The big core principle in The Freedom Model for Addictions is the idea that you can base your choice to quit/moderate your substance use around the conscious belief that quitting or moderating is the happier option than your current style of heavy use. I bolded the ier at the end of happier in the previous sentence to be clear about the fact that quitting doesn’t automatically lead to bliss, nor is heavy use necessarily bliss – nor do you have to live in constant bliss/joy to stay quit or successfully moderate. You only need to believe that your change can make you happier than heavy use did or would.
The point is that if you really see it that way, it doesn’t take strength to change, because you’re truly motivated to change. This is as opposed to feeling obligated to quit, or quitting out of fear and to avoid costs only. Those strategies leave you feeling like you’re losing, missing out, or deprived without heavy substance use. When you’re focused on the genuine benefits of change though, quitting or moderating feels like a win – and that’s key to sustaining it. People make panicked decisions to quit every day, and quickly change their minds, going back to heavy use. Some stay sober with a constant sense of deprivation, and struggle painfully to hold it together, sometimes for years followed by an explosion back into heavy use. You hear stories like this every day, especially in support group meetings.
Prior to publishing The Freedom Model for Addictions: Escape the Treatment and Recovery Trap, my colleagues at BRI had a program called The Saint Jude Program, which was different in many ways but had the same core principles. In these previous iterations of our approach (there were 13 updated editions of The Saint Jude Program taught at our retreats for the past few decades) what we’ve often ended up communicating, or people ended up perceiving even though we didn’t say it, is the idea that you have to achieve some kind of constant blissful state of happiness to keep you sober – or else you’ll “relapse.” We had great success with those learning materials, including a 62% independently verified long-term abstinence rate. But of course, there were (and always will be, no matter what) people who went back to heavy usage and felt like failures. We had to listen to, and learn from those people in order to improve our results. They often explained their “relapses” in two common ways.
Some used the explanation of the “underlying causes of addiction and self-medication” model that’s been extremely popular in the recovery world for the past two decades. They explained that they experienced too much anxiety, depression, or other negative emotions and life problems, and so they were helplessly driven back to heavy substance use to self-medicate these problems with drugs and alcohol. We did not explicitly promote this model, and we even spoke against it in the 13th edition of The Saint Jude Program. Yet, we still might have implicitly validated it, because our program had a lot of content that dealt with these life problems, including an in-depth self-analysis exercise designed to help people come to peace with their past and problems. We included this content in part because we partially believed it was needed, and because people were constantly asking for it. We had let our students and their families drive our program to some degree in this regard, and that was a mistake. They were mainly asking for this sort of help because the recovery culture had convinced them and popularized the idea that it was needed. It seemed harmless to offer this help, and in fact it was helpful for those problems in most cases. However, we offer a program for people to help them make choices about substance use, and the inclusion of help for these other problems within that program implies that these issues must be causally connected. They do not have to be connected, and it’s better if they’re not. When new life problems arise, the connection leads people to believe that those problems will somehow trigger heavy substance use, and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We were also mainly learning of this danger from new guests at our retreats who’d been to many other programs and treatments. They came in talking about how everything was going well after their last treatment, and then a problem hit and “caused” a “relapse.”
So in The Freedom Model for Addictions, we tackled this head on. We present the facts, including the fact that those “underlying causes” of “co-occuring disorders” such as mood disorders and anxiety disorders do not reduce the probability of getting over a substance use problem. This was revealed in data from NESARC. Furthermore, we present the fact that in epidemiological data, people resolve their “substance use disorders” at a much higher and quicker rate than any other mental disorder. That being the case, people usually get over substance use problems before they get over depression, anxiety, and the like. You don’t have to be problem free to be substance free. Beyond presenting these facts, we made the much tougher and radical choice to not include any content that seeks to help people with their other life problems. This had to be done in order to break the implicit connection. We should have learned this lesson from Jack Trimpey’s work (author of Rational Recovery) long ago. Don’t get me wrong now, we don’t tell people to just suffer with their other problems – we tell them to go do and get whatever help they think they need to deal with those problems – but don’t make the choice to quit or reduce substance use contingent on a problem-free life. Resolving your substance use problem allows you to better address those other problems – it’s not the other way around like the recovery culture says. I should also note that Heather & Robertson’s 1981 book Controlled Drinking presents a ton of evidence to back up this point too.
