Symptom Substitution

Jane* once reached out to me concerning her struggles. She was in a treatment facility, getting help for bulimia and self-injury behaviors. Jane informed me she just started smoking. And, as a way of “honoring” her challenges with eating disorders, she also got a tattoo and a nose piercing.

I asked her what her treatment center thought about these choices. She told me they preferred she focused on her recovery, not any distraction from it. But, since she was an adult, she was free to make her own choices. They could not stand in her way. Indeed, Jane was so excited about these choices, telling me how smoking, the tattoo and the piercing were far better than the eating disorder and self-injury behaviors which landed her in the facility.

But I saw something else instead. Indeed, someone struggling with an addiction or disorder can often become convinced they’re improving if they just switch one behavior for another.

I tried to do this myself.

Back in college, when I experienced an intervention with my roommates and the college’s social services department concerning my disordered eating, I was confronted about calling psychic hotlines.

Desperate for answers and relief from my bulimia, I spent hours dialing these phone numbers.

But the psychic hotlines could not heal my issues. Only further complications resulted, the phone bill being just one consequence.

So, this quote concerning substitution, for me, strongly resonates...

“Symptom Substitution has taught us that if you don’t address everything all at once, you will forever be chasing the symptoms instead of dealing with the root of the problem.”

Indeed, distraction/substitution is a tricky issue for those in recovery. After all, how many meetings are filled with people chain smoking and drinking endless cups of coffee?

And often, the need manifests to commemorate the struggle, the courage and the life-affirming recovery process, via body modification. Tattoos of a date representing someone’s last drink, for instance, often surface.

Combined with chain smoking and coffee drinking behaviors, we declare, “No, I’m not using; no I’m not sick. No, I’m not enslaved.”

But, again, substituting one addiction for another is not the answer and furthermore, may even be more of a complication to long term health. I have had recovering alcoholic family members die of cancer because of their “substitutes.”

And some of my friends have regretted their piercings and tattoos. Their recovery eventually moves on and they have come to view their body modifications as ineffectual coping attempts.

John Lennon once sang, “Whatever gets you through the night, it’s all right.” When one is desperate, any avenue will do.

We tend to see the substitution/distraction as possessing the power to reinvent and heal from past wounds.

But, these external choices only produce the disappointment of feeling lost when life is not perfectly solved.

Instead, the substitution/distraction enables one to avoid the actual pain. But dealing with the pain is the answer.

Accept no substitutes.

*Name changed.

Copyright © 2019 by Sheryle Cruse