The Trap Of Addiction And The Birth Of Dissociative Nihilism

5 weeks ago, I badly sprained both of my knees working out. So I had to stop. Not just going to the gym, but socialising, going to the office, and any activity that requires walking. Locked inside my flat, depression soon followed, and, shortly after that, the drinking started. However, it mutated, changed. I stopped drinking to manage the depression of confinement. It became an escape from itself. Which left me with one key question, "Why?"

I'm no stranger to substituting suffering with substance. I would argue it started young, when I began overeating as a way to cope with the undiagnosed C-PTSD systems. Even though, at the time, I had a counsellor to help me get control over it. Nothing would help. I didn't like being so overweight, but it felt, at times, that people around me thought that I did. Teasing and bullying at school was endless, especially in primary school. I wanted nothing more than to not be housed within this current body. Despite that, I couldn't stop, and it continues in some form to this very day. I will note, I am much lighter now than I was at my heaviest after years of self-work and improvement.

That is the key contradiction of addiction; it's not enjoyable. There seems to be some notion that the people who engage in addiction, regardless of what it is, have some level of choice in the situation. Which is arguably true. It is a choice to drink that bottle or to eat that burger. However, this way of thinking misses a key component in this equation. The individual doesn't have choice in the circumstance that creates and facilitates addiction.

This contradiction creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where now the individual is trapped between what they want and where they are. Working out, for me, was a replacement for eating. Both would please my brain and satisfy my emotions, but only one was removing me from my goals. So whenever I drank or ate, I knew how much it was damaging me. It doesn't matter at that moment, though. I needed to quell the painful contradiction of yesterday's binge. Then tomorrow, yesterday's. Then yesterday's, and yesterday's. Ad infinitum.

Drinking, and all addiction, is not about moving forward. It's about coping with the past. This is why, despite how clearly doing these things work against my bodily goals, I could not stop. Trapped in this mindset, there is no choice available – and certainly not in an unsupportive environment.

Despite having left school and any social engagement that I'm not interested in. The voices of the past still echo. I don't need a bully to exist physically, because he is so deeply embedded in my psyche. Whenever I drank or overate, he would come back. Mocking me, hitting me, reminding me of how deeply unloveable this bodied person would be. So while physically and neurologically, I was coping with yesterday. My thoughts and emotions were coping with 20 years ago.

All of these contradictions and pains culminate. Not in just in a cognitive dissonance. That started at the second day of drinking. No, this is its bigger, nastier, and ultimately, more destructive brother; dissociative nihilism.

After a month of drinking, it's not only that I hated what I was doing. I fundamentally believed it could not be changed any more. I am destined to be everything they said I was, fat, lazy, unloveable, unintelligent, undeserving; abhorrent.

So I stopped engaging with my body and thoughts to make drinking tolerable. That way, damage being done to my body didn't matter. The suffering in my mind didn't matter. None of it did any more, because it cannot be changed. It existed since the beginning of my time, and it exists now. Ergo, everything else I had been taught about me must also be true. So much so that when I washed, I did not look at the mirror which points towards the shower. I did not look at myself when I dressed. I knew I would hate what I saw, and it would only remind me of how much I had hurt my goals.

This is the vicious trap of dissociative nihilism. It cannot be stopped, or that it is incredibly difficult to stop. It takes immense patience and strength to engage with the subject being dissociated from, to re-engage that those emotions and pain. The deeper its roots go, the more it requires. It closes ourselves off from the world by reaffirming itself in our apparent lack of value. It saps our energy for socialising, and converts it into its own nutrition.

Clearly, though, I had I prevented it through some actions. At 29, despite the month-long binge, I am still 7st/~44kg lighter than I was at my heaviest. My back is no longer in chronic pain, clothes are easier to buy, and I do feel better about my appearance than before. I had started getting out more, and even made a couple of friends. Yes, once addiction and dissociative nihilism implant themselves, they will be there permanently. Their influence can be controlled. That control is gained through replacement.

As I think about how this episode started. It started when I lost access to the gym, my replacement for eating. See, the gym does not merely mean getting fitter and more athletic. It is the actionable antidote to dissociative nihilism. When dissociative nihilism begs us to embrace its truth of permanent suffering. An actionable antidote is evidence to the contrary. Each action with antidote is the next step to our goals and dreams. Not only does performing action feel good in and of itself, its action is meaningfully beneficial outside of action. It doesn't just feel better, it is better by any meaningful measurement.

This is the tenebrous position all addicts find ourselves in. We might find an antidote to prevent its spread. Dissociative nihilism always beckons, it tempts and constantly provokes. Once you find yourself in its trappings, it purposefully tries to close the ability to escape. My return with actionable antidote will not be only exercise. It will include clothing, makeup, and, hopefully, a return to socialising. So it is important to diversify the antidote. It cannot be a single action, relationship, or thing, it must be distributed amongst an interconnecting set of ingredients. That way, when one fails, others remain to share the burden. That was my mistake. One that, after this episode ends, I do not intend to repeat.

Note: Like with most of my posts. These are my experiences and accounts engaging with the subject at hand. There are socioeconomic, communal, psychological, and other factors at play – which will probably become their own posts in the future. I hope people find it insightful and beneficial, it is not intended to be a full guide on overcoming addiction.