Mourning a Lost Dear One; This Is among the Ten Principle Causes of Substance Use Disorder
Loss of any dear one whether it is a family member, friend, spouse, pet or any other family member is always a substitute for the griever. One goes through various types of feelings which are defined as different phases of mourning such as, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. When grieving, one goes up and down and this is the sequence that is followed throughout the entire process.
Getting to the point of stability- to the point of acceptance- seems impossible when it is happening to you. In the train of grieving there is always a time that the death of the loved one begins to make a certain kind of sense, even though not the sense that was elicited by the reasons behind the death, but the sense of loss.
When in the grips of SUD, this process is put through the most rigorous of tests as the following small case study highlights. The ebb in the process of grieving can pull you down to the lowest you can possibly get. When it comes to the effect substances have on your central nervous system, they are classified in three ways: In this article; Stimulants, Depressants, and Hallucinogens are defined in detail. Both build a different output in your brain each to cope with grief, and we shall discuss in this post.
The Grieving Process
It is very important to understand that grief is a process and does not occur at one go. Growing requires several stages or steps and growing through grief is no exception. These steps represent several positive and negative emotions as you go through them. What are these steps? Yes, it is for this reason that modern scholars have come up with seven universally accepted forms of grief that shall be discussed in the next section in detail. This section is focused on the journey of grieving, that means how you go through grieving.
Loss is not only in one occurrence but in many occurrences. The process is unique from other common and widely identifiable process. Seemingly unknown? What? I do not recall myself paying too much attention to the grieving process when I am grieving. Probably not.
What is the Question: Is there more than one kind of grief?
That is how and when one undergoes grief forms its type. In this section we will discuss five types of griefs. In the understanding of the kind of grief a person goes through especially where they are struggling with substance addiction in the process of burying a loved one as highlighted in this blog, the types of grief above will prepare you for how to handle death.
It is through this that addiction complicates these processes than they have to be. Being right in the chest with one’s mixed, confused feelings is helpful.
#1. Foreboding sorrow is sorrow experienced before the expected loss or stress such as having a relative diagnosed with terminal disease. While you may know there will be a time when they will not be there, anticipatory grieving is a feeling of emptiness inside — the ‘what ifs’ of a life. It is also indicated by confusion and guilt, which are also manifested in this type of grief.
#2. The term grief can defined as prolonged grief, or grieving after the event has happened. For instance, your parent or any other close person died and you have no the first stages of mourning. Rather, some months or even a year elapses and by that time, you are experiencing those feelings or emotions. Delayed grief occurs in various reasons maybe because a related life event which distract during what could have been stocked initial mutual grief or because of any other triggering event like a second loss of a dear one.
#3. When you don’t acknowledge your loss, the absence of grief is the apparent absence of grief. When it is mentioned one has ‘Absent grief’ it simply means that you don’t feel grief. It might emanate from the shock or denial of a loss, hence being quite sensitive to chronic conditions. The prospective of experiencing such kind of grief for long could be really dangerous when fighting addiction, because it is nearly impossible to understand own feelings in such state. Share the experience with the other people and this will help one to battle the relapse.
#4. Checking is the process in which you do not allow others to see your grieving process and keep your suffering in secret. It can hence be considered as a defense mechanism to avoid showing that you are distressed or allow it hinder you in your activities. As with absent grief, inhibited grief is dangerous because possible relapse occurs and one can explain the impact a loss has had on them.
#5. Disenfranchised grief is when you suffer a loss that is unimportant in the eyes of others; hence, you don’t get attention and support when you are mourning. For instance, such a type of grief may be caused by the death of a pet, an acquaintance, or as in when one fights addiction, a previous friend with whom one used to use the substance.
The Kübler-Ross model of the 5 stages of grief
Five stages of dying are described by the following, Elizabeth Kübler Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, who devised the most commonly taught system for understanding death”, how a person deals with his or her own death. Even though this system was not created to elucidate the cycles of grief that you go through in a loss, it has been used to perfectly illustrate it. These five stages include:
#1. Denial: One of the stages of grieving is denial, and therefore it is expected that individuals when undergoing grieving they will deny the situation. This could mean, you still subconsciously put a denial to the loss taking place, or a denial of the feeling to actualise from within over the loss. When you are in the phase of addiction and the first stage of denial, you replace real relief and a better understanding of loss with substances.
