This headline (and note article is from 2014) is... not ideal. I think I take the most issue with "simply" -- as if recovering from any addiction is simple in any way.
First off, I am 100% sure some people do "simply" grow out of their addiction. But what does that mean? What life changes happened during that period of growth that caused addiction to be a more manageable personal issue?
For me, most recently at least, it was when I simply could not find a vein anymore. I had always had poor vein access and after close to 5 years of IV'ing black tar heroin, I had more abscesses than I had available veins. Muscling tar is not pleasant, often leads to an abscesses at the injection site, and has poor bioavailability, but if you are sick and have spent 20 minutes poking yourself at least 20 times (hopefully going through 2-3 syringes in the process as well, and having to deal with backloading your dose), the option becomes more appealing. All of this poking around looking for a flash leads to abscesses as well.
With a lifetime of poor vein access, I was doing all the things they did to me in the hospital when I needed an IV: heated blankets, hydration, using alcohol swabs, tourniquets, at least attempting to rotate injection sites, and so on. When I discovered my hands and feet had slightly easier access, I was elated, but that only lasted a couple years, and it really, really, really hurts to miss in your hands and feet.
Is that what they mean by "simply growing out of it"? If so, I feel kind of insulted.
Eventually, after simply not being able to get high via IV anymore unless I got lucky, I did one last big detox (probably at least my 20th, including 2 in-patient ones), went back to my suboxone doctor, and have been stable on a low-ish dose of the sublingual suboxone for several years now.
In my recovery I have been to hundreds of NA/AA meetings and volunteered with harm reduction groups and this concept of "I simply grew out of it" is not a common theme. What is much more common are things like 1) I couldn't stand sleeping outside anymore, 2) I got pregnant, 3) I ran out of vein access, 4) I had a real opportunity to stop using and took it (like rehab or strong social support or job support), 5) I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and so on.
Just to be sure, I am not saying "simply growing out of addiction" via "natural recovery" -- as the article discusses -- is not a thing. It's just not enough of a thing to warrant much attention on. A sincere congrats to the people who grow out of it (and, like I said, I'd like to hear more about what that growth process looked like), now let's help the millions of others who haven't.
20 detoxes ? Holy crap, I salute your persistence. I was never a user, but 'rented' rooms (ok, I let em crash on my couch/stay at my house etc.,...OK, I was a fucking enabler, whatever) to several recovering (and non-recovering) H/meth/crack addicts. They all had legal and family problems that just buried them in never ending toil inside the system. I eventually picked up a case, and had to attend 20 something NA meetings myself. One of the most shocking things I remember was this old guy who had 20 years clean and then he relapsed. Wow. I just feel for these people that've fallen into this shit. I wish I could tell em something that would help, but I don't know...it's a terrible fork in the road.
First - I'm really glad that you are alive to post this, and it sounds like that wasn't a given based on your story.
I wanted to comment on one of your last sentences - that "natural recovery" doesn't warrant attention. I think there's a certain bias here given your own experience. If you go twelve step meetings, you'll find people who's lives were on the brink of ruin and who have pulled themselves back by living the steps. But I think even NA/AA would acknowledge that the percentage of people who walk into an meeting once who get sober and continue to attend meetings is small (if I had to proffer a guess, it'd be less than 10%, but I don't have a good basis for that). So the question is really "what happens to the other 90%"? Some will certainly die from their addictions, destroying themselves and the lives of their loved ones in the process. Others are going to "grow out" of their addictions. It may be that the percentage who grow out of their addictions is actually higher than the AA percentage (and that seems to be what the article implies). That actually _does_ merit attention (and I think we'll find that in most cases the growth mirrors some of the steps that you'd see in AA, just without AA).
