12-Step: What Is AVE? With DJ

[0:00] Charles: Welcome to the Nekawa podcast. We are here in Brazil at the Nekawa Ibogaine Treatment Center campus and we're doing another one of our student series. We're here with DJ and this is a topic that has come up a lot as we've been in conversations around the campus with every student and so I wanted to bring in his expertise because this is a subject that means a lot to him that he's engaged with a lot and today we're going to be talking about 12-step community and specifically

[0:35] Charles: we're going to be talking about this idea. What was it called again?

[0:39] DJ: The abstinence violation effect.

[0:41] Charles: The abstinence effect. Okay, and we want to talk about that. We want to talk about in general kind of 12-step and the approach that they take but I think we'll center on the abstinence violation effect and expand out from there. So why don't you tell us about that. This was a new concept for me but yeah, why don't you go from there.

[1:05] DJ: Totally. I think that with the abstinence violation effect it stems from this place that.

[1:11] Charles: What is it first? Give us a definition.

[1:13] DJ: Yeah, so it's a phenomenon that takes place where when someone returns to use or as the communities would call it relapse then they engage in this all or nothing thinking with their use and unfortunately in the United States we have a epidemic with opioids still and we have an illicit supply of fentanyl in the country. So people are losing their lives.

[1:37] Charles: Yeah, we were talking about that coming here, walking out here, which we had to walk out into the jungle. We're in the jungle right now where DJ just spent the last few days and there's close, I think it's gone down. It was a hundred thousand people dying a year. I think it's somewhere in the 80s right now but 80-some thousand people dying a year from opioid use which is astronomical when you think about it and we have this very pervasive ideology that says if you use once then you're on a

[2:12] Charles: downward spiral and it's all over and you've got to start over with your chips. You've got to go through this whole process again and you've gone through this, correct? This is something you've actually experienced in your life. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that, like your own personal experience with it before we extrapolate what it means and what maybe we should do differently.

[2:37] DJ: Yeah, absolutely. So my story is I was introduced to recovery circles in 12-step when I was 16 years old. Go. Yeah, very young. A therapist suggested that I go to a 12-step meeting and my parents drove me there when I was 16 years old which looking back I don't think was right for myself and then again at 22 I was more introduced to the program and went a little bit deeper and I think to tell someone who's young that they're going

[3:12] DJ: that they have to spend the right the rest of their life abstinent is a tall order and it's hard. It's a hard thing to accept when you're young.

[3:21] Charles: Yeah, yeah and before we move forward you said your parents took you there when you were 16. I think, you know, not to put any fault on your parents but they didn't know what they were doing, right? They were told by the therapist this is what you should do. Take your son here. 16 you're still exploring life, you're understanding stuff but no we're gonna we're gonna take you here because we think you have a problem and now you're now you're committed to this thing.

[3:48] DJ: Yeah, I felt like I was experimenting just like everyone else and because some guidelines came out that I had more than three drinks it means that I was drinking problematically.

[3:58] Charles: Oh my gosh.

[4:01] DJ: Yeah, I thought and given what was going on at home as well I don't think I was the one that needed to to go to 12-step meeting at the time. So the whole story wasn't wasn't there but yeah it's young for someone to be introduced to something like that.

[4:17] Charles: Yeah, super tough and so then you're there they tell you this is the way you got to do it this way you're you're an addict for life you're going to be in recovery for life you can't touch alcohol you can't touch drugs did that stop you?

[4:34] DJ: For a little bit but ultimately it was something that I couldn't really accept at the time because my peers were it was hard for me to find an avenue being young. So you know it's you feel a lot of shame around your use and in your life when you all of a sudden you have to you take on this identity of an alcoholic or an addict at a very young age and I think identity is it plays a huge role in our lives and when you start to identify as that because you're told to it almost becomes

[5:09] DJ: a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[5:10] Charles: Yeah, self-fulfilling prophecy for sure for sure and so you brought up shame right and and this this AVE what is it it's an abstinence violation effect so this is built upon the idea of shame right because you use you feel ashamed and then because you feel ashamed rather than tell someone or expose yourself you continue to use and you also feel that because you've crossed over this line that you might as well just go balls to the wall and you know see where it goes

[5:45] Charles: right it's like okay I've broken the law now now I'm really gonna see how break it because it's already smashed yeah why not. A friend of mine when I was using used to call it the the fuck-its you get the fuck-its then it doesn't matter anymore you're you're off and so a lot of people go through this they experience the shame they go through a much more difficult process they end up sometimes overdosing or things happen people die you've had people in your life who have who have died because of

