The Hamster Wheel

2 September 2023

This blog comes from questions emailed by a thoughtful attendee of one of the SMART Recovery meetings with which I’m involved.  There are some complex and related issues here, and that person was in no hurry for an answer, so I promised I’d use the questions to generate a blog.  Here goes. 

The correspondent observed that people who had considerable recovery (in the SMART Addictive Behaviours group) functioned at a higher energy level than people just starting or working their way through the program—at least in our group. That’s interesting and well-noticed.  I understand and I agree that this seems to be the case.  Let’s look at the next point and then circle back to this.

My correspondent then asked, Are typical worries fear-based?  The examples provided were “…worrying, complaining, overthinking, procrastination, fear of failure, trying to be perfect, waiting to be inspired…”  The correspondent then asked, Are these types of worries and fears triggers of addictive behaviours?

First, yes, worrying, complaining…are fear-based concerns.  In a culture where omnipresent marketing messages urge us to have better degrees, be better looking, thinner, richer, and brighter, there’s not a lot of room for relaxed self-acceptance.  Instead, there’s this nagging set of voices and images telling you to do more, be more, and make more.  As such, the fear is of not measuring up to a standard you never set but—somehow—feel obliged to meet or exceed. 

What’s happening here is cyclical.  Anyone starting to leave addiction behind has a deficit of self-regard.  That deficit fuels constant self-doubt because such a person feels they’ve messed up, are inadequate by nature, and feel deeply ashamed of who and what they are (by their own too-narrow definition).  Yet, the courage it takes to face down addiction, go to your first meeting, detox…is one of the bravest human acts I know of, drawing on typically depleted stores of resolve, resilience, and good faith.  Yet how many movies, billboards, or half-time advertisements do you see showing happy, shiny people in recovery from addiction?  Nor me.  There’s a paradox here.  Despite the fact that a person is doing something unquestionably heroic, they are hitting the ground sober for the first time in months, years, or decades with overwhelming feelings of shame, self-doubt, and abject depression. 

With that wonderful medley of feelings on repeat, they become increasingly aware of all the nice, shiny images they’re now living without: no Tesla, no forearms like Popeye, no Swiss bank account, and not even the teeny-tiniest of yachts.  If you don’t question the premise of these market-driven values, they become your standard.  And if left unquestioned, you are on a hamster wheel where the only thing that changes is the images of “ideal life” updated weekly, monthly, or quarterly.  It’s kind of like Plato’s Cave for the shadow-watchers i.e., it’s an illusion.

All of the anxiety-based fears mentioned above (worrying, complaining, overthinking, procrastination, fear of failure, trying to be perfect, waiting to be inspired) are exacerbated when we’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired (HALT from the 12-Steppers).  In the first year of recovery, people are almost always hungry, angry, lonely, or tired because their central feeling is I’ve woken up in a world where I don’t fit.  As such, the answer to the question, Are these worries triggers?, is yes, they are.  And the weaker your recovery, the stronger the impact of those triggers.

When our correspondent observed the calm but energetic demeanour, of people with years of recovery behind them, they cited the increased “energy and vibration level” of those with longer-term recovery.  My explanation is that all of those people have been hungry, angry, lonely, and tired but they’ve also come to a point where they called “bullshit!” on the images around the hamster wheel.  Moreover, they realized that their rotations on that hamster wheel were voluntary i.e., by questioning the values they wished to live by, they started seeing through the projected values on the monitors mounted on all sides of the hamster wheel.  And so, they got off the wheel and started living by their own freely chosen code of values. 

If you start living your own values, just adhering to those values begins to raise your self-regard, self-confidence, and self-valuation.  The yacht, the car, the forearms all begin to fade as emblems of success as you realize you never chose those images, they were chosen for you.  And most interestingly, when we adopt the values of others, anxiety is actually a healthy response—our selves telling us we’re suffering from incongruence—failing to be who we are each individually meant to be.

As such, those anxieties can trigger addictive behaviour, but they can also trigger original thought—thought that leads toward the forging of one’s authentic identity.  It’s a choice we can all make but it’s also a choice not spoken of with sufficient force or frequency.  Thanks for the questions.

Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying).  He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.