Mikołaj Czyż
Psychotherapy and Seminars
08 10 2016

Understanding drug use and addiction an interview

An in­ter­view by Lee Weber, the ed­i­tor of Ad­dic­tion Blog.

Understanding addiction - illustration

Lee Weber: Miko­laj, thanks for join­ing us! What does the term “ad­dic­tive ten­dency” refer to?

Mikołaj Czyż: Thank you for hav­ing me!

“Ad­dic­tive ten­dency” is a term that be­longs to the Process Ori­ented Psy­chol­ogy frame­work. It refers to the pur­suit of an in­di­vid­ual to ac­cess ex­pe­ri­ences that are im­por­tant to her and — for var­i­ous rea­sons — are dif­fi­cult to achieve.

If the use of a psy­choac­tive sub­stance or rit­ual helps in ac­cess­ing the de­sired ex­pe­ri­ence, then it con­sti­tutes an ad­dic­tive ten­dency. It is the case even if she does not de­velop an ac­tive ad­dic­tion.

An ad­dic­tive ten­dency is a wide­spread and com­mon dy­namic. This is a use­ful ap­proach to­wards ad­dic­tions also be­cause it is non pathol­o­giz­ing. It helps to deal with phe­nom­ena that pre­cede the de­vel­op­ment of an ac­tive ad­dic­tion and — per­haps more im­por­tantly — is a rich source of knowl­edge about one­self.

What are some of the com­mon ex­pe­ri­ences peo­ple yearn for through ad­dic­tive be­hav­iors? Are they uni­ver­sal?

In the data we gath­ered from Pol­ish users, the dom­i­nat­ing ex­pe­ri­ences yearned for were re­ferred by the fol­low­ing la­bels:

  1. #peace­ful­ness
  2. #plea­sure
  3. #re­lax­ation

And

  1. #stress
  2. #sad­ness
  3. #lone­li­ness

were used de­scrib­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences that peo­ple try to es­cape.

The la­bels ad­dress in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences, but at the same time they are rooted in the val­ues and be­liefs pro­fessed by a given cul­ture. So they are uni­ver­sal to some ex­tent.
I would like to em­pha­size here that a sin­gle label (eg. #plea­sure or #empti­ness) may con­nect to but vary ac­cord­ing to per­son to per­son ex­pe­ri­ences. This means that the label is an an­chor, or as­so­ci­a­tion, which is backed by a rich world of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences, states and val­ues. They are ob­vi­ously tinted with emo­tional re­ac­tions.

Fur­ther, what is Process Psy­chol­ogy and how does this type of treat­ment help ad­dress ad­dic­tion or drug abuse?

Process­work (Process Ori­ented Psy­chol­ogy) is a the­ory, a psy­chother­apy method, and ori­en­ta­tion used when work­ing with in­di­vid­u­als, re­la­tion­ships, or­ga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ties. Drs. Arnold and Amy Min­dell and their col­leagues have been de­vel­op­ing it since the 1970’s.

Process­work stresses the im­por­tance of di­verse per­spec­tives and ex­pe­ri­ences. It sup­ports both the ef­forts to set one­self free from ad­dic­tions as well as the states that are ac­ces­si­ble through the sub­stance or be­hav­ior.

Process Ori­ented Psy­chol­ogy ex­plores the struc­ture of psy­cho­log­i­cal bound­aries (edges) that make some im­por­tant ex­pe­ri­ences in­ac­ces­si­ble. These struc­tures at the same time form the foun­da­tions of an ad­dic­tion. You can read more about Process­work here.

Can you ex­plain to our read­ers how WHATAMI­DO­INGTH­IS­FOR works?

The app helps to keep the at­ten­tion on the topic of one’s ac­tive or po­ten­tial ad­dic­tion (ten­dency). It fa­cil­i­tates learn­ing the con­text of one’s ad­dic­tion: de­sired and un­wel­comed ex­pe­ri­ences. The app also shapes the un­der­stand­ing of the ten­den­cies in terms of choices, and mod­els the de­ci­sion mak­ing processes.

These steps seem triv­ial, but it is im­por­tant to take into con­sid­er­a­tion ad­dic­tive phe­nom­ena are hap­pen­ing on the very bor­der of one’s iden­tity, where con­scious­ness and ac­cess to psy­cho­log­i­cal com­pe­ten­cies are lim­ited.

What are the aims of WHATAMI­DO­INGTH­IS­FOR app?

There are many use­ful and well-de­vel­oped mod­els of un­der­stand­ing ad­dic­tions. This tool draws from one (Process­work) and I con­sider it an ex­per­i­ment. The goal is to pro­mote a cre­ative ap­proach to­wards ad­dic­tions. One based on cu­rios­ity, ac­knowl­edg­ing per­sonal needs and chal­leng­ing lim­its. It is also a re­search tool.

Addictive tendenciesWhat is the pur­pose of the ques­tion­ing process used in the ap­pli­ca­tion?

It is to fa­cil­i­tate one’s re­flec­tion and un­der­stand­ing of an ad­dic­tion in the con­text of the in­ter­nal con­flict which fuels the ad­dic­tion (eg. be­tween #empti­ness and #plea­sure).

