Alcoholism and Trauma: Alcohol Addiction Treatment at Home
Most people don't necessarily know what triggers them, but nonetheless, once you know the vocabulary of trauma, you can notice yourself feeling "triggery". This is one of the first steps in releasing trauma successfully.In order to understand how trauma causes alcoholism or other types of addiction, you have to first understand that trauma hijacks our mind-body interface. This interface is known as the autonomic nervous system. It is an extensive network of nerves that are so prolific in the body that if you took acid and dissolved every structure except the autonomic nervous system, our basic body shape and appearance would still be intact. Let’s imagine this extensive network of nerves as a super-high-tech human body suit.
The autonomic nervous system or rather, the high tech human body suit that we wear during our lives on earth is exquisitely sensitive to all kinds of data in our environment. The body suit can pick up the time of day or night based on the sun and the moon. If we expose the body suit to nature on a regular basis, it can sense the season and subtle changes in the weather. This body suit picks up changes in electromagnetic frequencies and it can sense other people, their presence and different bits of information about their energy field. But for many of us, the powers latent in this high tech body suit go completely unnoticed and untapped. By the time we enter our twenties, we live almost exclusively in our minds, which are like a giant penthouse poised atop this high tech suit. While our minds are excellent at absorbing the rules of our family, rules of our culture, rules of our religion, and rules of our government to try to come up with logical ways to live, the body is a wild animal. The mind hates this about the body. Our culture teaches us that to be wild is to be bad. But without our wild nature, we lack the 6th (or 7th or 8th) sense that the high-tech human body suit understands. We are both logical, but a big part of our successful and happy existence on earth requires that we check-in with our wild nature, learn how to use this high-tech human suit, and allow our wildness to guide us in situations where logic simply does not make sense.
The autonomic nervous system, our high tech human suit, is essential to our survival on this planet. It is made of ashes and dust and it knows this world in a particular way that our minds simply do not. What our bodies experience in the real world can be traumatic, but it can also be really joyful and magical. In today’s world, the mind is constantly being pinged to give attention to all kinds of miscellaneous information, but sometimes, we have to shut off the mind and just feel. This sounds easy enough, but trauma is like a computer virus that hijacks our high-tech human suit. It creates glitches and bugs in the suit. When we’ve experienced trauma and failed to release that trauma via the high-tech human suit, it gets uncomfortable to be human. We feel like “crawling out of our skin”. We can’t stand to feel what it feels like to be present inside that high-tech human suit. The feelings in there get really chaotic and out of control. So we move up into our minds and commit to staying there at all costs. The mind then sets to work at punishing us for being wild animals and for having any sort of wildness to our existence. Each time the mind disses the high-tech human suit and whatever we’ve done in our lives as a result of something that we felt or sensed through this suit, we feel worse. As the mind makes the argument that the things we did to survive in the past were somehow wrong, we know that we’re disowning a part of ourselves that we need in order to survive on planet earth.
This mind-body “problem” creates barriers to the release of the trauma that ultimately makes the human suit nearly unlivable. But the release of trauma is actually something very simple that takes just minutes if our minds will allow the process to unfold.
Click here to watch a video of what it looks like for a mammal to “shake off” trauma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDlR-wl7iFI
The word “trauma” has been used primarily in psychology to describe something that happens after a person goes to war. Post-TRAUMAtic Stress Disorder (PTSD), for example, is a mental illness that gives a nod to trauma as something that plays a role in creating extreme emotional discomfort. But recent research has shown that trauma can be used to explain most of the mental illnesses that exist today.
Trauma can be anything from a painful dental appointment to being hit by a bus. It can involve nothing but the perceived threat of death (as opposed to an actual threat of death) or it can be caused by neglect that’s perceived by a child as threatening to the child’s survival. Trauma is defined as the real or perceived threat of death of yourself or a loved one and as such, it is a subjective experience. Whether or not any given situation is perceived by the body as “traumatic” depends on many factors, but once trauma gets lodged in the body, specifically in the autonomic nervous system, it is no longer a conscious memory and the conscious mind can’t explain it in words.
Trauma makes us want to ignore how our bodies feel because we feel emotions in our bodies. When trauma gets stored in the autonomic nervous system, any number of “triggers” can set off the emotional content as something that we feel – like a feeling that’s been frozen in time – but all other information about the traumatic event is no longer connected to this feeling. So a person might be exposed to a trigger without realizing it and without having any awareness as to what the trigger is and suddenly begin to feel a powerful emotion like fear, anger, or sadness. This “free-floating emotion” of terror, rage, or extreme sadness changes the way that the person experiences the real world. You can be sitting in a peaceful meadow watching two butterflies playing with each other and be possessed by a feeling of terror due to a trauma that occurred decades prior. How the mind tries to make sense of this “free-floating terror” (and other negative emotions) that tend to emerge in response to either a trigger or from passing from an alpha brain wave state to a theta brain wave state, determines which of the various mental illnesses the person might be diagnosed with should they go to see a psychiatrist.
