Understanding Addiction

My TED talk

Written by

Marc

in

Yesterday was the day. I was pretty nervous all week. About every second time I practiced it, I seemed to get something wrong, like taking a wrong turn on a country road and ending up at a muddy dead-end, looking at a swamp. But the auditorium was beautiful. Plush and purple and warm with people who really wanted to be there. The audience was roughly 1,200, and that’s a lot, but the house lights were up halfway, so you could see their faces, and I think that’s what made it okay. I felt their interest and their support.

As my turn approached, I kept expecting my heart to start racing. But it didn’t. I told myself quite a few times: Self-trust, remember? Then when I went out there and started talking, I felt insanely calm, if you can say such a thing. And it just went fine after that. There were a couple of minor goofs, quite a few um’s and ah’s, but nothing too serious. There were even a few chances to crack a joke. For one thing, the clicker that advanced the slides was very sticky, and I had to stab at the button in order to get it to cooperate. While this did not produce gales of laughter, it at least got some chuckles. So here it is.

Today feels like the first day of summer vacation. I even slept in. Now I will study my Dutch for the first time in ages. Lesson this afternoon. And hey, the sun seems to be out!

Comments

44 responses to “My TED talk”

  1. Tamasin

    well done! you deserve to feel proud of this I personally enjoyed it and learned a lot.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Thanks so much! I’m pretty happy with it. 90%.

      Reply
  2. Richard

    Good speech! Informative also – Thanks!

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Thank you!

      Reply
  3. Richard Henry

    For years my trust was in my security blanket, called drugs and alcohol. It was something I could count on getting the job done, that being comfort to the life I was living. Today I have regained my self trust and choose to live a life without alcohol or drugs as part of my daily diet. I guess it is still part of a back up plan when needed but those are far and few in between.
    Thanks Marc

    Reply
  4. Persephone

    Very well done!

    Reply
  5. MB

    Nicely done Marc. It’s hard to condense a lot of spoken information in such a short span of time.

    As for trust in a higher power, I agree that professionals should not rely on the 12 steps as their treatment basis, but as an adjunct – free and readily available – it’s a good resource. The NA model is working for my son.

    My husband and I were raised as atheists (son was raised an atheist), so his construction of a higher power actually squares more with your model than the traditional NA model. His higher power is taken from the cartoon representation of angel and devil on a character’s shoulder at a pivotal moment. The angel is his higher power – it’s that aspect of himself that always makes the right choices and decisions. Granted, perfection in choice and behavior is unrealistic for humans, but it is a goal worth pursuing. So, in many ways, when he appeals to his higher power to remove defects of character, he is asking a part of himself to recognize and modify behaviors that have led or may lead him to use. When he trusts his higher power to guide him to the right choice, he is actually entrusting himself. He’s empowered.

    I was not raised with a religion or faith, but in observing friends with strong beliefs, I sense that their faith is so deep and integrated, that conversations they may have with their god are really internal conversations with themselves. Appealing to a higher power is actually calling to that part of themselves… that believes.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      This is a very important point. I think you’re right: I go too far in emphasizing the schism between trust in a higher power and self-trust. As you say, they may be different faces on the same thing, or they may be aspects of an integrated world view in which God and oneself are deeply connected. I have to think about this more. It opens up many questions about how (if at all) we construe God and to what degree God is a symbol for one’s own higher self. But I find your words really compelling. Thanks for sharing this.

      Reply
      1. Peter

        Yes, this was a very important point for me in my recovery. Being an atheist, I had to try to figure out exactly what relief those folks who believe in God were getting, and I came to the conclusion that it was the believe that I would be OK, forgiven, redeemed.

        This seems to fit with the self trust model. Once I got my head around this idea, it just seemed more possible to succeed. Establishing that thought didn’t happen all at once.

        Churches and 12 step meetings are full of addicts/alcoholics. Belief in God, in and of itself, therefore, doesn’t seem to be the solution. There is more to it than that, and 12 step programs say it is the alignment of my willpower with that of “God’s will for me”. What works for me is the belief in myself that I can be sober, and a good person.

        Reply
        1. Peter

          Great talk too, by the way.

