Alderson - Addictions Counseling Today: Substances and Addictive Behaviors

Substances and Addictive Behaviors

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alderson, Kevin, author.

Title: Addictions counseling today : substances and addictive behaviors / Kevin Alderson, University of Calgary.

Description: Los Angeles : SAGE, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019028128 | ISBN 978-1-4833-0826-5 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-5443-9231-8 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-5443-9233-2 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Substance abuseTreatment. | Substance abusePatientsCounseling of.

Classification: LCC RC564 .A42 2020 | DDC 362.29dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028128

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

I am an addict. I now understand why, as much as any of us truly knows ourselves. Perhaps these four words seem unsavory, but the flavors of our lives are not something we randomly pick from a smorgasbord. But heres the thing: I am flawed, and so are you. We are but imperfect human beings living our lives among a myriad of problems and issues. Given a particular set of circumstances, you could be the next one to sit in a counseling office.

Some of you are also addicts. Your drug or behavior of addiction may be different, but as in the lyrics to I Am... I Said by Neil Diamond, The storys the same one. We were not born as perfect slates. Like me, your suffering may have gone unnoticed even by you for years. The power of our unconscious minds to keep the obvious from becoming hurtful is truly remarkable.

If you are an addict, two sayings may be particularly pertinent to you in your developing awareness:

1. The unexamined life is not worth living (attributed to the philosopher Socrates).
2. Be the change that you wish to see in the world (an abridged quote from Mohandas K. Gandhi).

These two sayings remind us that (a) self-awareness is critical if we want to get better and (b) we cannot hope for a better existence if we are not prepared to work at changing ourselves.

Some scholars and counselors today do not use the word addict. This is a semantic endeavor to adopt English Prime (i.e., E-Prime), which is an adaptation of the English language that removes all versions of the word, to be. Semantically, E-Prime makes sense because we are more than any word(s) used to describe us. For example, addicts are more than addicted persons. They enact many roles in life, and the addict is only one of them. Surprisingly little research has been done anywhere in the world that explores drinkers self-identification, let alone regarding those addicted to other substances or addictive behaviors (Callinan, Pennay, & Livingston, 2017).

However, no one raises an eyebrow when I say, I am a counseling psychologist, I am a father, or I am married. When eyebrows are raised, it usually concerns a stigmatized identity label, and the word addict certainly falls into this category, and so do all of the other mental disorders labeled in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Although we can E-Prime out particular identities, those of us who are addicts understand what this word means to us. With over 40 years of on-off dysregulation, I know that if I return to using, I will insidiously return to my previous levels of use within no time. Nonetheless, in most places in this book, you will find that I use the word addict as an adjective instead of as a noun.

I would be remiss not to reveal that my counseling heroes are humanists like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and existentialists like Viktor Frankl, and, although my journey toward becoming harmonious, real, and genuine has felt like an eternity, writing this text represents my most authentic expression of self-actualization. As an existential humanist, I think that the personal is political, and I believe that self-disclosure is appropriate if it helps you in some way.

An appropriate subtitle for this textbook might have been The Book That Almost Didnt Happen