Content Written By:
SUD treatment executive, national news contributor & keynote speaker.
Updated: 01/09/2024
Navigation:
- Defining the term “Rock Bottom”
- Examples of “Rock Bottom”
- The Paradox about Addiction
- Want to Avoid Rock Bottom?
- Minimizing Our Problem Despite Concrete Evidence
- Asking For Help After Trying to Moderate
Defining the term “Rock Bottom”
Defining the term “rock bottom” isn’t so easy, much like defining “obscenity” isn’t easy. To quote Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart from an interview in 1964 when he was asked to define obscenity, he replied “I know it when I see it.” The same can be said for rock bottom.
Rock bottom sometimes appears suddenly—a fatal DWI, a domestic dispute where the police respond, a drunken disorderly charge, making sexual advances towards the boss’s spouse at the office holiday party, a total blackout waking-up handcuffed to a toilet in Newark, New Jersey, when your last memory is being at a happy hour in your home state of Connecticut. Other rock bottoms gradually build over time—the kind that friends and family see coming from a mile away, and after pleading with you to get the help you need. No two rock bottoms look alike, but they all have one thing in common: you have a problem, and you’re alone. Or at least it appears so.
Examples of “Rock Bottom”
The respected lawyer starts to miss deadlines, or misses court appearances for no good reason, he begins his happy hour festivities earlier and earlier every day because the call of the bottle keeps coming earlier and earlier, and without a drink, the shakes will set in.
The construction worker who pops oxycontin like Tic-Tacs, and starts making mistakes on the job, leading to safety violations and injuries; the carpenter who takes three times his prescribed dose of Adderall and ends up measuring once and cutting twice, wasting customer’s time and money
The school teacher who is too hungover to be effective in the classroom and still smells of alcohol despite her last drink being hours earlier. They still have their jobs—but all have been reprimanded by their bosses for poor performance or tardiness or taking too many sick days or …fill in the blank.
All of these people are close to the tipping point, the point where they will lose their free will because of their addictions and be physically and psychologically compelled to use their preferred drug. At this stage, none of them are living happy, fulfilling lives. All their actions are centered around the next drink or drug. They have waded into the pool of obsession, and they can’t seem to get themselves out.
Slowly, loved ones, friends, colleagues, and neighbors will stand by helplessly as the individual self-destructs. This is what addiction does to people. No one can expect to avoid or escape the consequences all together. Without intervention and treatment, the consequences of addiction catch up to you, and its those consequences that put you in a state of being called rock bottom. This dark, grim outcome looks a little different for every individual, but it’s unmistakable: and you know it when you see it.
The Paradox about Addiction
One thing is true about addiction, and it’s a paradox. Let’s say you catch your addiction in time and seek treatment. If you take it seriously and put in the work, after a period of time you will start to feel better. You will return to your family because they haven’t yet left you, your job because you hadn’t yet been fired, your friends because they haven’t yet turned their backs on you. In essence, you return to life as you knew it before going to treatment. Things go well for a while—perhaps you attend a couple outpatient groups a week, you go to AA or NA meetings and even share your story, you take people’s advice, following a path of recovery, you go to a marriage counselor and patch up your relationship, and you reconnect with your children or nieces and nephews, your siblings. You are riding high, a pink cloud, and feeling better than ever.
Then it hits you. It starts as a simple thought. Maybe a dream at night. A familiar smell or sound. The thought of feeling high from alcohol or other drugs flashes through your mind. You brush it away, shake it off. And then it happens again. You romanticize the warm feeling when the pain medication kicks in, or a shot of Irish whiskey, or a pint of Guinness with friends at your local bar after a long day or after a softball game, or on the back nine as the drink cart pulls up.
This time when the thought comes up, we’re more vulnerable than the last time.
The thought becomes a craving, the craving becomes an urge, and the urge becomes a decision. Will I lose everything if I take a drink or a drug now that I’ve been sober? But that’s never the question we ask in those situations. The addicted thinking kicks in because at that point we’re new to this sobriety thing, and we haven’t yet developed our sobriety skillset.
So, the conversation in our heads goes something close to this:
“I can handle it. I’ll just have one.”
“I can have just a taste.”
“I work hard, I deserve a break.”
“This is bulls*#t!”
Then we ask a rhetorical question, one we’ve already answered:
“Sure, why not?”
In our rational brains we know that our wife or girlfriend is going to upset, our friends
Those who really get it—are going to feel worried and dejected, our boss is going to think,
“Should I have kept his position open for him before? Is he too much of a risk now that he’s using again?”
That’s the rational thinking. But addiction doesn’t like that type of practical, results-oriented thinking. Addiction thinking demands that we have the substance, the booze or drugs, to feel the numbness, to escape reality, and to think, “Well, she didn’t leave me the last time I picked up a drink or a drug, she stuck by me and “My boss didn’t fire me before, he won’t this time.” Addiction hijacks our brains and drives out rational thinking because rational thinking would mean assessing all the potential—the very likely—bad results of starting up again, of using even “just this once” and we wouldn’t do it. We would catch ourselves and say “No! Not this time. I’m not going to use drugs; I’m not going to drink!”
If you don’t experience true consequences—losing everything that matters, including intimate partners, the closeness and admiration of our children, job, friends, our self-respect—then it’s more likely that we will choose to use the drink or drug the next time the urge comes.
The thinking goes:
“If I haven’t lost everything in the past, then maybe I won’t this time around.”
“Maybe she won’t leave you—this time,”
“Maybe you won’t get fired—this time,”
“Maybe your friends will give you another shot—this time.”
But will they?
Or will this slip, this relapse—or whatever you choose to call the act of using when you know that you should not—will this be the time you hurt yourself or someone close to you to such a degree that you will officially be at your rock bottom.
Want to Avoid Rock Bottom?
Assess the Severity of Your Problem and Take Action
Courageously answer these questions taken from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 (DSM 5). How many of the following statements apply to you?
- Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer than you’re meant to
- Wanting to cut down or stop using the substance but not managing to
- Spending a lot of time getting, using, or recovering from use of the substance
- Experiencing cravings and urges to use the substance
- Not managing to do what you should at work, home, or school because of substance use
- Continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships
- Giving up important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of substance use
- Using substances again and again, even when it puts you in danger
- Continuing to use, even when you know you have a physical or psychological problem that could have been caused or made worse by the substance
- Needing more of the substance to get the effect you want (tolerance)
- Development of withdrawal symptoms
Minimizing Our Problem Despite Concrete Evidence
A disconnect exists between the medical community and people going down the destructive path of addiction. For example, the DSM 5 uses the word “mild” to describe a person who identifies with two to three of the above symptoms. This use of the word “mild” to describe a substance use disorder gives comfort to those who are contemplating change—considering whether to cut down on their drug and alcohol use.
If your experience matches two or three of the 11 criteria, then you are on your way to rock bottom, plain and simple.
Asking For Help After Trying to Moderate
Despite a few successful days at trying to limit your use to one or two drinks or doses of drugs, you end up going overboard—again. If this describes you, then it’s time to ask for professional help. This can begin with a candid conversation with your doctor, if, and this is big if, your doctor has knowledge and experience identifying and treating addiction; the sad reality is that most doctors do not. If your doctor doesn’t acknowledge your risk factors, then you are most likely just going to prolong the inevitable. If you are questioning whether you have a problem—if it’s something you’re playing over and over in your mind—then you have a problem. Seek out an addiction specialist and explain your circumstances.
Hitting rock bottom is never a prerequisite to change—to get healthy, to honor your relationships with others, to put in the effort, and get on with your life. Ask for help. You’re not alone. You can do this.