Can the ap­pli­ca­tion be used as a tool dur­ing a drug ad­dic­tion treat­ment?

I see it as a tiny aware­ness tool. It can be use­ful in the search of mean­ing of per­sonal ad­dic­tion ten­den­cies, es­pe­cially be­fore an ac­tive ad­dic­tion is de­vel­oped. This re­flec­tion can be valu­able but ob­vi­ously it can­not sub­sti­tute ther­apy if one’s goal is to stop the sub­stance abuse or be­hav­ioral ad­dic­tion.

How does WHATAMI­DO­INGTH­IS­FOR con­tribute to a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of ad­dic­tion and drug abuse pre­ven­tion? Ie. How have you used in­for­ma­tion you’ve col­lected from Pol­ish speak­ing con­trib­u­tors? What do you plan to do with data col­lected from Eng­lish lan­guage con­trib­u­tors?

You can see the pre­lim­i­nary re­sults (in Pol­ish) on the charts here.

On a per­sonal level, the on­line ap­pli­ca­tion we’ve cre­ated helps peo­ple to get in touch with and con­cep­tu­al­ize con­flict­ing, trou­ble­some ex­pe­ri­ences. Let’s imag­ine some­one who strives for #plea­sure and runs away from #sad­ness. It can be an ex­is­ten­tial issue or a tem­po­rary prob­lem, one that can be fur­ther in­ves­ti­gated, ques­tioned, worked upon.

For some peo­ple, this per­spec­tive ex­tends to the un­der­stand­ing of psy­cho­log­i­cal dy­nam­ics and sup­ports long term life change. Maybe a so­lu­tion could be a po­si­tion that would em­brace both ex­pe­ri­ences of #sad­ness and #plea­sure and a flu­id­ity in mov­ing be­tween them. Or de­vel­op­ing a dif­fer­ent stand­point from which this con­flict is no longer rel­e­vant. Here I can see a pre­ven­tive po­ten­tial.

Learn­ing about one’s prob­lem is prac­ti­cal and gives al­ter­na­tive to dis­miss­ing the whole world of ex­pe­ri­ences and just let­ting it go wild in the un­con­scious.

In a broader sense, the ex­pe­ri­ences that peo­ple ad­dress via WHATAMI­DO­INGTH­IS­FOR are trou­ble­some to whole cul­tures. In other words, they are chal­leng­ing not just in­di­vid­ual bound­aries but the val­ues and iden­ti­ties of com­mu­ni­ties and the so­ci­ety at large. Eg. in a pro­duc­tive, goal-ori­ented com­mu­nity ex­pe­ri­ences of #plea­sure or #re­lax­ation may be dis­avowed.
And that is the area that I’m very in­ter­ested in re­search­ing now.

Can you tell us the im­pact of WHATAMI­DO­INGTH­IS­FOR? How do you mea­sure pos­si­ble in­flu­ence it has over drug aware­ness and pre­ven­tion? Do you have feed­back from users? What are the suc­cess rates?

I don’t have hard data in this area.

I’ve re­ceived emails from peo­ple who dis­cov­ered some­thing im­por­tant about them­selves through the in­tro­spec­tion that the app fa­cil­i­tate. An­other thing is that peo­ple seem to be nat­u­rally cu­ri­ous and the app helps with these cre­ative ex­plo­rations. The col­lected data in­di­cates that this model is in­tu­itive and users have lit­tle prob­lem find­ing ex­pe­ri­ences as­so­ci­ated with their ten­den­cies.

Do you have any plans for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the app? Do you plan to use input from other men­tal health col­leagues (psy­chol­o­gists or psy­chi­a­trists), for ex­am­ple?

The pre­lim­i­nary data that I worked upon con­sisted of 6000 records. My goal now is to build way big­ger dataset (as the app is on­line it grows steadily) to ver­ify ideas that I al­ready have.

It is a work in progress. I wel­come sug­ges­tions and im­pres­sions from other pro­fes­sion­als.

I don’t plan to ex­tend the app it­self at the mo­ment. Its sim­plic­ity was an im­por­tant de­sign de­ci­sion: it makes the app ac­ces­si­ble and in­tu­itive.

Can you share with us some “suc­cess sto­ries” or anec­dotes about WHATAMI­DO­INGTH­IS­FOR?

I think the biggest suc­cess is the amount of focus that peo­ple di­rect to get in touch with the ex­pe­ri­ences around ad­dic­tions.

Some­times it’s very in­sight­ful (from an email: “I had no idea my ad­dic­tive ten­dency re­lates to this im­por­tant area in my life!”). Usu­ally, it’s just tak­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive for a cou­ple sec­onds.

The ar­ti­cles about the app were pub­lished in Pol­ish mag­a­zines Gazeta.​pl and Zwier­ciadło.

Is there any­thing else you would like to share with our read­ers?

Ad­dic­tive ten­den­cies in­di­cate im­por­tant per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences and in­ter­nal con­flicts. It is not just about long-term and per­sist­ing ten­den­cies; even short-lived fas­ci­na­tions can be very in­sight­ful.

It’s cru­cial to go be­yond the ad­dic­tion. The path of dis­cov­ery of a sat­is­fy­ing and sus­tain­able so­lu­tion can be ex­cit­ing too!

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