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ATTACHMENT, ADDICTION AND CULTURE

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Development may be conceptualized as the transformation of external into internal regulation. This progression represents an increase of complexity of the maturing brain systems that adaptively regulate the interaction between the developing organism and the social environment. The experiences necessary for this experience-dependent maturation are created within the attachment context, the dyadic regulation of emotions.

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More specifically, the primary caregiver of the securely attached infant affords emotional access to the child and responds appropriately and promptly to his or her positive and negative states. She allows for the interactive generation of high levels of positive affect in co-shared play states, and low levels of negative affect in the interactive repair of social stress, i.e., attachment ruptures.

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The major environmental influence on the development of the limbic structures involved in organismic coping is the attachment relationship. Severe disruption of attachment bonds in infancy leads to a regulatory failure expressed in disturbances in limbic activity, hypothalamic dysfunction, and impaired autonomic homeostasis.

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There is extensive evidence that trauma in early life impairs the development of the capacities of maintaining interpersonal relationships, coping with stressful stimuli, and regulating emotion: the control of vital functions supporting survival and enabling the organism to cope actively and passively with stressors.

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Lack of positive maternal affective involvement, maternal flatness of affect, and overall disrupted maternal communication are the strongest predictors of dissociation in young adulthood.

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The brain of an infant who experiences frequent intense attachment disruptions is chronically exposed to states of impaired autonomic homeostasis which he/she shifts into in order to maintain basic metabolic processes for survival. If the caregiver does not participate in stress-reparative functions that reestablish psychobiological equilibrium, the limbic connections in the process of developing are exposed to high levels of excitotoxic neurotransmitters, such as glutamate as well as cortisol for long periods of time.

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The neurotoxic effects of glucocorticoids are synergistically amplified by simultaneous activation of the excitotoxic N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-sensitive glutamate receptor, a critical site of neurotoxicity and synapse elimination in early development. It is known that stress-induced increases of glucocorticoids in postnatal periods selectively induce neuronal cell death in "affective centers" in the limbic system imprint an abnormal limbic circuitry, and produce permanent functional impairments of the directing of emotion into adaptive channels.

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There is now agreement that, in general, the enduring effects of traumatic abuse and neglect are due to deviations in the development of patterns of social information processing. Early trauma alters the development of the right brain, the hemisphere that is specialized for the processing of socio-emotional information and bodily states. The early maturing right cerebral cortex is dominant for attachment functions and stores an internal working model of the attachment relationship.

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The continued survival of the child is felt to be at risk, because the actuality of the abuse /neglect challenges the child’s capacity to trust and, therefore, to securely depend.In contexts of relational trauma the caregiver, in addition to dysregulating the infant, withdraws any repair functions, leaving the infant for long periods in an intensely disruptive psychobiological state that is beyond his/her immature coping strategies

Effects of parent inflicted trauma on attachment

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When infants are not in homeostatic balance or are emotionally dis-regulated, they are at the mercy of these states. Until these states are brought under control, infants must devote all their regulatory resources to reorganizing them. While infants are doing that, they can do nothing else . In other words, infants who experience chronic relational trauma too frequently forfeit potential opportunities for socio-emotional learning during critical periods of right brain development.

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The human infant’s psychobiological response to trauma is comprised of two separate response patterns, hyper-arousal and dissociation. In the initial stage of threat, a startle or alarm reaction is initiated, in which the sympathetic component of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is suddenly and significantly activated, resulting in increased heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and muscle tone, as well as hyper-vigilance. Distress is expressed in crying and then screaming.

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The infant’s state of "frantic distress," a state of fear-terror is mediated by sympathetic hyper-arousal, known as ergotropic arousal: It reflects excessive levels of the major stress hormone corticotropin releasing factor (CR F) as well as Noradrenaline: The result is rapid and intensely elevated noradrenaline and adrenaline levels which trigger a hyper-metabolic state within the brain; in early traumatic experiences, such as childhood abuse this literally kindles the limbic areas.

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A second, later-forming reaction to infant trauma, dissociation, in which the child disengages from stimuli in the external world and an attends to an "internal" world. The child’s dissociation in the midst of terror involves numbing, avoidance, compliance and restricted affect. Traumatized infants are observed to be staring off into space with a glazed look. When infants' attempts to repair the interaction fail, they often lose postural control, withdraw, and self-comfort. The disengagement is profound even with this short disruption of the mutual regulatory process.

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The state of conservation-withdrawal is a parasympathetic regulatory strategy that occurs in helpless and hopeless stressful situations in which the individual becomes inhibited and strives to avoid attention in order to become "unseen." This state is a primary hypo-metabolic regulatory process, used throughout the lifespan, in which the stressed individual passively disengages in order "to conserve energies..., to allow healing of wounds and restitution of depleted resources by immobility"

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It is this parasympathetic mechanism that mediates the "profound detachment" of dissociation. If early trauma is experienced as "psychic catastrophe" (Bion, 1962), dissociation represents "detachment from an unbearable situation"

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As people mature, they develop an ever-enlarging repertoire of coping responses, but adults are still intensely dependent upon social support to prevent and overcome traumatization, and under threat they still may cry out for their mothers. Sudden, uncontrollable loss of attachment bonds is an essential element in the development of post-traumatic stress syndromes. On exposure to extreme terror, even mature people have protest and despair responses (anger and grief, intrusion and numbing) that make them turn toward the nearest available source of comfort to return to a state of both psychological and physiologic calm.

