The Addictive Personality by Craig Nakken

I haven't read Nakken's book, but my therapist had me watch a video of Nakken's that really helped me understand some of the things DW describes.  I liked Nakken a lot.

I was particularly struck by Nakken's description of addiction as one of the most painful of diseases and by his observation that suicide among addicts is really an act of self-defensive homicide directed against the Addict personality, whom it becomes so important to destroy that one is willing to die oneself as part of that effort.

It's that profound split of the self that's behind my repeated comments here that we're making a mistake when we try to explain an addict's behavior by modeling him as a single rational actor.

In passing, I've become persuaded that in what DW describes as a personality split between the Self and the Addict, the Self is in many ways the more dangerous of the two personae.  The Self is not at all a healthy individual, but an empty façade which is profoundly abusive toward legitimate and healthy aspects of my being.  The Self posits an impossible ideal and demands that this ideal be made real; but that ideal is an armored shell projecting perfection externally at the cost of ignoring my inner humanity.  The Self is externally polished, but is utterly emotionally empty within.

The Addict, by contrast, is dysfunctional, but at least he feels something.  He has a core of inner honesty that the Self lacks.

What makes the Self especially dangerous is both the fact that he embodies an ideal and the fact that while the Addict appears as a separate being, there is almost no space between me and the Self.  I imagine the Self as my true being, what I aspire to be, what I will be when I am well.

And that is profoundly wrong.  The Self is an ideal, but he is an inhuman, impossible ideal, a being without weaknesses, a thing without imperfections, a being who, in his terror of weakness and dependency, denies and destroys the emotional, the affective, the intimate, the human.

The Self is terrified of being seen honestly as just another human being.  The Addict is terrified of the Self, and of not living up to the standards of the Self.  Rather than working to become the Self, one has to come to understand that much of what drives the Addict is this terror of the Self.  The Addict's way isn't working, but at bottom, the problem isn't the Addict.  The problem is the impossible ideal of the Self, who is willing to destroy and divide my being rather than admit honest imperfection.

The Addict isn't the problem.  He's only the first of the victims.

In recovery, I need not only to discern that separation, but also to understand that neither of the pieces is well.  Neither is my real self.  Both need transformation and reunification if I'm to become well.  And that transformation absolutely must include abandoning the ideals of the Self and realizing that I am not the Self.  That's hard.  After all, the Addict has a separate being, but I've identified so closely with the Self that he lacks even his own name.  That's why he's so terribly dangerous.

Wow.  That just rather wrote itself.  How much of it makes sense to somebody who doesn't feel addiction from inside, I don't know, but I'll go ahead and post it.  I think that what I've said in this post is the absolutely central core of my own recovery.

Tim M.