[6:21] Charles: you know using afterwards and I want to talk about you know if we were to come back to this okay so we have this abstinence violation effect we have shame we have this idea of relapse I think to me that's a that's a terrible concept I've never liked that concept and when I was using opiates there are plenty of times where I stopped using for a couple weeks then I started using again but I never adopted this terminology and just like I never adopted the terminology of calling myself an addict or any of that and I felt that

[6:56] Charles: that was important that I didn't adopt that terminology and when people say it to me I I don't correct them but I also don't say oh you relapse because this idea of relapsing is like it's like you're I don't know if you you've probably heard the analogy no no person can step in the same river twice right because the river's flowing and it's different water every time and when we think that we're doing something over and over it reinforces the idea that this is all we can do that we can't do anything else and we start to get this in

[7:31] Charles: our mind that oh this is who I am this is always how I am and then we can't get ourselves out of that identity and we think that we're a chronic relapse or I've heard that chronic you know this nonsense but there's actually no such thing as a relapse there's there's you use you maybe you stop you use again but it's not the same thing your years you're maybe months or years older maybe sometimes only days you're a different person you're waking up on a different side of the bed you're thinking things differently you're experiencing that substance differently in that moment and yet for the sake of

[8:07] Charles: categorization we use this term on human beings and put them in a box of an identity simply because we can categorize them what do you think about that

[8:22] DJ: well america we'd love labels we have to label everything and even even from the the dsm5 that we use to to diagnose people um yeah we love these labels and oftentimes you know we're giving labels from an early age

[8:40] Charles: yeah smart kid good kid good boy good girl whatever

[8:46] DJ: yeah or if you're acting up in school then you have ADHD but maybe you just didn't want to sit in a box for um do six hours a day

[8:54] Charles: yeah read fake history

[8:56] DJ: yeah yeah so um we love labels but I think that um labels can often really um almost like marginalize a person in a way big time and when we start to throw around terms like addict and it just adds to the stigma that's that's already there and keeps people in this um in this system that is very hard to get out

[9:22] Charles: yeah yeah I I always and this is something I talk about a lot with you guys is the idea of environment right and we think of environment as our physical environment what's around us physically or who the people were around or maybe even what we what we view or entertain ourselves with but there's also the mental environment like what what boundaries are we putting around our ourself mentally that create the environment that we're operating and thinking about who we are and when I think about environment there's a really wonderful study I like to look at called it's rat park um

[9:58] Charles: [unclear] can't remember his name I should have done some some prep for this podcast but there's a fantastic scientist in I think he's in vancouver huh I don't know I don't know british columbia he's in british columbia and he did this study where he took rats and he put them in a place where they get heroin and cocaine and of course they use it until it's out or they use it till they die but then he also put them in a really beautiful place like a really lovely environment where there's other rats they can mate with there's those little

[10:33] Charles: hit the wheels there's things they can do balls toys whatever and the rats actually voluntarily don't use heroin or cocaine and environment is so important and we live in this one sometimes we can't change our physical environment we live in a city we live in a country we live in a certain way we can change some things but there's some limitation there but our mental environment is totally ours to change it's totally up to us and so many people give away who defines what

[11:08] Charles: their mental environment is to professionals because they think that they know better or they're wiser or parents or you know when you're 16 years old people think you have a problem and they say oh well you you have a problem you're a problematic drinker right they they establish this mental environment this little trigger that kind of puts a wall on you and oftentimes when we have walls we either try to go around them or we feel sick being inside them

[11:44] Charles: so we create these walls and then suddenly it's just a perfect storm for a continuation of creating more walls and more problems that we continue to reinforce this idea that we are broken addicted diseased relapser problematic defective whatever you name it all the stupid things that people say yeah and we and we believe it people other people tell us or we read it in diagnostic manuals or we read it we watch youtube videos we watch any whatever instagram and the the foolishness of

[12:19] Charles: this is ours because we're believing it and I think that's something that I've tried to get across to every one of you and something I want everyone to understand is that you have a choice of what you believe fundamentally you can choose and we all get to believe about ourselves what do we want to be telling ourselves am I am I a chronic relapser or am I an explorer or am I an addict or am I an adventurer or am I powerful or am I powerless

[12:54] Charles: or am I power these things are all so important and more important than anything I think is that what do we tell ourselves so I'm curious like for most of your life you've been telling yourself one thing and then now you're in your late 30s and you're starting to realize something else so why don't you walk us through that a little bit what you've experienced and where you're at today with that

[13:20] DJ: yeah absolutely I feel like I'm at a time in my life where I'm starting to step into myself and understand who I am and part of that process was integrating this addict or person the person that used drugs to cope with life I needed to to integrate that into who I was and I needed to stop running from it and because I ran from it from a long time for a long time and I kept that part of myself at arm’s length because I was so ashamed of who I was and there was people who in my life who would say

