sleep

i use sleep as an addiction cuz i don't want to be awake to deal with life

I never thought as sleep as an addiction.
I am not sure where you are in your recovery, but sleep is pretty important in the process. At first, you are usually pretty exhausted. (staying up drinking instead of sleeping, never hitting the right levels of REM to feel properly rested, physical withdrawal will lead to exhaustion) Then there is living life and experiencing feelings we are not used to. These feelings can definately overwhelm us and cause us to be sleepy.
This sleepiness can hang on for quite awhile (it did in my case).
I hope that VETERAN AAers help me with this one...but their is a saying at the meetings about the acronym HALT. As you are in recovery, these are things to keep in mind about what is going on with you and to take care of during the process.
Hungry...eat when you are.
Angry...find solutions to it (call sponsor, use phone tree, walk, etc.)
Lonely...find solutions to it (call sponsor, use phone tree, walk where there are people like in a park or downtown shopping mall/plaza)
Tired...rest as needed.
By working on HALT, you are avoiding those times or conditions that make us more vulnerable to having that first drink again.
So, rest or 'sleep' can actually be a very good thing.

thank you raggedyann.

rest indeed can be a good thing, but not 20+ hours at a time. I feel uncomfortable, I sleep. I feel agitated, I sleep. I feel depressed, I sleep. I feel whatever, I sleep. It's my escape. My way not to deal with anythiing. I'm far enough along in recovery to know that I'm just switching seats on the titanic. ship is still sinking.

thanks for the halt reminder though. very informative.

Hey there, hi iq. Maybe this is kinda addiction as a metaphor ... what do you think? My addictions use me, not me them!

I het not wanting to deal with life, and avoiding doing so by sleeping seems to me (at least at this thinking it over) to be probably the safest experiential way of doing that. Certainly way better than drugs.

Hope you get back to me. This ia a provocative concept.

hi iq i read your profile page and no mention of recovery from addiction/drug/alcohol altho there are others that this forum is used for. my first thought was of my baby sis. for years she used sleep as an escape and slept her days away. for her this stemmed from severe depression. she kept that info to herself. so we just worried. she eventually got dx'ed for depression. she enjoys now her new life. no long sleeping for her now.
i'm wondering if you'd get more responses/support in another forum such as sleep issues forum or perhaps the depression forum, etc. just a thought based on what you posted. hope this helps.

madisgram,

i intentionally have my profile very vague. i do not wish to reveal my history to anybody who chooses to glance at my profile. I'm learning to respect my right to privacy. thanks for being concerned though. I appreciate it.

hi roadrunnerbeepbeep!

i like your name. i personally think anything can be an addiction. Humans have a basic need to cope with their reality and part of that coping is altering how we feel when flooded with negative emotions. If you think about it you may find that the majority of people deal with negative emotions in an unhealthy way. The healthiest way to deal with negative emotions is to accept them, feel them, and then let them pass. But, that is not innate to our nature as humans. We don't want to feel negative emotions so we choose to escape from them or alter them into something that is pleasurable. Most addicts will use the more common substances, being drugs and alcohol. Others will turn to behavioral addictions such as sex or codependency. In any case, at the first moment that the negative experience is altered into something that is pleasurable, the brain records that and asks for more. The brain chooses to protect us from unpleasurable experiences and seeks to promote pleasurable experiences.

We learn from birth to alter our emotions. For example, we cry because we are uncomfortable, maybe hungry, maybe tired, maybe dirty, who knows. But then here comes mommy and daddy doing anything they can think of doing to get us not to cry. They are teaching us to quell our emotions. They want to alter our reaction to a negative situation by pacifying us with the nearest remedy to them. Why not just let a child cry, after checking the obvious of course, thereby teaching them that negative feelings are okay. By the school age the need to alter the negative experiences we have is ingrained in us and the pattern can rarely be broken.

If we find one replacement we choose does not work, or stops working, we simply choose another replacement. Hence, why you hear about so many people switching addictions. I believe that is why you see so many in AA drinking coffee all throughout the meeting and then smoking afterwards. Caffeine and nicotine can be powerful drugs too.

So, lets talk about food for a minute. Have you ever stopped to consider all the times you were rewarded as a kid? How many of those rewards were using food? Seriously, when you look at how you reward yourself now, is it using food? For instance, I had such a good workout I'm going to get myself a smoothie. Or, I got the job, let's celebrate with dinner! Then there's birthday cake, wedding cake, christmas fruit cake (yuck). Where do the food rewards end? I can tell you where they end. They end with the a lot of people stuck in the over/undereating cycle of food addiction. I struggle to come up with rewards that are not based on food.

With all that said, it is no wonder we are a society that lives in the realm of addiction and fantasy. We want what we can't have. Or we are not willing to accept the necessary steps to get what it is that we want so we bypass the uncomfortable steps that are necessary to get from a to b. I perceive this world to be a world that seeks instant gratification.

Just my perception. What say you?

Very interesting & insightful perspective here! I have a sleep disorder in which I want to sleep allllll the time, literally I'd only wake up for food if I could. I finally found the right treatment for it about 2 months ago, and I've noticed I've been experiencing more anxiety since then. I had attributed it to the changes in my life that have been going on lately, or maybe the new medication; but perhaps it's due to the fact that now I'm awake to face all of it instead of just immediately falling asleep like I would before! Very interesting thought prompt, thanks! I want to do more reading on this theory now