ACTIONADDICTION IS COMMITTED TO GIVING YOU THE BEST POSSIBLE ADVICE
Actionaddiction is committed to giving you the best possible advice. Our clinical work is carried out in close collaboration with two qualified and certified professionals:
Gérard Chevalier & David Delapalme from the CDCOUNSELLING practice who together have 45 years’ experience as authors, conference speakers, trainers and psychotherapists (individual and family) in France and the United Kingdom.
Yes, it is possible escape the grip of addiction!
Recovery is within the grasp of everyone who wants it and the stigmata of the illness can be overcome with personalised and completely confidential care that has been tried and tested over many years in several countries and that has led to a profound change in people’s lives and their relationships with those around them.
- + Actionaddiction will care for the person as well as the illness.
- + Actionaddiction will treat people with dignity and respect.
- + Actionaddiction will support all patients / clients throughout their care, treatment and the long-term recovery process resulting in a marked improvement in quality of life.
- + Actionaddiction will always act in the best interest of individuals.
IS ADDICTION A QUESTION OF MORALITY?
Observation of an addict’s destructive behaviour, whether via alcohol, illegal drugs, psychotropic medicines, sex, gambling or food, and the painful consequences of such behaviour, can lead one to ask whether addicts are immoral or simply bad people.
Morality can be simply defined as a choice to conform to the rules and norms of social behaviour. Thus, for an addict to be devoid of morality implies that they have no choice over their behaviour.
In the past it was thought that the seat of addiction was in the brain’s frontal cortex. That is the seat of will, rationality, consciousness and also of morality. With the enormous strides made in neuroscience and the necessary contribution of laboratory mice, we have discovered that addiction is actually based in the central part of the brain where unconscious and involuntary survival instincts are found. The mice gorged on cocaine until death ensued contrary to any survival instinct. However, the mice did not choose to become addicts.
When an addict is anxious, their brain produces cortisol (the stress hormone) which blocks the production of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that functions in a variety of ways on behaviour, cognition, motivation, reward, sleep and memory). We all need the functions of dopamine and the common denominator of all drugs and addictive behaviour is to trigger the release of large amounts of dopamine. When an addict is taken over by anxiety and all pleasure disappears, they turn to the best means that they know to get dopamine rapidly. The substance or behaviour thus becomes a primordial survival tool, which is what we call a ‘craving’.
In a healthy brain, the frontal cortex exercises control over the central brain. From the moment when anxiety becomes overwhelming, that control reverses and hands over to the central brain which then focuses on the production of dopamine. It is at that moment that the addict loses their ability to choose. Here at Actionaddiction we see people every day who have chosen above all else, the addictive substances and/or behaviour to the detriment of their health, their family, their work and their freedom. This situation, aggravated by denial, reinforces the idea that the addict cannot survive without using the substance and/or behaviour and be, at the same time, conscious of the consequences of their behaviour.
In some ways addiction is a malfunction of the ability to choose. This loss of choice means that addiction is not a question of morality. Addiction is an illness of the brain that is progressive, incurable and fatal. That is why the Minnesota Method of care and the 12 Steps programme are indispensable. Treatment by the Minnesota Method enables the individual to become abstinent so that brain functions can be restored, denial can be beaten and they can put themselves on the path to recovery. The 12 Steps programme provides very useful tools for the management of anxiety and the return of the ability to choose to the frontal cortex. Millions of people have recovered using these methods and there is hope if health professionals, families, friends and employers will do what is required by working with active addicts.