So to sum up, we broke the implicit connection between “underlying causes” by not including any material meant to address other life problems, and we broke the explicit connection by directly addressing it throughout the book. For example, we teach that depression doesn’t cause substance use, but some people may think depression is a good reason to use substances. They reason that alcohol and other drugs will help them deal with depression. We demonstrate that this and other supposed healing powers of substances are mostly illusions in chapters 17-20. We also had to repeatedly clarify that you don’t have to be happy first to solve your problem, you only need to believe that the options of quitting or moderating will make you somewhat happier than heavy use.
Here’s an excerpt from chapter 16 of The Freedom Model as an example of some these points:
Unhappiness Isn’t a Cause of Heavy Substance Use
With all our talk about heavy substance use being driven by the pursuit of happiness, there is a common misconception people have about The Freedom Model. They think that we’re saying depression or unhappiness causes heavy substance use. This is the most common learned connection. The next logical misconception is that the solution to heavy substance use is to get over unhappiness or depression first and then sobriety will follow. Let’s be clear and firm about this: we do not believe nor mean to teach that heavy substance use is caused by unhappiness or relieved by happiness.
You can be genuinely unhappy or depressed and not feel the slightest need or desire for heavy substance use. In fact, 80% of people with mood disorders do not have substance use problems, and the minority who have both substance use problems and mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar, have no special difficulty getting over their substance use problems. Their rates of “recovery” are just as high as those who don’t have these problems (Lopez-Quintero et al., 2011). Take a moment to let that sink in because it’s contrary to our cultural belief.
No matter what your current level of happiness is— whether you’re depressed or living in constant bliss— you will prefer heavy substance use if you see it as your best path to happiness, and you will not prefer it if you don’t see it as your best path to happiness.
The solution to your substance use problems is not to get happier first but to simply cease to believe that heavy substance use is your best available option for acquiring happiness. Again, trying to resolve unhappiness first is indirect and keeps heavy troubling use alive as a potential option for when unhappiness hits again. That learned connection is dangerous to keep fixed. Carefully exploring the three options with a focus on benefits is the most direct path to developing a lasting preference change that could eradicate any further attraction to troubling heavy substance use patterns. Furthermore, when you no longer feel dependent on heavy substance use and stop paying all its costs, you regain so many resources that can now be devoted to building your happiest life possible.
Focus on goals can cause an implicit connection too
The other similar way that people made the connection between life problems and heavy substance use is through goal setting and goal failure. Goal setting was a huge part of our program, and families really wanted it for their loved ones since much of the demo who came to our retreats were often directionless young people. The hope is that if their loved ones can become occupied with other things, they won’t feel the need to use substances or even have the time to do so. I believed heavily in this myself as one of the most important parts of the program. Yet, when I look back at the early days when I had happily quit all substances, I basically had no goals whatsoever, save for just learning how to live with some stability and normalcy again. It wasn’t until about a year after I quit using substances that I finally started to seriously consider some real goals for my life.
Furthermore, there are also plenty of highly successful goal-driven people who came to our retreats with massive substance use problems. Some of them were self-made millionaires whose lives were deeply inspiring to me personally. They didn’t need goals. They needed to figure out whether they could be happier without drinking all day long every day. And logically, all of their goals and direction didn’t keep them from feeling the need to use substances at highly problematic levels up to this point. Nor is there any guarantee that if the directionless bunch became as goal directed as the self-made millionaires that they’d sober up as a result.
It was hard to take goal-setting out of our program, but logic, and our guiding model, demanded it. Nevertheless, the parents are in the right zone with their belief that something may be lacking with young people and the issue of goals. Here’s what I think it is – the basic theory of The Freedom Model is that when you’re doing something, you believe it’s your best option for happiness at that moment. For some people, especially young people, they may have never even considered a future that could be happier without getting high or buzzed every day. Thinking about a better future in terms of dreams and goals may help, even if it’s problematic to make quitting/moderating contingent upon achieving specific dreams and goals. And it is problematic, some people were coming to us from treatment centers saying they “relapsed” because they didn’t stick to or achieve their life goals. Some former guests of ours who “failed” believed they needed to be “pre-occupied” with goals to distract themselves from the desire to use substances, and since they didn’t keep up with their goals, they were forced back into heavy substance use. We had to eradicate these traps, and salvage any value there might be in the area of goals.