#2. Anger: Anger as grief and when combined with the confrontation of the addiction is either anger at the loss or confusion as to what happens now. If in the case the loss you are grieving is a loved one or acquaintance who also suffered from substance addiction, you might feel anger toward yourself for probably inciting them.
But anger and substance addiction do not mix; if you has both, mindfulness will not only keep you from flying off the handle but will also help you understand where your rage originates from.
#3. Bargaining: This stage of grief can occur before the death of the person as well as after the deceased’s funeral. For instance, when a person is suffering from substance addiction at the bargaining stage of grief, he or she would beg a higher power to save, or perhaps resurrect, his or her dearly loved one with words that are willing to part with the substance ruling his or her life.
But be careful and attentive to this stage, as when time goes by and a loss is realized now realizing that bargaining has failed, you can be transferred to the next stage of sorrow, which is depression.
#4. Depression: Of all the five stages of grief, depression is the most lethal to a person in recovery, leading you down the path of the relapse discourse.
Grief Myths and Facts
From interpersonal relationship, from physical health to mental and emotional health, for those enslaved in the cycle of addiction, the task of passing through the five stages of grief is unarguably one of the biggest tests on surviving. This is also true when one is a griever, because apart from not wanting to hold unhealthy expectations one needs to know the myths and facts in the process.
Common grief-related myths include:
- The five stages of grief are in order: This can be baffling and puzzling for the you that is grieving reinforcing the misconception that you are grieving incorrectly.
- Crying and grieving are one and the same: Healing from grief is the loss of any feeling other than crying. These can work as experiencing numbness, despair, pining and reorganization.
- It becomes more comfortable as time progressively. This is particularly a lie if you have not been in a position to come to terms with what you have lost. Grieving something in passion of addiction is very long, it can take years and everything can have inclinations up and down.
Common grief-related facts and how grief affects substance use include:Common grief-related facts and how grief affects substance use include:
- A simulation based on loss or death of a beloved person shows an increase in the probability to gain or develop addicted behaviors.
- More so, the Journal of Behavioral Medicine established that grief has the ability to impact one’s body in as much as it has samples of health consequences including; sleep quality, nutrition, and weight loss.
- That is why it can be considered that grief handled in a proper way will help a person to accept the death of a close one quicker than if it was unhandled.
The Effects of Substance Use on Mental Health Dealing with Death
When considering grief and death of a loved one, we cannot leave out any separate possibility to reinforce comfort with substance use (or abuse). When applying such substances in this way, one is bound to have adverse effects on oneâs psychological wellbeing. More awareness of a range of disastrous impacts that substances have on one’s health helps in avoiding them during the period of mourning.
Employing a substance, without dealing with and accepting feelings turns into a show and a lack of, or even regressive experience of, their loss source.
Alcohol is the easiest and the most legal inaccessibility product there is in the world aside from tobacco. The harmful uses of alcohol are therefore availability and addictive characteristic of the substance. Any complementary with the process of grieving by alcohol only intensifies the depressive episodes that occur during the grieving period since the alcohol itself has depressive effects.
Marijuana is also a depressant Most people are in touch with the fact that marijuana is also a depressant that can impair one’s ability to perform tasks, especially where alertness and clear mindedness is very essential. Some aspects of marijuana use may include addiction and grieves; however, these connection should be used for a specific case. What do we mean by this? With increase use of medical marijuana in the United States, ensure that you consult your physician if you are in doubt about using it. If you do not take some preventive measures and if you are not completely enlightened on the hazards and side effects of relating marijuana to healing during and after the burial process of a loved one, then you should not engage in the use of marijuana in any form.
Cocaine is taken as a strong stimulant drug that has the ability of producing high feelings that are very addictive, according to the DrSono. It raises the levels of dopamine in your brain and dopamine is associated with the coordination of movement and reward. The problem with taking this drug is that it is very easy to get addicted to it and dependent on the drug as the “cocaine changes the brain’s reward circuit” and the body “becomes steadily less sensitive to it. ”