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Lack of caregiving during the first few weeks of life decreases the number of opioid receptors and have shown that the loss of social support decreases brain opioid activity and produces withdrawal symptoms; emotive circuits mediating loneliness-panic states are apparently activated or disinhibited. Re-establishment of social contact may, among other neural changes, activate endogenous opioid systems, alleviating separation distress and strengthening social bonds.

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Have you ever seen a child separated from their chosen object: a stuffed animal, blanket or pacifier? If you have, you may have seen a little person in an emotional melt down. This chosen object, in psychological terms, is called a ‘transitional object’ meaning that it serves as a replacement for the child’s attachment to her primary caregivers. This symbolic replacement helps the child to feel some sense of control or independence in the absence of her parent(s) or caregiver.

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Winnicot describes the transitional objects the conditions in which children cling to an inanimate object for comfort and security to deal with a separation from their mothers. He proposed that the child attributes to the inanimate object some of the qualities that had been experienced in the relationship with the mother. As mother became less accessible to the child, the child uses a device by which he or she could carry a symbol of her with him or her. The child’s anxiety is alleviated by transferring onto a concrete object the attributes and psychological functions of the mother, experiencing the functions of the transitional object as part of him-or herself.

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Without the primary or transitional object, this child can hardly contain their anxiety and distress. One can theorize that the intensity of the child’s attachment to the transitional object increases with the child’s anxiety or to the extent that the child’s primary attachment is unavailable, unwilling or unable to provide comfort and security.

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Adolescence or young adulthood is a time when alcohol, drugs and sex become increasingly salient and available while stressful responsibilities increase and attachment to one’s original family loosens. Insecure, avoidant or disorganized attachments to our original caregivers must now deal with it all somehow, despite the fact that we were unable to make a consistent, secure and comforting attachment from early childhood. This lack is experienced as a sense of insecurity and/or emptiness. If we then make substances or sexual relationships our transitional attachment objects we further lose an inner sense of attachment to our own values and sense of self worth as our helpless need for these objects causes us to feel that our lives have become unmanageable.

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Drugs and alcohol become the transitional attachment objects with a further loss of an inner sense of self. For adolescents the developmental task of conformity vs. identity is not mastered.

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From a tribal point of view, modernity lacks the traditional rituals of initiation. Boys do not become mature men automatically; something in them must confront a symbolic death. Boys were guided through three stages. • The first was separation from the community. • The second was liminality, that ambiguous

and terrifying period when old identities were torn away and the initiates were as yet unborn. Here they learned sacred knowledge of the tribe — and a sense of what they were meant to be.

• In the third stage, re-incorporation, the community welcomed and celebrated those youth who had completed the trials, those persons who had died as boys and been reborn as men.

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Held to be one of the most ancient of rites, an initiation marks the psychological crossing of a threshold into new territories, knowledge and abilities. The major themes of the initiation are suffering, death and rebirth. The initiate undergoes an ordeal that is symbolic of physically dying, and is symbolically reborn as a new person possessing new knowledge.

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Special rituals and requirements for new members of a group are called initiation rituals. Many social organizations are quite demanding of new members. Anthropologists have a term—mortification rituals—for initiation ceremonies that inflict pain or humiliation or otherwise mortify the new member of the group. To mortify is, literally, to threaten death, and mortification rituals often threaten death either actually or symbolically.

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Painful or stressful initiation experiences have a long history in the human species. In many cultures, young men or women are forced to submit to painful body alterations like circumcision or tattooing, as a symbol of entry into adulthood.Physical stress can serve to make a new group member dependent and obedient, weary and incapable of thinking clearly, ready to do only what he or she is told to do.

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In our culture, we retain patterns of socializing young people, but little more. Our initiations teach the values of competition, materialism, and individualism — within the heritage of Puritanism, militarism and unease with the physical body. Most of our rituals, then, are reaffirmations of the status quo. Our rites of passage merely note very mild transitions into the consumer lifestyle, rather than marking any meaningful change and competition is the culture's primary value.

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To a great extent, American initiation is class-based. Middle-class white youth experience a conventional series of events intended to mark their passage, such as birthday parties, graduations and Bar Mitzvahs. These rituals are confirmative rather than transformative; they mark the social standing of a family as much as the new identities of the participants. The churches have retained the rite of baptism in its various forms, all of which are rooted in the ancient rituals of purification and initiation into community. But modern rites of passage offer no sense of risk — the potential loss and restructuring of identity. Thus it is rare for a young person to feel (and be treated as) fundamentally different, let alone transformed, after having been baptized or Bar Mitzvahed.