[13:55] DJ: this is the best thing that ever happened to me and I could never relate to that because it had been it took my brother from me it took a lot of my life for me and I could never see it for for being a good thing and when I started to to integrate that part of myself into my life and tried to start understanding that I could potentially help people with my story that was a turning point for myself and it's taken a lot of hard work it's taken I needed to go through a lot of stuff in my life I needed to go through all the shadows and all the stuff

[14:31] DJ: that I've leaned on to to make life livable I needed to go through all that and come out on the other side to to be here to walk up on the earth and be the person that I know I can be and there's a lot of power in that and I don't I don't feel powerless anymore um it was I've been told that my entire life and I I felt like something's not right I can take a different stance so once I started to step into that power was what things really started to change

[15:04] Charles: yeah yeah it's it's a brilliant moment that we all get a choice to make is are we going to believe one thing or are we going to believe another thing and we can keep trying to believe the same thing that they've told us for forever and we're going to keep getting the same results you know as they say insanity the definition you can keep doing it that way or you can believe something else and I I know a lot of people at home will say oh that's just arrogance or you know it doesn't let you be humble but it's actually I think it's more humbling to believe that you have power than it is to believe that

[15:39] Charles: you're powerless because when you know that you have power you have this great responsibility and to quote the all-famous uncle ben from spider-man with great power comes great responsibility and we all have great power you have great power I have great power we all have it within us to be responsible to be response able to be able to make a decision to choose to be different and we we forget that so fast we forget it so fast because of everyone around us we're too busy listening to what everyone else

[16:14] Charles: has to say about us and that is the answer to addiction is to reconnect with yourself to reconnect with the nature the nature of yourself this powerful nature that can create can create wonder in this world think about all the humans who have created all the great things in the world you come from that stock you have the same genes you have the same organs you have the same body that they all had and you have the same ability to learn and grow as each of them did and so this idea of power it's something that we

[16:49] Charles: uh there's a there's a wonderful song that I listen to where they say power is not gained power is remembered and I want everyone to remember because it's too too many people are dying thinking that they have no power over their lives so yeah uh man I feel like this is a topic we're gonna we're gonna dive into here but um you know to close it out thinking about the this this situation

[17:24] Charles: around shame and use of drugs there is nothing wrong with you there never was anything wrong with you me or anyone else we chose to do something and we can choose to do something else and yes it's hard and there's suffering and there's pain and there's things we have to go through but such is life there's no point in worrying about it it's better just to get your bags and and start walking

[17:53] DJ: I think we'd love for it to to get to a point where people if they're going to use they feel comfortable reaching out to someone and because it's not worth dying

[18:05] Charles: exactly exactly saying hey I feel like using heroin you know I'm probably going to do this can you come support me or be by me and the person not be like oh no don't do that that's terrible but instead say okay how are you feeling what's going on are you sure you want to do that I'm there for you if you need right what that would be so much of a better response than someone saying oh let me get over there right now we got to get you into a treatment center we got to put you we got to we got to lock you up essentially send you off we got to send you off because you're going to make a mistake

[18:41] Charles: yeah maybe it is a mistake but how are we going to learn from these mistakes if we don't go through them and it's like there's so many people dying already you really think more people are going to die if we change our our attitude about this I don't think so I think it's worth a try to see because I think less people will die yeah maybe more might have issues but the support will be there we'll stop demonizing people

[19:08] DJ: so I think you know what we're doing here in brazil is really taking a holistic approach to this and I believe that's what recovery needs and we've talked about recovery being um this idea that uh recovering something that's been lost that's ourselves so returning back to to who we are and our true essence and um it takes a holistic approach it's not absolutely there's there's many ways to do it

[19:35] Charles: yeah but it wasn't it wasn't ever lost that's the funny thing it wasn't covered up it wasn't anything like that it was just forgotten yep we just forgot for some reason we forgot life made us forget you know there's a lot of there's a lot of things out there trying to get us to forget who and what we are because they want us to be focus our attention on them so that they get what they need yeah so awesome awesome all right well for those of you that are choosing to follow the 12-step path

[20:10] Charles: awesome we're supportive of that and we also encourage you to look beyond look further deeper into what it means to you who you are and what you want to be and for those of you that are seeking something more exploring something more you can come talk to us come to brazil learn watch the podcast learn more how these conversations talk to your friends start questioning what you've been told right start questioning who you think you are and then only then will you discover what's true so

[20:46] Charles: thanks for watching today we hope you enjoyed this this. This the Nekawa podcast charles Johnston here is your host here with dj one of our first students and will be with us for many years to come and yeah if you have comments or questions hit us up