Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
Ryan Soave, LMHC, an addiction and trauma recovery expert, discusses actionable tools for breaking addictive cycles and building distress tolerance. The episode covers recovery stages, self-directed state shifting via yoga nidra, recognizing addiction, and treatment options.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Addiction: Definition, Underlying Stressors, and Relief
Initial Treatment: Detox, Stabilization, and Emotional Capacity
Recognizing Addiction: The 'Does It Have You?' Test
Dopamine Dynamics: Pursuit of Reward vs. Pleasure
Reordering Loves and Addressing Childhood Roles
Creating a Life Post-Addiction: The Jellinek Curve
Tool: Emotional Weather Forecast for Daily Navigation
Building Distress Tolerance and Proactive Practices
Stilling the Mind and Activating Parasympathetic System
Yoga Nidra (NSDR) for State Shifting and Trauma Recovery
Alcohol Addiction: Social Acceptability and Community Support
Gambling Addiction: Unique Challenges and Accessibility
Transmuting Energy and Stimulant Addiction
Overcoming Pornography Addiction and Shame
Addiction Treatment Options: Rehab, 12-Step, and Support
Addiction as a Solution to Underlying Trauma and Stress
GLP-1 Agonists, Sugar, Caffeine, and Psychedelics in Addiction
Helping Someone with Addiction and Family Support
7 Key Concepts
Addiction (Soave's View)
Addiction is seen not as the primary problem, but as a problematic solution to underlying stressors or discomfort. It's characterized by a substance or behavior driving a person's actions, offering temporary relief that ultimately becomes destructive.
Distress Tolerance
This refers to the capacity to experience difficult emotions and discomfort without immediately resorting to harmful coping mechanisms. Building distress tolerance allows individuals to face pain and access deeper joy and satisfaction in life, rather than constantly seeking escape.
Emotional Weather Forecast
A daily practice designed to help individuals understand their current emotional state and upcoming plans. By predicting potential emotional disturbances and identifying personal 'character liabilities,' one can proactively strive for desired ways of being, such as patience or tolerance.
Stilling Leads to Seeing
This principle suggests that by calming the mind and body, one can gain clearer perception of actual events, rather than reacting based on past experiences or future anxieties. It enhances present-moment awareness, enabling more intentional and less reactive responses.
Powerlessness (12-Step Concept)
In 12-step programs, admitting powerlessness over an addictive substance or behavior is not a sign of weakness, but a foundational step towards finding true strength. It involves recognizing limits to control, which then opens the door to seeking support and building a new life.
Plagiarizing from the Past
This concept describes the tendency to unconsciously repeat old, reactive patterns of behavior and thought. These patterns, often developed as survival strategies in earlier life, prevent individuals from authoring new, adaptive responses in current situations.
Dopamine Dynamics
Dopamine is primarily released during the pursuit of reward, not just upon receiving it. Rapid, intense increases in dopamine from certain substances or behaviors quickly lead to diminishing satisfaction and significant emotional lows, perpetuating a cycle of craving and pursuit.
12 Questions Answered
A good test is to try quitting for a month; if all you can think about is doing it or stopping it, and it's negatively impacting your life, it likely 'has you' rather than you having control over it.
For many, it's the first time they experience a different emotional or physiological state, realizing that life or their internal state could be different from their previous baseline, which they may not have even recognized as problematic.
Proactive practices like yoga nidra, meditation, cold plunges, and therapy can raise the nervous system's capacity to handle discomfort. In-the-moment tools like breathwork can help regulate responses when distress arises.
Yoga nidra helps individuals activate the parasympathetic nervous system, creating a pause before reacting and allowing access to a state beyond survival mode. This provides a 'touchstone experience' for building new, adaptive responses to stress.
Alcohol is highly socially acceptable and deeply integrated into culture, leading to stigma for those who choose not to drink. This cultural context makes finding and maintaining community support crucial for recovery.
It uniquely offers the illusion that the 'next hit' (a win) can solve all financial problems, which perpetuates the cycle. It's also increasingly accessible to young people through unregulated online platforms, making it harder to avoid.
