Addiction - a polydynamic dance of the figure ground theory

Polymorphic -  occurring in several different forms, 

Polydynamic - Pertaining to or having many powers or forces

I have always been a big advocate for the thinking and energy around recovery capital and at the same time really trying to use my experience in the sector by sharing the learning around why addiction should not be held any longer in the impasse narrative around substance use, dependency or obvious impact. 

I want to share something that has been sitting with me for while and like the idea itself will never be a finished article but a fluid and agile process like our mental and physical health. 

The culmination of so many things in people’s lives can bring about the conditions where an unhealthy attachment can occur. My own personal thoughts on this are around affect regulation, resilience and everyone’s search for meaning, purpose and security. I agree that whether through experience of trying to maintain an addiction or previous lived experience we need to be mindful of trauma but not in the current frame that I am seeing nationally, I feel so inspired by the energy and dialogue I am hearing across the country about the impact of trauma and have grown so much from the wisdom of so many but I personally hope there is not much of a time lag between understanding trauma and being more mindful of the adaptations as opposed to the historic events. If we begin to frame people through their traumatic experiences we are risking a confluence that could open the relational door to a greater impasse that slows down the whole movement towards health, wellbeing and healing. 

I think my previous comments are easy to role out as a statement of hope but I would also like to share how I think this can occur. I was recently reading and listening to podcasts about the nucleus accumbens and the reward centre as I was interested to hear how this is currently being viewed in relation to addiction. I do hold beliefs that internalised messages can also impact the reward centre in the brain as well as the biological and medical impacts. 

As part of this meandering reflection I found myself reading the drug strategies and other guidance, I have always respected and admired the difficult process that must occur in writing a drug strategy, this is a fixed point document for a field that is a vibrant mix of polarities, flex and impasse. This statement has always felt like a contradiction when writing as I know and many people I have met have shared that a life in addiction is both chaotic and repetitive in both subtle and loud ways. This leads me to my thoughts around field theory and if we look at a life lived in addiction where substance is the dominant force that drags issues, needs, people, emotion, health etc into the figurative space as and when required or impacted by use then it risks becoming a linear view. If this is the case, people living a polydynamic life style centred or viewed through substance acquisition and use then we start the understanding in a non relational space. Here is the issue, we have developed our support through the emergent issues of supply and demand of substances, I.e. we try to meet the person through an understanding of what substances they are dependent on and how this impacts their lives as opposed to why this dependence may be occurring, therefore become confluent with the addiction consequences, meaning that from my perspective and through the lens of the clinical, psychosocial and relational approaches we are always going to be one step behind, as we can see when we find ourselves chasing drug trends of both illicit and prescribed problematic consumption, and it’s time to get one step in front. 

This for me means changing the way we view the psychosocial offer and being more supportive around harm minimisation and substitute prescribing offers. Our current national data for people leaving treatment in the sector I work in is static and if I’m honest worrying, especially as we seeing an increase in drug and alcohol related deaths and harm across the UK. I am currently working on a Relational-polymorphic method of therapy to support people who want to understand and challenge their addiction. This relies on some fundamental theories and modalities of therapy being integrated in an almost parallel process to the humanistic integration a person has to experience when challenging their unhealthy relationships with objects or people. The method of this also acknowledges that the key relationships in this healing with self, other and the world needs emphasis on coming back to the origin of internalised relationships. It is key to understand how they manifest internally thus predetermining and to some degree forecasting the inevitability of life chances through projection, transference and many other interruptions at our own contact boundary. 

In a nutshell, the fluidity of the addiction adaptations are working at a polymorphic level that outsmarts the research, data and systems we have in place so a relationally centred polymorphic approach is required to attune to the dynamics of people in and impacted by addiction. 

This in turn we also release the amazing hope, compassion and empathy of so many people to enter the relational experience and become the generation who truly carry home the narrative that addiction is about people and not substances. 

Andy Ryan

Twitter @In_to_recovery