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Drug use and religion have been intertwined throughout history, but the nature of this relationship has varied over time and from place to place. Alcohol and other drugs have played important roles in the religious rituals of numerous groups. For example, among a number of native South American groups, Tobacco was considered sacred and was used in religious ritual, including the consultation of spirits and the initiation of religious leaders. Similarly, wine, representing the blood of Christ, has been central in the Holy Communion observances of both Roman Catholic and some Protestant churches. Considered divine by the Aztecs of ancient Mexico, the Peyote cactus is used today in the religious services of the contemporary Native American church

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Many young men attempt to create their own initiations by intentionally approaching or creating the symbolic brush with death that real initiation provides. They may climb mountains, ride motorcycles, participate in "extreme" sports etc. Such experiences have the undeniable potential of validating a person's sense of ability and self-worth, and provide the exhilarating sense of having passed through danger. But this brush with literal death lacks a symbolic component, it occurs outside of a ritual container, and it has no social or spiritual context.

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One may experience momentary authenticity and potency; but without being welcomed back into the village as a transformed person, one receives little lasting nourishment. And the longing for this acknowledgement is so intense that one returns to the experience over and over, hoping to get something it cannot provide. This too is the essence of addiction.

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The military is the one institution in America that is highly ritualized, and this fact is a major attraction in our secular society. The destruction of an individual ego by the "elders" and its replacement with membership in something that mimics a closed initiatory group does thrust the young man into a form of liminal space. Within that space, the training does present obstacles to be overcome that can evoke the trials of the traditional Hero's Journey. Trainers, however, typically assign those obstacles the stereotyped characteristics of the enemy. This process literalizes what otherwise might have symbolized the defeat of a person's inner demons.

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It is initiation into the culture of death, of killing — or dying — rather than living for the world. The irony is that death is precisely what the young men are looking for — the symbolic death of their own childhood. Undeniably, the experience of combat will strip away a young person's sense of innocence. He may return home wiser or more cynical about his own darkness — or that of his nation — but in this third phase of the hero's journey, he brings no gift back to his community. And a loss of innocence does not bring new social or spiritual status, but only depression.

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On the hard, stony ground of the ghettoes, rituals take on a life-or-death quality and the 'crossing' to adulthood becomes fraught with danger. In this atmosphere police attention, arrest, lashes or prison become the dangers of the hunt, a rite of passage through the police vans and prison cells of the 'enemy' and into the admiring arms of the gang. It is conceivable that some gangs formed as a means of providing their members with rites of passage to adulthood. Having dropped out of or failing at school, like-minded youths may begin to associate with each other.

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Mystery also plays a role in group cohesion. When a new member is recruited to a "secret society" or similar organization, promises are shared, oaths recited, sacred responsibilities pronounced and accepted. Access is allowed to secret writings or places.

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In recovery communities, like 12-step programs, the program and/or the Higher Power becomes the healthy attachment that enables the addict or alcoholic to release their relation ship on the addictive substance and/or behaviors. It mitigates the pain of feeling separate, lacking, and anxious and meets their emotional needs enough to offset the unhealthy attachment or addiction. The program addresses the need for a spiritual connection to a Higher Power, even if that Power resides in the recovery group itself. This can facilitate a healing of the original failure of effective attachment. In achieving emotional freedom from the pain of addiction, there is then an inner attachment that must be corrected and achieved.

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Self-help organizations for people with addictions or with backgrounds that include childhood traumas or parental addictions have elaborated a model of treatment that provide people with both human attachments and a meaningful cognitive frame for dealing with the sense of helplessness that is central to these problems.. They focus on the development of "serenity," which can be understood both as a state of autonomic stability and homeostasis.

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These groups teach that the way to gain this serenity is by learning to trust, by surrendering, and by making contact and developing interpersonal commitments. They provide a support network that attempts to avoid the barriers that people create to bolster their individual differences, and they thus endeavor to circumvent the shame of being helpless and vulnerable that perpetuates social isolation. Shame and social isolation are thought to promote regression to earlier states of anxious attachment and to addictive involvements.

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In achieving emotional freedom from the pain of addiction, there is then an inner attachment that must be corrected and achieved. This is the inner attachment to the sufficient Self, the inner connection and consistency that enables the ability to keep one’s own promises to oneself. It is associated with a sense of self worth and with one’s values.

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Culture: that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society and is codified and defined by language, rituals and behaviors.

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Language:

• NA language is contemporary, • AA language is traditional, AA tends to

be scriptural in how members share: quoting chapter and verse

• Handshaking VS hugging• Differences in definition of a newcomer • Addicts and crime • Social acceptance of Alcohol • NA stands on the fringes

(counterculture) and in the shadow of AA

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Sponsor as ShamanRituals and milestones in Recovery/Sobriety:Separation from the community - Learning the language - Telling one’s story - Achieving a year - Service position/Trusted servant - Becoming a sponsor - Speaking at a convention – Initiation: • Separation from the community: –• Liminality (a process of ego death and

rebirth that gives meaning)• Mortification, enduring a period of

physical or emotional stress as newcomer

• Mystery, the process of being led through the Steps.