2 September 2020
This week’s blog concludes the review of Hashmet’s (2017) list of reasons for addictive behaviours (genetic predisposition, low entry cost, cultural, incremental, personality, loneliness & self-medication) with a second look at incremental causes, or the slippery slope.
Hashmet cited the slippery slope under the ironic title of One Step at a Time, the 12-step mantra for patience in sobriety, itself a long-standing help to many. I prefer the slippery slope as it conjures images of being able to resist sliding down the first part of a snowy hill, as the top is covered with hard-packed wet stuff in which your heels can gain purchase. However, as momentum builds, you find that wet snow has given way to a light dusting over hardened ice. The faster you move, the more you realize your only defense is bracing for the least damaging crash-landing you can prepare for.
De-analogized, using alcohol, sex, food, gambling, or drugs as a one-time (or maybe just two) way of allowing yourself to feel short-term pleasure, over long-term hurt, is the slippery slope into addiction. To paraphrase Hashmet, “Bad choices are made one day at a time. They are not made at the level of a long-term lifestyle consideration. After all, no one chooses addiction as a way of life.”
As with the slippery slope analogy, the problem only becomes visible after you’re committed to the downward trajectory. That same slope has come up in discussions of abstinence versus harm-reduction and managed use. “I will have only one drink at the beginning of the party and one glass of wine with dinner.” But that one drink loosens your inhibitions, feels manageable, and becomes two drinks. By the time your first glass of wine is empty at dinner, you no longer really care. As anyone who attends meetings has heard, “One was too many and a thousand not enough.”
In the same way that snow was part of the slippery slope, it also applies to the party drinker above. In wet snow, snowman-sized spheres grow by accretion. That is, the more mass and surface area they gain, by being rolled in the wet snow, the more snow continues to be added. The solution, once you’ve identified the problem, is staying off snowy hills and away from wet snow: that’s why some people find cold, hard abstinence a more reliable ally than they ever expected.
Dan Chalykoff facilitates two weekly voluntary group meetings, as well as private appointments, for SMART-based counselling services at danchalykoff@hotmail.com
S*** happens. We cope with the tools we have at the time.
No person knows the future or their fate.
If you do not test or stress the tools. How do you know they will work when truly needed?. Therefore, should you expose yourself to more and more challenging circumstances? A little bit of poison every day and you will be immune.
Otherwise, we will be victims of our unforseen pcircumstance.
Thanks for the response, Allan. The idea behind SMART is that you increase the number of tools and your familiarity with them. We have choices about which events we choose to attend and with which friends we choose to associate. As such, start with small steps and gradually “stress” or test the tools with increasingly challenging situations and friends but only IF those situations foster your health and well-being. That has to be the priority in recovery. Glad the blog’s provoking responses.