Releasing the trauma means releasing the mental illness as well as the awful feelings that emerge from the abyss of our subconscious minds.
It’s important to consider the effect of trauma in alcoholism because anything that disrupts the dopamine system is likely to disrupt the autonomic nervous system’s ability to release trauma. If dopamine receptors are killed by the flooding of dopamine or by droughts of dopamine and a lack of a steady drip of this essential decision-making neurotransmitter, trauma, or rather, the incomplete actions that we weren’t able to take in response to something terrifying, sad, or maddening can get stuck in our autonomic nervous system.
If you’ve ever been talking with a good friend about something really important to you and were interrupted mid-sentence and mid-thought and the conversation then ended and never resumed, you have just a taste of what it’s like for your autonomic nervous system, the part of our bodies that interface between the body and the mind, to be zinged by a traumatic event. When we aren’t able to run away, save ourselves, scream, yell, or perform any number of actions that we might feel like doing if we were able during the experience of something traumatic, we store this feeling, this strong urge to perform a powerful action in the autonomic nervous system. The urge to scream or run away is encoded as an emotion of terror, for example, in the autonomic nervous system.
Sexual abuse, for example, often involves a bigger or stronger person who forces a sex act on a person who feels as though it’s necessary to comply with the bigger / stronger person’s wishes. Though the victim in a scenario like this may feel like running away, screaming, yelling, kicking, or fighting, he or she complies for any number of reasons related to the sense that if he / she does not comply, he / she may be hurt or killed (or a loved one might be hurt or killed). Suppressing the urge to run away or fight against an oppressor is traumatic. It builds up in the body and it has to be released. Usually, the release of trauma is a quiet and gentle affair that involves breath and subtle movements. Despite this, most of us brace ourselves against the feelings that trauma generates in the body. We do anything we can to avoid feeling those feelings.
Most people can’t identify the specific traumatic experiences that might contribute to an addictive cycle because trauma, once it is stored in the body, is not something that operate in the conscious mind. Rather, trauma operates unconsciously, in the symbolic “mind-body” of the autonomic nervous system. As with a computer that has a virus, trauma can drag down the whole system and take up a lot of the resources in terms of thinking and decision making. Trauma can cause issues like panic attacks, psychosis, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and almost any other mental disorder including sexual dysfunction, and other forms of addiction by overwhelming the autonomic nervous system with symbolic artifacts that hijack our conscious, logical minds. When our bodies feel terror, our minds try to make sense out of this terror based on the real world. When the mind can’t make sense out of a free-floating emotion like terror that has no basis in fact in the real world, our minds are quickly recruited to come up with creative ways to explain and make sense of the problem. Indeed, our bodies can take on some of the burden too through the sudden development of “autoimmunity”, “arthritis”, “chronic fatigue”, etc. Having a physical disease is often less unpleasant for people than having the feeling of terror when there’s actually peace reigning in the real world.
Killing dopamine receptors seems to keep trauma at a very slow trickle out of the mind-body of the autonomic nervous system which might explain why any addiction that kills dopamine receptors can be like a form of self-treatment for trauma. In some cases, as dopamine receptors are killed, the trauma gets “stuck” in the body. As an alcoholic begins to take Kudzu and Mucuna pruriens on the other hand, along with other supportive nutrients, trauma may begin to rise from the unconscious into the conscious mind to cause issues like panic attacks, depression, or other mental health issues. This may sound scary, but if we think of panic attacks, depression, and most other symptoms of mental illness as “steam” that’s being vented from a pressure cooker that’s about to explode, we can understand these symptoms as being a part of a cure.
In today’s world, traumatic experiences literally happen to people on a daily or at least a weekly basis. The healthcare system itself is a huge source of trauma. People are traumatized, in fact, by the diagnostic labels that have been pasted onto the symptomatic release of trauma and their process of healing. So trauma is a problem that accumulates over time and the goal is to release trauma at a steady pace and to learn how to release trauma to keep ourselves healthy. This is an important focal point for anyone who is doing alcohol recovery at home. Begin working with at home treatments for trauma as soon as you feel like you’re ready. Be aware of your tools and get to know which ones you prefer as your alcohol recovery process unfolds.