          Reply
        2. MB

          Peter –

          *amen* 😉

          Reply
        3. Marc

          Great to hear, Peter. There does seem to be some kind of click when you find that connection with yourself. It’s sort of corny, but a metaphor that comes to mind is a hand-shake — or maybe a hug — with yourself. What a difference from that continuous diet of self-contempt!

          Thanks for sharing your experience.

          Reply
  6. Janet

    FANTASTIC. You have really given a face and a voice and a soul to the vast “unknownness” (the scariness and helplessness and confusion) of addiction. For everyone. I cried watching this. It was so good.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Wow! Great to hear that you found it so moving, Janet. Thanks for sharing this!

      Reply
      1. petersheath

        Marc that was great. You got such a lot in in such a short space of time. If you want to check out more about higher power, higher self, God and trust have a look at breathing underwater by Richard Rhor. He’s a Roman Catholic priest who writes very eloquently about addiction, scripture, spirituality and religion.

        Reply
        1. Marc

          Interesting stuff, Peter. I took a pretty quick look, but this sentence got to me — it’s about the benefits of helplessness, of reaching bottom.

          “So in a sense, addicts are forced into this place, which is strangely the starting place for all spiritual growth.”

          I just read a scientific article, recommended by Shaun (a blog member), which shows that the cells in the cortex grow and interconnect with increasing density after cocaine addicts quit, and the degree of their growth is correlated with the length of time of their abstinence. But here’s the kicker: After a few months of recovery, this growth process moves beyond the level reached by people who have never been addicted to anything. In other words, you are getting a stronger, more focused brain, just by dint of having been “helpless” and now being…”helped” / “self-helped”… you can fill in the blank.

          Can we put self-trust, God, and the brain in the same sentence? Well we can try.

          Reply
  7. Valeria

    Congratulation Marc,

    enjoy now your deserved rest.

    Reply
  8. Jaliya

    Way to go, Marc! I imagine that to get up on that stage, wrangle with the moody technology, and pace your talk with that huge timer ticking at your feet was a novel challenge…!

    “You trust what you’re addicted to” … There’s the tragedy of it. We *need* to trust someone, something … and since we are mammals, we *need* to cling (attach; bond) to someone, something …

    Betrayal … it seems inevitable, no matter who or what we trust … I’m pondering the people of the American midwest who were pommelled by so many tornadoes and ‘super-storms’ a few days ago. Our most essential sense of trust, I think, is bound with the biospheric systems that sustain our lives — all that the sun, earth, and atmosphere do in concert to sustain existence — and when even our systems of sustenance act to destroy (as in tornadoes), the very ground of our being threatens us. Talk about terror–!

    We cling and we cling … for as long as we live. If we cannot trust the natural bases of life to sustain us, how can we trust anything? If we cannot trust that we are safe simply walking down a busy street on a sunny afternoon (as in the very recent massacre of a soldier in England who was doing just that), how can we trust another human in any way?

    The threats to trust seem often, paradoxically, to be also what we are designed to trust in the first place: other humans, the ground we walk on, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the light that pours into us all. How can we trust our fellow human beings, and our own humanity, when we are the species that also destroys our sources of sustenance?

    (Yikes! — I watched this vid shortly after I woke up today, with not even a full cup of tea in me yet! Very, very rich food for thought.)

    You are so ON about trust, Marc. I keep thinking about your moment of realization, when you had just arrived in your room at boarding school for the first time. Everything utterly new and unfamiliar … and no one, nothing to trust. That does drop the bottom out of one’s world … and it takes a lifetime to regain that ground, if we work and *work* at it. It’s so much easier (in a way, for a while) to deflect ourselves away from the agony of broken existential ground. The pain is ferocious; no wonder we stymie our own consciousness and force ourselves away from feeling.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      We absolutely do need to trust in the world and in other people, in the weather and the ground we walk on. This whole conference was about trust, and you might want to check out some of the other talks. As you say, the things/people we trust are fundamentally untrustworthy, to a degree — but that’s because life is full of chaos, and nothing is perfectly predictable. Well, ok, so that’s the way the world is. So trust becomes more of an act of dancing than an act of leaning. I can go with that.

      Yet there are betrayals and there are betrayals. You’re totally right about the magnitude of the betrayal I felt when I got to boarding school, looked around, and found myself surrounded by some really nasty boys supervised by really nasty men. And, yep, that cut me to the quick — a wound that was certainly soothed by drugs for years.

