm just scared to death he's gonna kill himself because he's just using drugs and it's I don't even know what to do. And they're saying it to you, and guess what? You're the person who's in recovery and they had no idea. And you say to them, Yeah, really? Huh. And then you give them some way words of wisdom and they kind of look at you and and you and you say, Yeah, you know, I I I had a drug problem too when I was younger. And they're gonna look at you and think to themselves, and they're gonna say to you, Are you kidding me? I tell this to my clients because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to sow the seeds of change. They are gonna be so transformed in their recovery, they're gonna it's gonna be lifted off of them so much that people will have no idea that they were an addict, and you will be able to give the sage advice, these these words of wisdom and guidance to somebody who desperately needs it, and they had no idea that you were an addict. They just couldn't believe it. So if you can move beyond that identity trap, you can get to that place where you can do that. So there's some steps you can do that. This is this is let me give you some steps. Build a future-based uh identity. Future-based, future-focused. Who am I becoming instead of look at what I was? I I the analogy I use is stop looking in the rear view mirror. Start looking out the windshield. Because you're moving. The car is moving forward. It's like a time machine, it's moving forward. Whatever was behind you is what you did in the past. If all you're doing is staring in the rearview mirror, you're going to hit a tree or hit a car, run off the road. That's self-destruction. So have a uh have a way to build a future-focused identity. Stop asking who was I? You probably have done that so much over the years that you've been in recovery. Ask the question, who am I becoming? That's maybe the that's the first step. The second step, develop some new roles. Be a mentor, be a leader, be a creator, be a skilled professional, be an athlete, be an artist. Do something that pers that pursue something with the amount of energy and effort that you put into being a recru uh an addict. Build competency and mastery in a new area. Become that thing that you could have been before you were an addict. But again, I'm saying this, I I cannot emphasize this enough. Use the same amount of energy doing that that you did being destructive. Stop rehearsing the old story. You listen, there's something to saying, there's something to say about repeating this story enough where you understand this is what I was. It's a convincing that I was as destructive as I was, instead of saying, no, it was no big deal. But neuroscience says neuropathways strengthen through repetition. So if you're if what you're doing is you're repeating the same story of destruction over and over and over, listen, your brain, it's gonna it's gonna focus on that as a pathway because you you strengthen that by repeating it. And so what happens when you s when somebody says, hey, who are you, or what are you doing? You're automatically going to snap to, oh, I'm I'm an addict. You know, that's like you're an addict. Oh, okay, I see. So you because you haven't built anything beyond that. So you need to expand your life beyond recovery environments when you can do it safely. So if you spend your time going to meetings and you're diving deep into that for a long time and you finally are there, many of my clients will start to feel guilty because they don't feel. Feel like they need to go to meetings and they're just going to them. They're afraid. They're afraid of the future. They're afraid to let go of that structure because it feels like if I do that, I might stumble and fall. But you're not abandoning support. You're expanding your identity beyond it. Accepting that. I want more, right? And go live your life. That's why you got sober. That's why you got clean. You're not the same person. You gotta accept that. You're not the same person. Recovery is not about becoming a better addict. It's about becoming someone entirely new. A new person. Maybe you're the person that you never got to meet in the first place. A lot of my clients started drugs fairly heavy in high school. Then they got out of high school, maybe they went to college. Maybe they got kicked out of college. Maybe they just bounced around or they got kicked out of their parents' house pretty early and they were bouncing around. Where what are you when you're in recovery? What are you? You don't know because you all you've done is, you know, pursue drugs, alcohol, get high, drunk, hang around, cause problems, steal stuff, do stupid things, and that's all you know. So you've got to accept that you're no longer that same person. You're you're when you have accepted that, time will time will not be as important to you as it was before. I've lost ten years because I was an addict. Yeah, you did, but now what? Are you just gonna stay with the I lost ten years? Are you just gonna be paralyzed with that? So once you've gotten out of that water, you're drowning. You got out of that water. Now it's time to start living. Some people benefit from lifelong identity in recovery. They they that lifelong uh identity is is one that they need. And unfortunately, when you go to meetings, you're gonna hear a lot of that because some especially with the old timers, they needed that. They needed that. And I again I cannot emphasize this enough. There is nothing wrong with staying in the recovery community, staying in that recovery identity, because it keeps you safe. But that's not everybody's story. But the that's what you're gonna hear. The other people who didn't need to do that, they're not in the rooms. And so it's less likely you're gonna hear that. It's an empowerment. Recovery should empower you. It shouldn't confine you. Again, it's not the prison, it's the chance to rebuild. So when you hear people say, you know what, you gotta go to meetings, and if you stop going to meetings, you're gonna relapse. What they're what they're saying is that's what they've experienced. But I want you to make sure that you understand that that may be you as well. You don't know, but you need to try. And that's the that's the message, I guess, for today is you got into recovery to have a life. You didn't get into recovery to stay in recovery mode and a recovery identity. That's really not the point. The point is for you to have the freedom to feel like you can rebuild and or maybe for you, build your life. You know, you were never meant to just survive addiction. You were supposed to outgrow it. And by growth, I don't mean I just got older and so I'm mature. But you outgrew it. In other words, you became stronger than the addiction. The addiction was stronger than you initially, and it took you over. The enemy wanted to take you out, but you worked really hard to get into recovery. So you are not your addiction, and you are not your recovery. You are the person who walked through the fire and lived it and survived it, and now you're building. Well, that's this edition of Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard. I really hope you've enjoyed this uh episode. If you did, please subscribe, give me a like, and uh you can also send me a note to whatever was on the platform to uh our website walkingmindbody.com. Meanwhile, I can help you, just reach out to me. If not, go to me now. Go to a couple, find somebody. I've got listeners all over the world. I don't know what everybody's doing to the public, but it community. Because if you're gonna kill yourself, you save your dick, that's what you can. So, until next time, this is Doc Jocks, and I appreciate you listening.