Pornography creates unrealistic expectations of sex and intimacy, can rapidly escalate to extreme content, and fosters a deep sense of shame. This often leads to social isolation and real-life performance anxiety, as the brain gets wired to observe rather than participate in intimacy.
Addiction is primarily an attempted solution to underlying discomfort or stress. However, the addictive behaviors themselves become problematic, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of trauma, stress, and further addiction.
Yes, individuals can develop a nervous system setting where a high level of stress or activation is needed just to feel at baseline or 'alive.' This can lead to a drive for intense or risky behaviors, sometimes referred to as an 'intensity addiction.'
While not always meeting formal diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder, if these behaviors progressively take over one's life, cause significant negative impacts, and are difficult to stop, they can be considered addictive in practice.
Psychedelics can offer powerful 'touchstone experiences' that allow individuals to access states beyond survival mode, providing a window into how they can be. However, they require careful ethical consideration, professional delivery, and extensive follow-up integration work.
Approach them without shame, have open conversations, and seek help for yourself (e.g., Al-Anon) if you don't know how to talk to them. Suggesting 12-step meetings or professional assessments are also viable options for support.
45 Actionable Insights
1. Addiction: Problematic Solution
Reframe addiction not as the primary problem, but as a person’s attempt to find relief or a solution to underlying discomfort or stress. This perspective helps in understanding the root causes and developing more effective, sustainable solutions.
2. Increase Distress Tolerance
Learn to increase your capacity to experience difficult emotions and discomfort without immediately seeking short-term relief from substances or behaviors. This allows you to face pain and become more available for joy.
3. Break Trauma-Stress-Addiction Cycle
Recognize that addiction often stems from a cycle of trauma (wounds), stress (relationship to the wound), and the search for relief. The addictive behavior then creates new traumas, perpetuating the cycle. Addressing the underlying wound is key.
4. Reorder Life’s Priorities
Examine what you love the most and prioritize a ‘higher power’ (which can be God, community, or a guiding principle) above things like money, relationships, or pleasure, as these can fail you when made the ultimate priority.
5. Author Your Own Life
Strive for authenticity by becoming the ‘author of your life’ rather than plagiarizing from past reactive patterns. This involves making conscious choices that move you forward, even if they feel risky or unfamiliar.
6. Embrace Powerlessness for Power
In recovery, admit where you are powerless (e.g., over a substance or behavior) and that your life has become unmanageable. This recognition is the first step to finding true power and seeking alternative solutions.
7. Daily Emotional Weather Map
Practice a daily self-reflection protocol by listing gratitudes (including challenges), outlining your day’s plans, identifying your current emotional state, noting what character liabilities to watch for, and defining what virtues to strive for. This helps navigate daily stressors consciously.
8. Share Daily Reflections
Share your daily emotional weather map or similar vulnerable self-reflections with a trusted friend or therapist. This fosters accountability, brings your intentions into existence, and provides external perspective and support.
9. Activate Parasympathetic Response
When experiencing a stress response, focus on activating your parasympathetic nervous system rather than just deactivating the sympathetic. This can be done by asking if you’re in immediate physical danger (if no, it’s discomfort, not threat) and using breathwork.
10. Breathe with Long Exhales
To quickly calm your nervous system and activate the parasympathetic response, practice breathwork with long exhales. Even taking seven focused breaths can help regulate your emotional state in moments of activation.
11. Schedule Distress Tolerance Practices
Schedule proactive practices like Yoga Nidra (non-sleep deep rest), cold plunges, therapy, or community involvement. These activities build capacity in your nervous system to manage distress, making it easier to respond adaptively to real-time stressors.
12. Daily Yoga Nidra Practice
Engage in Yoga Nidra or Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) daily, ideally in the morning and late afternoon, or whenever possible. This guided meditation helps relax the body, quiet the mind, increase dopamine stores, and build distress tolerance.
13. Set Nidra Intention
During Yoga Nidra, set a clear intention or ‘Sankalpa’ – a state you wish to experience or a quality you want to bring into your life. This helps guide the practice and reinforces desired mental states.
14. Body Awareness Scan
During practices like Yoga Nidra, guide your awareness through different points in your body (e.g., 61 points). This technique helps shift focus from thinking to feeling, grounding you in the present moment and away from external distractions.