      But, as I said in my talk, trust in drugs is a way of asking for betrayal. They just don’t work for very long — same with other addictions, I believe. The feeling of waking up empty, with the beginnings of withdrawal symptoms, and no drugs left, and no self-respect left — that was easily as bad as finding myself in boarding school. Only I did it to myself, again and again.

      Reply
  9. Denise

    Hi Marc. There were two edifying and enjoyable experiences in this blog entry: first, your written blog, which gave insights into you as a person, i.e., your anticipatory anxiety before your speech as well as how and why it went away when you gave the speech. As I am a sufferer of shyness and panic attacks when public speaking (as probably a high proportion of addicts are), your words were helpful. Then, to be treated to the speech in video format was terrific. Enjoyed watching and listening to you, and you clarified the dopamine issue for me. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and knowledge, as well as yourself.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Thank you, Denise. That really touches me. Yes, I guess I did share a lot of myself. I felt like I had an anxiety disorder for days — but then it magically evaporated when I looked into, what?, the eyes of the scary beast, and they turned out to be just a bunch of nice mostly Dutch people who seemed to care about what I had to say.

      I’m getting pretty used to the content, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to giving talks like that.

      Reply
  10. Elizabeth

    Very cool! Your delay discounting portion got me thinking: do you think that addicts have a hard time with delay discounting because they may believe that the larger, more distant rewards are more “uncertain”, whereas the drug reward is a more sure-fire thing that will get you out of the current present state of distress? I think you tangentially reference this in your talk. Having trust will enable one to view the future rewards (i.e., better family life, good job, etc…) as actually attainable, and can enable individuals to appropriately delay-discount.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      I think delay discounting is always about the uncertainty of future rewards. I mean there has to be a basic mechanism, and dopamine presumably evolved to get us to focus on the immediate BECAUSE the future is always sketchy. I’m pretty sure that dopamine is at the heart of delay discounting for anyone — there’s that eagerness, the lunging, for the thing you’re about to GET. But addicts have it so bad because they get these geysers of dopamine for the same damn thing every time, while everything else has lost that potency. And each cycle spurs the synaptic shaping that makes the rewards rewarding in the first place.

      Reply
  11. NN

    Well done, Marc,

    As good a wrap-up in 8 mins. as is possible, I’m sure, esp. with a damn huge
    seconds counter at your feet.

    Many of the points have been raised in this blog, so I’ll not rehash.

    What you said, above, to MB, I’d underscore. Arguably the ‘religious experiences’ and ‘spiritual awakenings’ and ‘turnings to a Higher Power’ or even ‘coming to believe in my therapist or group as a source of support’ are *means* to the goal of self trust.

    Where you made an important point in the talk, however, was that some of these means, e.g. specific instance of actions taken in some 12 step groups, seem to work against self trust. Perhaps the conclusion is that *if* one turns to anything or person that’s external, and long-terms relies, perhaps overzealously, on it or him or Him as a means, then that reliance has a way of backfiring or going wrong. Somehow the whole enterprise, at least in some cases, can get subverted. In the human case, the process is rather well known, in that the person who’s rescued you becomes an authority, then a tyrant and so onl.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Beautifully said. Yes, it can be a valuable, even beautiful process….but it can also get subverted. And even if the rescuer doesn’t become a tyrant, how do you ever stop seeing him/HIM/it as your saviour? That is the role relationship you’ve developed and used, perhaps to great advantage, but how do you turn it off, or at least turn it down?

      There certainly are images of God that put him/it inside us, rather than outside us. Maybe that’s the key. But the problem is perhaps even thornier when we rely on doctors and medications to recover. Medicine is a rather authoritarian profession, not usually poised to give the patient back the capacity to cure him- or herself.

