When Self-Medication Doesn’t Work
Image by Matteo Badini
By work I mean make problems go away or resolve them. Self-medication, especially through the use of drugs, is rooted in impatience, and an urgent desire to make things better. Usually with the intent to do so as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. There is a type of logic to this thinking that is understandable when you consider the fact that people exert a tremendous amount of effort to bear their pain and hide their suffering from others.
It makes sense to look for easy solutions in such circumstances and expecting anyone in this position to double down on the work of eating well, sleeping enough, exercising regularly, and maintaining social connections is asking a lot. And yet, this is exactly what is required, what should be asked, and what should be promoted. All of these are called forms of self-care, but they are also forms of self-medication because engaging in these activities affects you in all of the same ways, altering your mood, emotions, brain chemistry, your life.
Discomfort is a side-effect of change, and what most people mean when they say they dislike change, is that they dislike being uncomfortable. When people are reasonably sure that change will lead to more pleasure and comfort they embrace it openly. The issue with adaptive methods of creating change is that the positive results are usually not immediate and must build up over time, and time, along with patience, are luxuries not often given by those who are suffering. Improving the diet, starting the exercise routine, taking the medications daily, attending the therapy sessions weekly. They all yield positive benefits, after the initial challenge of starting. Substance abuse, on the other hand, provides immediate relief without posing any initial challenges, which makes it an enticing choice, until one considers the painful side-effects that come after and last much longer than any ill effects that come from making other types of changes.
Failure to thoroughly consider this reality is what sets off the intolerable cycle where the remedy is also the source of pain, which can only be alleviated, one thinks, by getting more and more of the remedy. The record of the chaos this cycle produces is well-established: in reality the only way to experience genuine relief is by accepting that the journey towards healing will be undertaken with a certain level of discomfort. Accepting that working on oneself in all the aforementioned ways is worth the effort of pushing past one’s current capacities, and maintaining, if only for a little bit, the hope that things will get better.