It’s important for people with alcohol use disorder to note that odd things can happen as their body starts to heal. Otherwise, many alcoholics feel like they’ve overcome alcoholism only to develop a mental or physical illness. In fact, these two things are related: as dopamine levels and dopamine receptors heal, trauma that’s been acting to drag down the body’s “system” for years rises to the surface to be released (this is a good thing if you know what’s going on). The release of trauma can look like almost any kind of mental illness (including schizophrenia, panic attacks, depression, etc.) as well as any number of physical illnesses or symptoms or chronic physical pain. This might sound scary, but in fact, if patients are able to seek out treatments to help them release the trauma fully, they’ll begin healing from alcoholism on a whole new level.
Click here to read a bit more about my own experience with trauma and later panic attacks (in this article in the section titled “The Psychological Layer”) that were due to a dental appointment.
It’s important to note here that talk therapies can be helpful but they are remarkably slow in comparison with body-mind-based trauma-focused therapies that can be used to release big batches of trauma quickly. Talk therapy is not a way to access the autonomic nervous system unless you’re working with hypnotherapy or another type of talk therapy that bypasses the conscious mind. Of all of the treatments for trauma in alcoholics that work the fastest and that work best to release trauma to a point of completion, the sacred medicines are the best. I have personally worked with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing / EMDR with excellent results, but you can only work on one unit of trauma at a time. This can be really helpful when you’re doing at home alcohol recovery because EMDR can quell feelings of panic, terror, depression, etc. It works quickly and it’s very effective. But sacred medicines like Ayahuasca not only work to heal the autonomic nervous system to release trauma, but they also help us heal the body, specifically the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas, along with our most valued relationships. A person with alcohol addiction due to trauma, should consider working with Ayahuasca at some point in the recovery process simply to rebuild beta cells in the pancreas and at the same time, experience the power of being counseled by this plant medicine to move forward in the addiction recovery process with exponential speed.
Click here to do a free trial of EMDR online.
Below are some of the most important trauma-release therapies that can be used to release trauma that causes alcoholism and other forms of addiction:
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- EMDR is a treatment modality that can be performed at home to release trauma that causes addiction. It is an elegantly simple form of treatment where the eyes are guided to move back and forth, but it’s powerful. Click on this link to do a free trial of EMDR at home. Note that you need to religiously follow the instructions in this program for best results.
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Mindfulness meditation involves bringing oneself into the present moment using the five senses. Trauma is always a situation that happened in the past (though often people feel great anxiety about the future as a result of these past traumas). Bringing the self into the present moment rewires the brain.
- Craniosacral Therapy
- Craniosacral therapy is a type of massage that moves the cranial bones so as to relieve pressure on the cranial nerves. Indeed, negative thoughts actually cause our upper vertebrae and cranial bones to move out of alignment, causing pressure on cranial nerves (which are part of the autonomic nervous system). This can lead to physical manifestations of disease as well as mental illness caused by trauma.
- Alpha-Theta Therapy
- Alpha-Theta therapy requires that you work with a therapist, but this type of treatment involves moving trauma from the unconscious autonomic nervous system into conscious awareness for release.
- Neurofeedback
- Neurofeedback involves the use of electronic devices to reward the brain for being calm and for staying present. It is a powerful tool for overcoming trauma that causes addiction.
- Sacred Medicines
- The sacred medicines are the fastest way to release trauma that is causing you discomfort (mental, physical, spiritual). The sacred medicines listed below each take people to different levels of consciousness or other worlds. Lydian and I have worked intensively with each of these herbs under the tutelage of a shaman in Mexico to learn how they release trauma. Contact us at [email protected] for more information about working with any of the sacred medicines in Mexico listed below:
- Psilocybin
- Ayahuasca
- Sapito
- Peyote
- Kambo
- Sananga
- Dream herbs
- The sacred medicines are the fastest way to release trauma that is causing you discomfort (mental, physical, spiritual). The sacred medicines listed below each take people to different levels of consciousness or other worlds. Lydian and I have worked intensively with each of these herbs under the tutelage of a shaman in Mexico to learn how they release trauma. Contact us at [email protected] for more information about working with any of the sacred medicines in Mexico listed below:
Click here to buy psilocybin online.
In summary, trauma likely plays a role in most addictions, but nutrient deficiencies that lead to dopamine deficiencies can make it harder for the body to release trauma naturally through dreams, for example. The release of trauma is often a rather quiet process.
Click here to buy The Anti-Addiction Encyclopedia.