      Reply
  12. Calista

    Marc,
    I have been following your blogs for sometime. I am still waiting to get your book. As an active addict, I have yet been able to get it. Your writings give me so much hope. It was nice to see and hear you in the video. And yes that huge count down number was disconcerting to watch. I am currently catching up to your 187th time to try to stop. I am hoping my success comes soon. It is very tiring living this life as an opiate addicted person. Thank you for work and hope.It helps me immensely to not feel so isolated. Trust has always been tough for me, patience too.. One of these days, I hope to be able to write to you and say I have done it, or at least gotten thru the first parts of leaving this dreadful life of seeking and using behind. Thankl you so much. Have you written anything about using as a means of escaping the existential issues we as humans all must face?” Take care and thank you again, Calista

    Reply
    1. Marc

      It is so supremely tiring, isn’t it! I also look forward to receiving your good news. Remember that recovery, like addiction, is a developmental phenomenon. Plants develop (from seeds to maturity), people develop within and beyond childhood, and we continue to grow. So we’re not quite the same one day as we were on previous days. Somehow, that shifting baseline is critical. One day you will have had enough and you’ll find the strength you’re looking for.

      I do sometimes write about “self-medication” — the use of drugs to ease difficult psychological issues, existential or not. In fact, the post I just put up deals with something related: my own painful issues plus some someone else’s rather different issues that were nevertheless soothed by addiction.

      Hoping for you!

      Reply
  13. Bill Abbott

    A great TED talk like so many of them.

    No question of the self trust thing and imo its all tied into the huge burden of feelings of self unworthiness so common in the west . What Tara Brach ( Radical Acceptance) calls the trance of unworthinness .

    This is what I so strongly object to in the 12 step approach – it takes away self empowerment which just aggravates the whole negative cascade . And decreases the power of choice in its insistence of surrender ie powerlessness.

    Ive increasingly turned to the teachings and concepts of buddhism . You are the cause of your suffering and you hold the solutions- in simplisitic terms . Mindfulness is the tool to find them or as Socrates said ” Know thyself”

    Delay discounting is huge – thats one of the essences of addiction. Addicts are way out of balance with ever seeking short term gratifications to the loss of enduring satisfactions – or even more , increasing negative consequences or dissatisfactions .

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Nothing to add to this, Bill. We are clearly of like mind.

      I love that phrase, radical acceptance, and the approach it seems to represent. I’m going to look into that soon… Or maybe I’ll just DO it right now : )

      Reply
  14. IAN

    Marc: Could you just review your spoken TED ‘radish/chocolate cookie lab test’ part of your speech.? You seem to have said that the people who couldn’t eat the cookies don’t do as well with the cognitive test? What do you mean?

    Reply
    1. IAN

      Sorry : I should have also said – congratulations on the speech. Very clear, your words make good sense easily.

      Reply
    2. Marc

      Hi Ian. The phenomenon was first studied by Roy Baumeister. He used this task in 1996. Actually, all subjects had both a bowl of radishes and a bowl of cookies in front of them, for precise experimental control. Then the subjects were randomly assigned to two groups: either (1) you eat the radishes but not the cookies, (2) you eat the cookies but not the radishes. Those forbidden to eat the cookies (the far more attractive option) quit sooner in a very demanding puzzle task. In other words, they gave up due to ego depletion.

      Here’s a link: http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Ego_Depletion

      Hope that helps.

      Reply
  15. Diane

    Hi Marc,
    I really thought it was a great TED. You share so personally about yourself on your blog, I didn’t know what to expect. And there was this calm, authoritative guy – really felt deep respect for both personal and professional aspects of your presentations.
    I host a Serenity Service at my church for people in recovery/friends/supporters and maybe for myself as I wonder if I belong there more as the minister or as an … jeez, can’t even say it! I am going to talk about trust I think and encourage folks to see the TED talk. As part of the divine spark, trusting myself is trusting God, as I see it. But, turning over in powerlessness has never made sense to me. I have respect for the AA folks at my service who view it that way. Trust – seems more powerful, volitional, than surrender…but whatever works when it comes to addiction…thank you for your work.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Indeed, whatever works! It’s a strange paradox. When I get as close to “God” as I ever do (as a fairly decided atheist) in meditation, I do feel a connection with a warmth and acceptance that spreads out well beyond “me”. But it never feels like giving something away. It feels more like welcoming something in. I do often notice a sense of surrender, but it’s just surrendering to reality — nothing more. So perhaps the “God thing” and self-trust are really much more connected than we often suppose, especially in the sometimes controversial rhetoric of the recovery world.

      Good luck with your services!

      Reply
  16. Cheryl

    Can I get a link to this Ted Talk?

    Reply
  17. Cheryl

    I found it 😉 Well Done!!!

