Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
Paradoxes of Trauma and Addiction Recovery
Geral T. Blanchard • July 22, 2023
According to author Anna Lemke, M.D., author of Dopamine Nation, “The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.”
In a culture with pleasure opportunities at every turn, she contends, “too much pleasure leads to pain.” Then there is this thing called anhedonia, when we no longer can feel enjoyment doing things that were once quite enjoyable. Lemke goes on, “The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.”
I’m reminded of Aldous Huxley who wrote Brave New World Revisited. In it he noted our almost infinite appetite for distraction from life. It appears as though persistent efforts to insulate ourselves from pain seem only to have made our pain worse. The trick may be to stop avoiding painful emotions, to sit a spell and notice them until they naturally subside and, in the process, get acquainted with that side of life -- with us.
But sitting quietly in our own company can be very boring. In repose, we may automatically flip into a default state and quickly jump into a state of self-judgment or shame. Well, maybe boredom is more than boring. For many of us it can also be terrifying. We end up sitting with painful feelings about ourselves.
The temptation is to squelch anything that starts to feel unpleasant or unsettling. But with that reflex, another paradox can rear its confounding head. For example, individuals with anxiety and insomnia often rush to their physician for a prescription to numb them from that part of life. Commonly, Xanax or Klonopin (sedative hypnotics) are the ticket. But take them for more than a month and guess what? Anxiety and insomnia worsen, only to have the dose raised.
It has been shown that individuals who take opioids (or even ibuprofen) for more than a month are at increased risk not only for opioid addiction but also worsened pain, even in regions of the body that once were pain free. Pain killers can eventually create pain. This phenomenon is called opioid-induced hyperalgesia. Our dutiful brain is just doing its darndest to return to homeostasis, the brain condition experienced before we messed things up with psychotropic drugs.
Stimulant medications like Adderall and Ritalin which are routinely prescribed for attention deficit disorder. Beyond the advertised benefits for ADD, many people take the drugs to help study and prepare for exams. The drugs promote short-term memory – attention and retention, but there is virtually no evidence for improvement in long-term memory, complex cognitions, or overall better academic performance. It may not be smart to experiment with these smart drugs. Over the long-haul users of Adderall can develop a dependency and carry the risk of psychosis as well.
Then there are the antidepressants which, ironically, eventually become depressants (tardive dysphoria). While once not thought to be habit-forming (due to effective marketing), we now know that at best they can lead to tolerance, at worst to addiction. And withdrawing from both SSNIs and SSRIs can be absolutely hellish, more difficult to come down from than heroin. And the withdrawal process can last many months, perhaps even longer than a year, leaving a wide array of damaging side effects – cognitively, intestinally, neurologically, and psychologically. How depressing!
Pain commonly precedes pleasure. The idea was first documented by Plato who said, “…wherever the one is found, the other follows up.” But are we too impatient to wait for good results? Like sadness or depression, we would prefer to entirely do without these natural states.
Socrates also noticed how an improved mood followed a period of being ill. Somewhat similar, for those of us who once were addicted to running or some other aerobic exercise, know of the endorphin and endocannabinoid high that follows a robust workout. In essence, pleasure is the natural reward for enduring pain. A marathoner learns that if you run toward pain, you will be rewarded with a pleasant buzz soon thereafter.
Cold baths, even ice baths, can be jolting if not painful. Researchers at Charles University in Prague recruited a group of men who sat in 57-degree water for one hour. Using blood samples, the researchers noted dopamine and norepinephrine (both natural antidepressants) levels increased dramatically – 250 and 530 percent respectively. And the results lingered for one to two hours thereafter. Discomfort precipitated mental pleasure without any pills being ingested. And other studies have revealed that animals exposed to extreme cold experience brain neuronal growth. Don’t forget, humans are one form of animal.
Socially, especially after a history of interpersonal trauma, many people prefer to avoid unnerving social gatherings. Rather than experience any emotional discomfort, the temptation might be to avoid social gatherings altogether, to isolate and become a recluse. Over time the penchant to avoid discomfort further trains the brain to become increasingly more distressed, even by simply envisaging a social outing.
What are the implications of all of this when it comes to MDMA and trauma recovery? One of the lessons to be garnered may be that our perspective on painful emotional and physical experiences has become somewhat lopsided. Perhaps pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin, and our task is to flip the current Western paradigm. Using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy we may very well find that behind difficult if not traumatic life experiences, there may be a rich and rewarding life waiting to follow. Pain may actually be a healer waiting in the wings. Now that’s a paradox.
