Grieving the Death of Addiction

As a systemic therapist, I look at most everything through the lens of relationships. In working with my substance-dependent patients, the analogy of addiction to a drug is no different.

Like a new relationship, at first, the use is thrilling. There’s the high, the intimacy, the butterflies that come from anticipation of time spent together. When that time becomes more frequent, the attachment becomes stronger. Then comes the increased time spent getting high, followed by the isolation, the cravings for the drug, and placing the addiction as the only priority in one’s life. The feeling of love may even be developed.

The dependence continually intensifies, money is spent to excess, and the “relationship” can become a full-time job to maintain. The drug becomes a permanent fixture that will never leave them.

What once was exploratory and fun becomes dependent, shameful, and confining, further polarizing the relationship with addiction from the real relationships with everyone else.

“My husband actually thought I was having an affair because of the time spent away from the family," a patient once reported to me in explaining her relationship with prescription opiates. He knew I was lying about something, but he couldn’t figure out what was happening.” 

“I wasn’t having an affair with any other person, but Oxy became my best friend. I was in love with it and never wanted to be separated from it,” she said.

In my recovery-based work, I personify addiction as a means to help my patients understand the severity of their addiction and their need to separate themselves from it to progress within their recoveries.

In working with these patients in treatment, there is a significant emotional response when they come to understand that, to move forward in their recovery, they must first say goodbye to the notion of ever being able to have a healthy relationship with their addiction.

This is where the analogy of death comes into fruition.

Why Does the Relationship With Addiction Have to Be Explained as Grieving a Death?

Thankfully, relationships with people can be improved. People can grow and work to resolve problems.

Conversely, one may try to get back together with their toxic “ex,” and find that the honeymoon stage is transitory, and the same underlying problems continue to surface.

I equate the latter process to a relapse; to be healthy, we must separate ourselves from the unhealthy. And as morbid as it may seem, comparing the relationship with addiction to death provides a concrete finality that addicts need to reach the stage of acceptance.

They must understand that, despite how much a part of them loves their addiction and wants a relationship with it forever, their addiction will never be able to reciprocate healthy love in return.

Death in this regard is the symbolization of the ending of a very deep relationship.

It’s important to endure the grief process to understand the depth of the addiction itself, but to surrender also means to accept the death and move on from it.

How Does One Go About Applying the Analogy of Grief to Addiction Treatment?

In working with grief itself, I’ve come to understand that:

1. It, unfortunately, is a lifelong process
2. It endures many stages, several times over.

That’s when the Kübler-Ross model (1969) of the five stages of grief comes into the limelight.

For those needing a refresher, the stages are Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Depression, and Acceptance. When applying this analogy of grieving the death of addiction, I explain and process each stage with my patients for us to understand where they are in their overall recovery.

Denial

This reflects addiction in its active stage, when it can be hard to acknowledge that the costs of maintaining the relationship outweigh its benefits.

Denial may show up as an unwillingness to let go of the relationship due to fear of change, fear of pain, and/or fear of “doing the work” involved in the grieving (and recovery) process.

In this stage, denial often appears as the belief that the problem lies with everyone else, not with them.

“I’ve got this handled; I can manage it on my own.” The person may not yet recognize how harmful the relationship is and may defend it to others.

A common stance may be, “Why would it hurt me?” The person might recognize the pain the relationship has caused others, yet still struggle to believe it could harm them, too.

Bargaining

Relapse can be common in this stage, even when someone has achieved a period of sobriety.

The person may try to bargain with recovery by “only having a few drinks,” staying close with friends who still use substances, or avoiding talking openly about sobriety in an effort to minimize how serious the problem has been.

Statements like, “I didn’t tell anyone I was sober outside of the people in my meetings, and I relapsed a few weeks after I got out of treatment,” are often shared by patients who return to treatment during this phase.

In this stage, the person may feel desperate to prove to themselves and others that the relationship with substances isn’t harmful, insisting that “things will be different this time” or that they “can control it this time.”

They may blame others for why things aren’t working or direct strong emotions toward those who encourage separation from substance use.

Even as they begin to realize that the addiction isn’t fully within their control, they may still work hard to demonstrate whatever sense of control they can maintain.

Anger

This is the stage where the person may feel anger as the reality becomes clear: the relationship with substances is harmful, has caused pain, and can’t be controlled.

That anger can stem from recognizing the toll addiction has taken. They may also feel a sense of abandonment or betrayal by the substance use itself, especially after having defended it earlier on.

I also believe anger is often a secondary emotion that can cover deeper hurt and propel us toward action.

In this stage, anger may be directed toward the substance use or inward toward oneself for having allowed so much harm.

As a result, the person may feel a strong, urgent drive to reclaim responsibility and take action to step away from the relationship.

Depression

Beyond the low mood that can accompany the brain’s recalibration after substance use (often described as a shift in the “hedonic set point”; Brickman & Campbell, 1971), depression is often the primary emotion that anger has been covering.

In this stage, it can take many forms. This is where the person may feel profound sadness as they recognize the wreckage caused by addiction. As one patient put it, “I became very sad once I realized how I let the addiction treat me and how it abandoned me.”

Depression may also arise as they reflect on how they treated themselves throughout active substance use. In this stage, someone may also feel depressed as they come to terms with the possibility that they won’t be able to drink or use again and that they may need to say goodbye to that relationship for good.

Grief can show up in the loss of imagined “normal” moments, like having a glass of champagne at a wedding, or the hope of returning to “responsible” use, the way it may have seemed earlier on.

It can also surface around the reality that recovery requires ongoing attention, often day by day. Depression here can resemble acceptance, but it tends to carry a heavier emotional weight. It reflects the deep grief that can emerge when a person in recovery begins to truly mourn the loss of the relationship with substances.

Acceptance

This is the triumphant stage in which the person in recovery accepts the loss of their relationship and begins to apply the conceptualization of living life free from addiction.

This is the stage in which the recovered readily acknowledge that the fantasized wedding champagne toast could lead to a DUI following the reception, that the hangovers were exponentially worse than the highs, and that they want to experience lasting, healthy relationships in the future.

Acceptance is vocalizing the understanding that this relationship is a disease that will only continue to kill them if they continue to keep it alive. Acceptance takes form as surrender, as freedom, and as the choice that the recovered make in order to say goodbye to this relationship forever.

In my experience, those who reach this stage are active in their recoveries and go on to assist others in earlier stages of this grieving process. The recovered have accepted the death of their addiction and go on to lead lives that are not without struggle, but the most important change is that they are now able to lead their own lives again.

If you’re grieving substance use and navigating early recovery emotions, you don’t have to do it alone. Recovery.com can help you explore and compare treatment options, levels of care, and supportive programs.