A misery addict has a hard enough life. She doesn’t deserve the pain of other addictions or conditions.
If only life were fair.
Most misery addicts deal with at least one other big-time difficulty. Kali Rose has chemically caused depression and attention deficit disorder (ADD). Helena has depression. Merril is dysthymic and has dissociative disorder. Sanderson is an alcoholic.
Did the other disorder contribute to these people’s misery addiction? Perhaps.
In the case of ADD, it’s a real possibility. Parents of children with undiagnosed attention deficit disorder often get overwhelmed and irritated when their children keep forgetting things, including the rules. Their frustration can feel like rejection. They can become too angry.
When alcoholics become sober, they are often surprised to discover that they have another disorder, one that was buried underneath the alcoholism. In fact, their slide into alcoholism may have been an unconscious attempt to medicate that disorder.
With misery addiction, which came first? In the case of a misery addict with depression, did the depression cause the misery addiction, or did the negative consequences from the misery addiction cause the depression? It’s difficult to say.
We know that trauma can cause physically based depression. Childhood trauma messes up the brain’s soothing systems, and the body needs some outside source to make up for the deficit. Alcohol, drugs, food, and excessive exercise can be the tools for this.
In terms of treatment, it doesn’t matter which came first. Each of the issues requires attention. Regardless of which disorder led to which, a misery addict will use the sister disorder in the service of the misery addiction.
Thus recovery from misery addiction may not take hold if the other disorder goes untreated. Certainly a drinking alcoholic isn’t going to have a mind clear enough for the penetrating work of misery addiction recovery. Yet if the misery addiction isn’t attended to in a timely fashion, the improvements wrought by sobriety could trigger a relapse back to drinking.
A person with untreated depression might not have the energy to take all the steps recovery requires. Untreated ADD may interrupt a person’s ability to sustain his focus on the steps required for recovery.
So treatment for sister disorders must proceed in concert with the recovery process.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Actually there are pills for most of these other disorders. But we’re talking misery addiction here. If a person is addicted to misery, is she going to take a pill that makes her feel better?
That’s the catch.
There are numerous effective treatments for depression these days. If you’re depressed, you picked the right century for it. But misery addicts are notorious for wanting to discontinue their depression medication. And they’ll pick the worst time to do it.
In the Pacific Northwest, for example, it’s seriously dark in the winter. Winter is not the season to throw away your Prozac.
How about when your husband leaves you? Or when you discover your wife’s having an affair? Would that be a good time?
When you’re changing jobs and shouldn’t be rocking your emotional boat, how about then?
A misery addict’s thing is self-sabotage. If a medication will help a condition, a misery addict’s tendency is to keep going off that medication, and at the worst possible time.