Addiction Is The Survival Strategy

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]When you are out in the world and you're feeling distressed and you have a sort of poverty of rewards, too, because you're sort of you [snorts] know, you're not getting great feedback from the rest of the world about great job at work, great job here, you know, sometimes because this vicious cycle of what what you're doing with the getting high and being undependable and whatever all that other crap that goes with it.

[00:00:27]>> Mhm. You're just your life sucks. And so you start wanting to use dissociative strategies to get away from the distress and drugs will help you do that. And and so part of what we think, you know, when we do this work >> [snorts] >> we think about how do you create healthy forms of reward and healthy forms of regulation?

[00:00:54]Because if you have those, that's [clears throat] really the only way that you're going to be able to sort of create circumstances for somebody to get to the point where they can then in a sustained way act on what they want to do. You know, if they really want to it's really hard if you have been struggling with this stuff. It's really hard even though you have good intentions in a moment it's hard to sustain that under tremendous distress.

[00:01:22]That's right.

[00:01:23]>> And um so and I believe that a lot of the neurobiological vulnerabilities that relate to making it more likely that somebody will use and more likely that somebody will use maladaptive ways to get reward and regulation, um that those kind of predispose you for um overusing substances.

[00:01:46]And but I think that if you can again, if if in the same way that you would treat somebody who has a predominant trauma-related presentation if [snorts] you give them opportunities for appropriately dosed and spaced opportunities for success, then that are relationally scaffolded, right? You've got a relational density where people are around that who can be respectful and regulating and and aware of all of this stuff. I think that that will go a long way in helping somebody who's struggling with a drug.