    Reply
  18. Gray Lindsay

    Thank you Marc. I have enjoyed following your blog for some time.
    I appreciate too, the valuable insights generously provided by the comments.

    I first became aware of you work after an interview on ABC Radio, in Melbourne, Australia.
    Kind Regards, and Best of Health !!!

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Thanks, Gray. I have fond memories of your beautiful country.

      Reply
  19. Amythist

    That was a great speech, Marc. I really like the self-trust aspect of it. I went to refresh myself on what you said so I could better comment on it, and unfortunately found the video has been removed. Of course that’s typical when someone even mildly criticized the 12-Step way of treatment of alcoholism. But what a shame it got yanked.

    But reading through this thread, I see some really mistaken ideas about the Higher Power being the aspect of the self that makes good decisions and that can be trusted. This idea is completely counter to AA philosophy. In AA the self absolutely CANNOT be trusted. Only God can be trusted to keep one sober only one day at a time, in exchange for being in a “fit spiritual condition”. As evidence of this there are slogans like “My head is a bad neighborhood, I can’t go in there alone.” Or “My best thinking got me here” meaning it was your best thinking that got you addicted to alcohol, not even in recovery. And one of the things that they believe is a cause of alcoholism is “playing God”, of all infinitely insulting things. “First of all, we had to quit playing God.” BB How It Works, p.62. Another thing they say is “There’s only one thing you need to know about God: You’re not him.”

    No, in AA there is a complete separation between God and self, and everything bad flows from the self, while everything good flows from God. In fact, that’s often how they rationalize not knowing God’s will, as promised in the literature. If they do something and it is successful, all praise goes to God. If they do something and it fails, then it was their using their own will that screwed things up. But I can certainly understand the temptation to think it’s otherwise.

    Oh and BTW, I couldn’t remember the name I posted with the last time I commented on your blog. I just don’t want you to think I was trying to be deceptive.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      Hi Amythist. (nothing wrong with a name change) Wow, this is really shocking. I didn’t know things were so very polarized in AA parlance. If you see my reply to Dianne, just above, you’ll note that I believe there needn’t be any tension between a sense of something out there, different, warm, embracing, cosmic, etc, etc, and a sense of self-trust. So these divisive phrasings from AA are really troubling.

      A lot of what I learn about AA I learn from this blog, and granted it’s a biased sample. But the feeling that you absolutely cannot trust yourself does strike me as destructive, even a kind of torture, because you can never not be yourself.

      I’ve read in various places that recovery rates for AA are poor, especially if you include those who attend a single meeting as the sample. And yet it helps some people. And yet, and yet, it seems a lot of those who’ve tried AA, and end up pro or con, make mention of this fundamental unease they feel toward aspects of AA philosophy. Thank you for elaborating the details.

      Reply
  20. Persephone

    Marc, can you repost the video yourself? It appears to be gone now.

    Reply
    1. Marc

      It’s back!

      Reply
      1. Persephone

        So it is! Great!

        Reply
  21. Fred

    Marc I really liked the talk. The key part for me was when you said addicts need to find a “part of themselves” that they can trust. For me, I envisioned that part as my “best self”, which I conceive of as being more connected to the divine. So, trusting God made it easier for me to access and trust my best self. I see no conflict and actually see union here. I can see now that in early sobriety, I was forming a trusting relationship with a part of myself that could overcome my addiction. I chose to credit God, but that’s just the label that was helpful and salient and that allowed the trusting to occur.

    As for Amythist’s quoting of AA slogans and literature above, I can simply say that there are as many ways to understand and experience spirituality in AA as there are alcoholics. One can read those texts as damning to self-trust, and one can read them as supportive of self-trust (if we accept the idea that God is allied with and an element of our best self). “My best thinking…”, for example, doesn’t mean we can’t use our heads to stay sober. It means that when we were in our addictions, we had a lot of rationalizations and smarts that contributed to our downward spiral. In recovery, to me it means keeping some humility about my ability to think my way through my problems on my own. It’s encouraged me to open up my life, take counsel from people who really know me, and listen if I’m getting static. I think better when I think in the open and take input.

    That’s not to excuse those who use those slogans to berate and to bully and to belittle. I know, from this blog, that it happens with some. But that is not the 12-step I’ve experienced.

    Reply

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