CodeMaster

I had a most meaningful talk with my therapist today. I forgot how we got on the subject, but she mentioned how alcoholics (or any drug) makes a person stop maturing at the point they start using, just as everyone has said on here before but I never understood it. She explained it to me and man understanding it helps me a lot, I feel like my heart is healing faster by understanding.

She explained it to me, said when you have a problem or emotional issues, you mature by learning to deal with them and resolving them or talk through them with your partner if thats the case. But for drug addicts, instead of resolving them, they resort to their drug of choice and feel better and hope it just goes away but it never does. Any bitterness they may have had against their significant other or any issues they have just gets buried in the hearts and it adds up.

So when they stop drinking, they all of a sudden have to face all of it, not to mention all the bitterness / anger they held back from letting significant others know about arises and thus it explains why a lot of people who just stop drinking face great hardship not just to kill the addiction of drugs, but facing reality of what theyve buried for so many years. Thus any anger they had towards you (or me specifically) can arise at that time and all hell breaks loose and everything blows up.

It helped me to understand why my ex seemed so crazy when she stopped, it also helped me understand the dry drunk phase, and it also helped me understand its not necessarily cause I was bad to her or that she didnt love me, its just her way of handling feelings has completly changed and she doenst know how to handle it, not to mention, she has a lot of hidden feelings supressed deeply that are all arising now and no drugs to make it go away temporarily. It helped me understand why people tend to be pretty messy at the initial stages of recovery, the sleeping round in the rehab I saw or lack of care for entire families.

She went on to say its common for recoverying alcoholics to say what the hell, I stopped drinking and life is hard, it was better when I was drinking and go back to drinking.

Anyways, she did say this was why EARLY stages of recovery people feel this way, which implied if they can make it through these hard times of recovery for both the drugs and emotionally maturing over time, they are going to be just fnie.

I hope my ex is doing great, I feel less hurt knowing this info, thought I'd share.

Best wishes always