Of course, those that _don't_ grow out of their addictions would be far better served working a program, and we don't have a good way to distinguish which group any addict is in, so that puts us back to where we are, which is in not knowing the best way to treat addiction. :(
(Personal note: I was clearly an addict and alcoholic in my late teens and twenties, and this period of time involved multiple trips to rehab, as well as AA/NA meetings. None of that "worked" for me, but what worked was the development of some additional maturity (late 20's) that was able to see a life that I wanted which was incompatible with my behavior. As an adult in my 40's, nobody would define me as an alcoholic or an addict. I'll occasionally drink, but drinking to excess really just doesn't fit into my life anymore.)
I appreciate your anecdote. I have no experience with heroin, but I imagine softer drugs with relatively mild or non existent withdrawal symptoms carry the kind of addiction kind you can grow out of. Say, pot, or various amphetamines.
It's so difficult to answer this as everyone's experience will be different. I do know that there were certain periods of my life where I didn't smoke pot because I was just very active with something or the other and did not want to be lazy. But I was probably using an upper during that time to "be productive".
There's also got to be some kind of chemical/medical aspect to how a certain substance affects you individually, apart from how it affects everyone else. I was more of a cafeteria drug user and got bored really quickly and the only objective was to be high(or low), not necessarily an obsession with one kind of drug. For instance, heroin withdrawals were never stereotypical for me. I'd always thought of it as a high wearing off, and would fix it with any other drug that was available, it didn't strictly have to be heroin.
I agree with you. I think the "I simply grew out of it" is a realization that comes when I think about it after a couple years clean. It's obviously not that simple, and there were many other factors involved. It's also the easiest answer when I ask myself why I'm clean, rather than the hundreds of other reasons I would actually have to list. So I think it might just be a lazy answer for most people who are clean. I know it is for me.
Isn't this formulation a bit extreme? I understand and agree somewhat with this concept in general terms but maybe not everyone had a reason for addiction, or maybe that reason was intrinsically localized in the past, a problem long solved that left the addiction behind.
Telling someone that they will surely relapse based on an equally anecdotal assumption looks unjustified to me.
First off, I am 100% sure some people do "simply" grow out of their addiction. But what does that mean? What life changes happened during that period of growth that caused addiction to be a more manageable personal issue?
For me, most recently at least, it was when I simply could not find a vein anymore. I had always had poor vein access and after close to 5 years of IV'ing black tar heroin, I had more abscesses than I had available veins. Muscling tar is not pleasant, often leads to an abscesses at the injection site, and has poor bioavailability, but if you are sick and have spent 20 minutes poking yourself at least 20 times (hopefully going through 2-3 syringes in the process as well, and having to deal with backloading your dose), the option becomes more appealing. All of this poking around looking for a flash leads to abscesses as well.
With a lifetime of poor vein access, I was doing all the things they did to me in the hospital when I needed an IV: heated blankets, hydration, using alcohol swabs, tourniquets, at least attempting to rotate injection sites, and so on. When I discovered my hands and feet had slightly easier access, I was elated, but that only lasted a couple years, and it really, really, really hurts to miss in your hands and feet.
Is that what they mean by "simply growing out of it"? If so, I feel kind of insulted.
Eventually, after simply not being able to get high via IV anymore unless I got lucky, I did one last big detox (probably at least my 20th, including 2 in-patient ones), went back to my suboxone doctor, and have been stable on a low-ish dose of the sublingual suboxone for several years now.
In my recovery I have been to hundreds of NA/AA meetings and volunteered with harm reduction groups and this concept of "I simply grew out of it" is not a common theme. What is much more common are things like 1) I couldn't stand sleeping outside anymore, 2) I got pregnant, 3) I ran out of vein access, 4) I had a real opportunity to stop using and took it (like rehab or strong social support or job support), 5) I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and so on.
Just to be sure, I am not saying "simply growing out of addiction" via "natural recovery" -- as the article discusses -- is not a thing. It's just not enough of a thing to warrant much attention on. A sincere congrats to the people who grow out of it (and, like I said, I'd like to hear more about what that growth process looked like), now let's help the millions of others who haven't.