How Does Trauma Affect Addiction?

The Link Between Trauma and Addiction

Over 70% of patients who receive treatment for substance abuse have endured traumatic experiences. Moreover, 59% of adolescents who experience traumatic events develop addictions later in adulthood.

The link between trauma and addiction is real and complex. Traumatic experiences can lead people to abuse substances. Drugs themselves can exacerbate the negative effects of trauma.

The nature of this link is hard to untangle. When we examine the facets and effects of traumatic experiences, we can see how they set the stage for substance abuse and other types of addiction. It also becomes clear that any effective treatment of drug addiction must be trauma-informed.

Sometimes in day-to-day speech, people use the term “trauma” to refer to any stressful experience. Or, people may use the term interchangeably with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). To understand how trauma impacts drug use and alcoholism, let’s first unpack exactly what trauma is.

About Trauma

Trauma is an overwhelming, painful experience. Trauma can encompass physically, psychologically, and emotionally painful experiences.

The defining trait of a traumatic experience is overwhelming. The experience temporarily overwhelms the individual’s ability to cope with the distress.

Physical, psychological, and emotional pain may seem different from the outside. But, our central nervous system actually processes all three types of pain in the same way. Sensory processing does not vary much based on input. 

The long-term impact of trauma on the central nervous system underlies the most lasting trauma symptoms.

Immediate and Long-Term Impact

At the moment, a traumatic event causes an intensely heightened emotional state. The nature of the state varies. But, it will often resolve itself into shock or denial at the moment or immediately afterward.

The long-term impact of trauma varies. Some people have a higher trauma threshold than others. When a person experiences pain inflicted by other people rather than due to a natural event, they’re more likely to experience trauma.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

ACEs are traumatic childhood experiences.

Painful experiences are more likely to be traumatic to children because they have fewer coping mechanisms. Children experiencing multiple ACEs are less likely to have adults in their lives who model positive coping skills.

They also have a lower capacity for resiliency, as their brains are still growing. ACEs harm brain development.

Acute Trauma

Acute trauma stems from a single traumatic event. It is a single intense experience, and it can cause short-term PTSD symptoms.

The impact of acute trauma typically lessens over time. That said, it can still cause disruptive symptoms that deserve treatment and still feed into trauma and addiction.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

PTSD is a set of long-term symptoms caused by one or more traumatic experiences. It can be debilitating. PTSD calls for serious mental health intervention.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)

C-PTSD is a set of long-term symptoms caused by multiple chronic traumatic experiences.

C-PTSD is typically caused by living for an extended period of time in a traumatic environment. For example, living in a war zone, in an abusive household, or in extreme poverty can cause C-PTSD.

Many symptoms overlap. But, C-PTSD is more likely to cause ongoing emotional dysregulation than typical PTSD.

Trauma: Effects and Symptoms

When patients endure traumatic experiences, they may experience effects and symptoms. Professionals categorize these as trauma disorders. These effects and symptoms fall into five categories, and each one can affect trauma and addiction.

Insomnia and Sleep Disorders

Insomnia and other sleep disorders disrupt the sleep cycle. For some trauma survivors, hyper-vigilance causes insomnia. Hyper-vigilance keeps a person on high alert, constantly on the lookout for danger.

Sleep disorders disrupt the body’s healing process. Without enough sleep, people think less clearly, feel pain more intensely, and make poorer decisions.

Panic, Depersonalization, and Derealization

Trauma alters the brain. A person may process stimuli associated with traumatic memories differently than other stimuli. Stimuli can be anything: an image, a sound, or even a smell. These stimuli can then trigger panic attacks, flashbacks, depersonalization, or derealization.

Emotional Dysregulation

Emotional dysregulation is an intense emotional response to a stimulus. It is akin to having emotionally burned skin. When a person experiences emotional dysregulation, day-to-day negative experiences can trigger emotional reactions.

The reactions may include crying, embarrassment, rage, or overwhelming loneliness.

These day-to-day experiences are not traumatic. Instead, these are typical experiences. Someone rejecting your invitation, making a paperwork mistake at work, or seeing a sad video online can trigger a reaction.

An individual struggling with emotional dysregulation experiences normal negative events as potentially traumatic. This is due to the impact of previous trauma. It can also be an innate result of divergent brain development, which exists in ADHD and other disorders.

Like insomnia, emotional dysregulation can be a factor when a person makes impulsive, risky choices.

Alexithymia

Alexithymia is the experience of disconnection from your own emotional state. It also causes a “flat” tone of voice or body language. Alexithymia makes it more challenging to accurately read other people’s emotions.

Alexithymia can be innate. However, emotional suppression or detachment to cope with trauma can cause Alexithymia.

Executive Dysfunction

Executive dysfunction makes it hard to plan and execute tasks. People who struggle with executive dysfunction often get distracted. They can also find themselves paralyzed by indecision over even small choices.

A “simple” task, like washing the dishes, can be overwhelming for someone who struggles with executive dysfunction.

Executive dysfunction is caused by problems with the circuitry of an individual’s frontal lobe.

Some innate conditions, like ADHD, cause frontal lobe underdevelopment of divergent development. However, traumatic experiences can also impact frontal lobe development. So, trauma also causes executive dysfunction.

