Addiction as an Attachment Disorder

The book arrived in my PO Box from Amazon last week, and I have devoured it. Addiction as an Attachment Disorder by Philip J. Flores. It is written in somewhat clinical language but it has helped me understand my own experience of addiction, and what I have seen in others' experiences.

I'm not sure that I am an addict, albeit I have had to go cold turkey on alcohol. I believe that I have a predisposition to addiction in it's many forms, having been raised by an alcoholic, my dad. His father was an alcoholic too who grew up in an orphanage. I notice that there is an absense of mothers in my family, with orphaned male children on both sides and women who died in childbirth. When I was in therapy in 2006, my therapist helped me understand that my own mother had a personality disorder called Narcissistic Personality Disorder. NPD is a coping stragegy against an unresolved early childhood narcissitic wound, in which a false self is created while the authentic yet crippled self is abandoned, and the ability to empathize with others is lost.

This book has introduced me to the concept of the "good enough" mother, one who is present and responds authentically to the emotional call of her child. Attachment disorder can occur when there is no emotional atunement between mother and child, and the absense of it can effect the child's relationship patterns with others for the rest of their lives. It's not the mothers who pick up the their children the most who have the most psychologically healthy children, it's the ones who pick up their child when the child wants to be picked up, and put him down again, when that is what he wants.

It's a very painful and anxious state to be in, when one's deepest, earliest, most authentic child-self has not been responded to. And this book proposes that addiction is that self's attempt to compensate for this lack. That's why just going cold-turkey on whatever we are addicted to isn't enough. It has to be combined with the trial and error of forming new relationships in a safe and supportive environment. That way, addicted people can experience what is called "non-traumatic failures" in interaction with others, the normal ups and downs of relationships that don't cause the end of the connection, but offer opportunites to learn about self and other, and improve communication skills as well as self-trust.