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“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche
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Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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In recent years psychotherapists have become increasingly aware of the risk of transmitting trauma intergenerationally. By examining the impact of the Holocaust, or the experiences of Native Americans who were systematically abused by colonizers including the Catholic Church, it becomes obvious that indirect passage of depression, despair, anxiety, and damaged self-regard are but a few of the ancestral legacies of uninterrupted abuse. If, however, trauma can be passed from generation to generation without direct experience, could it also be possible for the reverse to happen?
Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
There are many emotional reactions to a drug-free spiritual awakening experience and a ceremonial MDMA journey. While this article focuses on empathy – both the feeling and the cognitive component – it is obvious to those who have awakened from a spiritual emergency that a variety of related emotions arise.
It is one thing to imagine how another person feels. Psychopaths, despite what the general public believes, are very good at empathy on an intellectual level. Even criminal psychopaths can put themselves in another person’s position and understand their perspective. It is bigger, better, and far healthier when empathy, in its deepest sense, allows us to “feel with” other people by recognizing a sense of oneness with them, what’s called unity consciousness. To hurt others would be to hurt ourselves.
It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
First, a definition of projection: This is evident when an individual attributes their own unacceptable impulses onto others. For example, a person might accuse others of engaging in thievery when, in fact, they are swindling money from their employer. Some of the behaviors and thoughts we are most ashamed of could be called shadows. We can see them first in other people before we can “call them out” in ourselves. We are defending against humiliation and mortification lest we be exposed.
Does this empathogen work in a similar manner as psychedelics, blasting us off to a sudden and dramatic awakening of the mind and soul? Not necessarily. Much like massive stress, psychedelics and MDMA can knock people off an unhealthy path and offer them an entirely different trajectory, but there is a lot of arduous individual work that must follow the use of these propellants.
So, could it be concluded that MDMA is a transcendent spiritual event -- a chemical event, or perhaps a neurological experience? By themselves, both seem unlikely. They can change activity in the brain, but enlightenment comes from hard work before and after their use. Entheogens and empathogens likely have a catalytic but not a primary casual effect in awakening.
Many events in life can change us, some in profound ways, others somewhat superficially. Some positively, some negatively. Some temporarily, some permanently. Let’s break it down.
With the “help” of psychology and the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD, an entire trauma industry has developed. Much help has been delivered and, unfortunately, in many instances the assigned labels stick like glue and there can be difficulty relinquishing the newly imposed identity of “breakage.”
Many life events are transformative:
Many great minds have come out of India. Like countless spelling bee champions, Mahatma Gandhi, and Aurobindo Ghose who later took on the name of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo became a highly regarded spiritual teacher and author in the twentieth century. His main insight was that what many humans experience during altered or higher states of consciousness are glimpses of the future of evolution. And, he contended, one day these states of expansion will be normal for the whole human race.
Countless numbers of people are seeking the unity consciousness that MDMA can offer. It can make them feel bigger. And more deeply connected and powerful. Like many billions of tiny ants inching a fourteen-wheeler up a hill, every tiny bit of effort pulls the big rig along. Similarly, each one of the eight billion or so people residing on our planet today may, via a combined assemblage of singular efforts, raise their individual consciousness, while tugging the entire race forward.
“Where did all the time go?” That is the ubiquitous question every patient asks after a treatment. They ingest the medicine at 9 a.m. and, after what seems like perhaps an hour or so but was actually five or six, and once the eye mask comes off there is bewilderment as to just how much time has passed. Of course, this is all built on the bedrock notion in Western culture that time is a straight line and linear manifestation. And that there is such a thing as time! Stepping out of existing paradigms, even if for a brief “time” can be eye opening while your eyes are closed.
Traditional Native American cultures have long believed that time is a circular phenomenon. Remotely like the movie Groundhog Day suggests, every day is very similar and reoccurring like the last. In indigenous worldviews, the sun rises and the sun sets, routinely; we always have a predictable reset of sorts, the start of what we call a “new day,” or what Arapahos called “sleeps,” both reflecting measurements of time.
Dark nights of the soul as Saint John of the Cross called those long, despairing periods of our life, are never easy, in fact they are usually dreadful. They are so necessarily awful and so damn long because some of us don’t do subtlety very well. If we are open to these moments, even a tiny bit, they can serve as an internally calculated and blaring wakeup call that will guide us to solace.
John Nelson, in Healing the Split, refers to a fleeting or ephemeral sense of a higher purpose, not fully conceptualized, but compellingly near the heart. It holds answers to life’s pain but isn’t quite within our grasp…at least until the dark clouds engulf us. Then, with great staying power and inexperience matched with trust, a spiritual emergence nears surface awareness. And it always happens, as psychiatrist Stan Groff defined it, around the time of a blurry spiritual emergency.