So, we scrapped all the goal setting when writing The Freedom Model, and replaced it with one goal-related exercise. The exercise just asks readers to come up with and write some dreams or a vision of a better life, and then assess whether various levels of substance use (heavy/moderate/abstinent) would help or hinder their progress toward that vision. So instead of a goal list and plans, which if included could make an implicit connection and contingency between substance use and goals, dreams or a vision just serves as part of the decision-making process of whether or not heavy substance use is the happiest option moving forward. In short this vision can help with preference change, when it gets you tasting the potential for greater happiness, and helps you to realize that heavy substance use may hinder your potential of moving toward it. Dreams and vision may help tip the scales toward a change in substance use. It’s a sticky issue, and I’m not entirely sure yet if we nailed it. Fortunately though, our staff at the retreats is finding that people really understand the issue now from what we’ve written.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 23 explaining our position on goal setting:
Finally, and this is a topic we’ve had trouble communicating in the past, a goal set as part of a “recovery plan” can promote the idea that you must become happier first to make your desire for substances go away. Again, this idea gets things in reverse order, but it’s a common misperception in The Freedom Model because the model is based around the pursuit of happiness. Let us be clear about this: The Freedom Model does not say you need to be happy first and that happiness will then stop you from using substances. It says that you will do what you see as your happiest option and that you have the power to change the way you see things, to cease seeing heavy substance use as your happiest option.
All you had to do initially to get motivated to start using substances was believe it would be worth it. In fact, many people’s early experiences with substance use are painful and involve vomiting, coughing, and other problems and miserable outcomes, yet they persisted because of a belief that they can do it in the right way to acquire happiness. All you need to do to change your substance use is believe it’ll genuinely be worth changing. You need to believe that a change offers you the chance of greater happiness, and you will then persist on this new path if you believe it’s a viable possibility. Building this new preference starts the same way you built the old preference.
The creation of a goals list can also promote the idea that you need to do spectacular things and achieve spectacular levels of happiness to replace the happiness lost by decreasing/ quitting substance use. We’ve shown you that the benefits of substance use are highly subjective and that there’s little to nothing to be lost by letting go of heavy use. Therefore there is also little to nothing that needs to be replaced if you choose to decrease your substance use.
With that said, we do offer some add-on services at our Freedom Model Retreats to help people get their GED or get enrolled in college, or deal with legal troubles, but that comes after they learn The Freedom Model. This separation reduces the opportunity for a perceived causal-connection between life troubles and substance use, while still allowing some of our students to get some assistance in cleaning up the messes in their life that resulted from their substance use choices.
Happiness is the motivator
I wrote this article because from some sample material from The Freedom Model and appearances we’ve made in the media discussing it, people aren’t getting the full picture of our model. Some of these same misunderstandings are coming up. The only way to get the full picture is to read the full book. But these misunderstandings deserved a blog post.
When you use substances heavily, it is because you believe it is the best available option you have for happiness at the time. When you repeatedly do this, it’s probably because you’ve believed that enough to create a preference for heavy substance use that you no longer think about much – that is, you don’t consciously think “this is my best available option for happiness right now”, but it’s just what you implicitly believe and act on without much thought anymore. As long as the beliefs that underlie that preference remain unexamined and unchanged, it will stay in place, and you will crave, want, or desire heavy substance use, even while you know it’s costing you a lot. If you examine your preference, you can change it, by coming to believe that a reduction or quit will bring you more happiness than heavy substance use. You don’t have to believe it’s going to be utter bliss or joy, you just need to believe it’s the happier option. That could mean, on a happiness scale of 1 to 10, that heavy use rates as a 1 in your mind, but abstinence rates as a 2. It doesn’t mean abstinence solves all your problems or results in total joy – just that you like it better than heavy use. The Freedom Model for Addictions is designed to help people sort through this issue, and really come face to face with the happiness potential of all their options. If you don’t believe a change is worth making, you probably won’t follow through on it.
