Arnold M. Washton - Willpower Is Not Enough: Understanding and Overcoming Addiction and Compulsion

THIS IS NOT A QUICK-FIX BOOK. If youre looking for an easy, fast answer to addiction, you will not find it here.

Do you feel let down, or even cheated? Did you buy this book thinking that maybe we could provide you with an instant cure for your or someone elses addiction? If so, that could be part of the problem: a limited understanding of addiction and mistaken beliefs about how it can be overcome. Many people think that what the addict needs is greater self-control: If she could just try harder, surely she could stop drinking (or overeating, or getting hooked on unavailable men, or using cocaine). What she needs is willpower.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What prevents an addict from recovering, in fact, is relying on willpower alone. Using willpower, you can get off an addictionfor a week, a month, or even longer. But sooner or later, when life gets stressful, youre very likely to relapse. Or, you might conquer one addiction with willpoweronly to find yourself with a new one, as when Sally stops drinking, but starts abusing prescription drugs; or when Howard stops eating compulsively, but starts using cocaine. In other words, you can use willpower to get rid of the symptom of your addiction, but youll still be vulnerable to relapse or to new compulsive behaviors until you make otherinternalchanges in yourself.

Willpower isnt enough because it springs from the very thinking that causes addictionthe belief that there is a quick-fix to everything and that if we just exert enough control we can avoid all pain and discomfort. Since weve all grown up in a society that relies heavily on quick-fix solutions, its not surprising that when we try to break an addiction we approach it the same way. We think, Theres got to be an easy way.

Using willpower alone to break an addiction is whats called first-order change. It never works very well because the solution comes out of the same mindset as the problem. When an addict has already lost control over her use of a mood-changer, how can yet another attempt at controlling it be a lasting solution?

In second-order change the problemand the solutionare reframed within a different set of concepts and beliefs. Second-order change for addiction means not trying harder to control the addiction, but throwing up your hands and admitting defeatadmitting that you are not in control.

The addict finds this hard to swallow. But that sounds like the opposite of what I should do. Youre telling me to give up. We are, because thats what works. Trying harder and harder to be good enough, to be accepted, to perform better, to look like youre managing, to be normal is part of what makes a person vulnerable to addiction to begin with. So its only when you stop trying , accept yourself right where you are (even if thats addicted), and admit that youre not in control, that you can begin to regain control. Its a paradox, but there are many in recovery.