Trauma Impacts Four Spheres

The effects and symptoms of trauma impact a person’s wellbeing directly. These effects also negatively impact an individual’s ability to thrive in four spheres that make life meaningful. 

People who’ve experienced trauma often struggle in school, at work, and with relationships. They also face barriers to cultivating spiritual well-being. It is challenging to connect to spiritually sustaining communities. This lack of connection can cause problems with trauma and addiction.

How Trauma Feeds Addiction

Trauma survivors deserve care and effective treatment for symptoms. Unfortunately, the effects of trauma can make accessing care challenging.

Some people turn to substances or alcohol to alleviate symptoms. This is because drugs are more readily available than medical and mental health care.

On top of self-medication, some trauma symptoms in and of themselves make an individual more likely to abuse substances.

This is why trauma and addiction are such a problem, and the problem is only growing bigger.

Challenges Accessing Care

It can be hard to get drug addiction help. Barriers to accessing effective mental health treatment include:

Trauma and Drug Use: Self-Perpetuating Cycles

The less income a person has, the less likely they are to access effective, trauma-informed care. Likewise, the fewer healthy relationships an individual has, the less likely they will have social support. Support improves resilience and makes treatment more likely to work.

Trauma’s effects negatively impact income and relationships. So, trauma survivors are more likely to seek to alleviate their pain outside of a healthcare setting. Often this creates a cycle of trauma and addiction that can takes years to break.

Cognitive Distortions

Trauma symptoms can cause a person to develop maladaptive ways of thinking. These are cognitive distortions.

Cognitive distortions happen when emotions don’t match the context. A person’s mind attempts to make observable reality match their internal, emotional reality. A person cannot deny their own emotional experience.

They also cannot change how they feel simply from the sheer force of their own will.

External vs. Internal Reality

Yet, when that internal experience is out of sync with external reality, it hurts. A trauma survivor may tell themselves a story that re-interprets reality. The story makes external reality fit their internal emotional experience.

These thoughts explain the pain and rationalize substance abuse. People find themselves trapped in a cycle of drug addiction and trauma symptoms. Cognitive distortions can prevent them from getting help.

Is Drug Addiction a Disease?

Drug addiction is not a disease caused by a germ. However, the Biopsychosocial Model of illness considers substance use disorder a disease.

The Biopsychosocial Model states that diseases are prolonged states of distress. These states have three causes:

These three causes are present in most types of disease. People develop drug addiction, also called substance use disorder, due to these three factors

Biological Factors

The biological factors that increase the risk of drug addiction are sometimes genetic. Biological differences also contribute to how different individuals respond to trauma. A given stimulus (like a drug) can be more or less rewarding.

People’s brains can produce different amounts of dopamine, or no dopamine at all, in response to the same drug. Likewise, people’s central nervous systems vary in terms of how much pain relief they experience from alcohol or opioid drugs.

Finally, physical illnesses can exacerbate the long-term impact of trauma. Physical illness can also push a person’s experience of a painful event over the trauma threshold.

Legal, Prescription Medication

It’s important to treat the biological differences caused by trauma. It’s also key to understand how different people’s bodies and brains are predisposed to substance use.

Treating the biological components of drug addiction can involve prescription medications. These can treat the psychiatric symptoms of PTSD. Some of these medicines alter a body’s neurochemistry or hormones to alleviate symptoms.

It can also involve treatments for any underlying physical illness. Pain caused by inflammation can be treated with corticosteroids or anabolic steroids, for example. Primary care physicians and mental health professionals work together to treat a patient.

Cognitive-Behavioral Framework

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most researched type of therapy. Its successes are well documented.

CBT therapy uses a cognitive-behavioral framework to understand and treat illness. A person’s thoughts, emotional states, and behaviors impact one another. This creates health or illness.

CBT therapy can target and change cognitive distortions. It can empower patients to bring their internal, emotional self in alignment with external reality safely.

CBT practices also bring people into more positive emotional states. The therapy focuses on changing behaviors rather than trying to change emotions directly.

So, rather than trying to “calm down” when they feel scared or panic, a person may learn specific physical things they can do to reduce their body’s physiological fear response. Then, they’ll indirectly move into a calmer emotional state.

Changing emotional states improve emotional regulation and decreases other trauma symptom severity.

Social Factors and Substance Abuse

Social factors can increase or decrease a person’s risk of developing substance use disorder. These factors can also make treatment more or less effective.

Social Factors and Substance Abuse

Social factors that increase the risk someone will abuse substances are:

These social factors contribute to or worsen trauma symptoms and feed into the trauma and addiction cycle. They also decrease the likelihood of long-term recovery from substance abuse.

Positive Social Factors

Social factors that offer protection against substance use disorder are:

Many of the social factors decrease the risk of substance use disorder. These also mitigate the risk of long-term PTSD after a traumatic experience.

Real Recovery Addresses the Roots of Addiction

To recover from drug addiction, people need treatment that addresses the root causes of addiction. Effective recovery calls for trauma-informed practice.

Trauma-informed care understands the impact of trauma on substance use disorder. Biological, psychological, and social factors that affect our responses to trauma and addiction. When we address them, we can recover.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, or if you want the tools to heal from traumatic experiences, talk to us. We’ll answer any questions you have about trauma and addiction, alcohol and drug rehab, and how to make it work for you.

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