15. Still Mind for Clarity
Practice stilling the mind through meditation or other mindfulness techniques. A stilled mind enhances your ability to perceive what is actually happening in real-time, rather than being driven by past narratives or future anxieties.
16. Differentiate Discomfort from Threat
Train yourself to distinguish between discomfort and actual threat. Our nervous system often confuses the two, leading to inappropriate fight-or-flight responses. Recognizing when something is merely uncomfortable allows for a more measured response.
17. Pause Before Reacting
When a stressor hits, consciously create a gap between the stimulus and your response. This pause, even if brief (e.g., 20 seconds), allows your forebrain to re-engage, enabling strategic decision-making instead of automatic reaction.
18. Conscious Event Interpretation
Recognize that all external events are neutral; it is your perception and beliefs that assign meaning to them. Practice conscious awareness to choose how you interpret events, rather than reacting automatically based on past narratives.
19. Prioritize Ways of Being
In daily planning, strive for ‘ways of being’ (e.g., patient, tolerant, kind) rather than solely focusing on specific external goals. This cultivates internal virtues that help navigate challenges regardless of outcomes.
20. Small, Frequent Mind Practices
Incorporate small, frequent practices (e.g., seven breaths, a minute of mindfulness) throughout your day, even if you also schedule longer sessions. These ‘grease the groove’ for mental and emotional regulation, making larger practices easier and more effective.
21. Exercise for Energy Transmutation
Engage in physical exercise, especially endurance activities, to transmute stored energy and stress from the body. This can calm the mind, improve sleep, and provide a healthy outlet for energy that might otherwise contribute to distress or addictive cravings.
22. Embrace Healthy Discomfort
Recognize that humans may have an innate ‘discomfort appetite.’ Satisfy this need through healthy, adaptive challenges (e.g., physical exercise, difficult projects, self-imposed discomfort) rather than allowing it to be fulfilled by unhealthy, addictive behaviors.
23. Beware Easy, Quick Rewards
Be highly mindful of behaviors or substances that provide easy and quick rewards or pleasure, as these can rapidly lead to dopamine dysregulation, increased craving, and a diminished sense of satisfaction over time.
24. Effortless Dopamine is Risky
Be wary of rapid, high inflections of dopamine that do not require effort (e.g., from certain substances or behaviors). This ’easy dopamine’ creates a slippery slope, leading to increased cravings and decreased satisfaction over time.
25. Assess Your Addiction Control
To determine if a substance or behavior is an addiction, ask yourself: ‘Does it have you or do you have it?’ This helps understand if it’s driving your behaviors or if you’re leaning on it as a problematic solution to underlying stressors.
26. Month-Long Abstinence Test
To self-test for addiction, try to quit the substance or behavior for a month. If all you can think about is doing it or stopping it, it’s a good indication that it has you.
27. Evaluate Life Impact
Evaluate what the substance or behavior is impacting in your life, such as disengagement, loneliness, quality of relationships, or motivation, to understand its problematic nature.
28. Join a 12-Step Community
If struggling with addiction, find a 12-step meeting (e.g., AA, NA, OA, GA) in your area or online. These free, peer-led communities offer support, shared experience, and a structured path to recovery, helping you feel less alone.
29. Explore Diverse 12-Step Meetings
Don’t settle for the first 12-step meeting you attend; try at least six different ones. Meetings vary, and finding a group where you feel comfortable and connected is crucial for sustained recovery.
30. Talk to Addicts Without Shame
When talking to someone suffering from addiction, approach the conversation without shaming them. Frame it as talking to a sick friend rather than a bad person, fostering an open dialogue and encouraging them to seek help.
31. Family Support for Addiction
If a loved one is struggling with addiction, seek support for yourself through family support groups like Al-Anon, Co-Dependents Anonymous, or Families Anonymous. These resources help you understand addiction and how to best support your loved one and yourself.
32. Professional Addiction Assessment
If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, seek a professional assessment from a therapist or treatment center. They can help understand underlying patterns, provide appropriate levels of care, and guide recovery.
33. Explore Virtual Addiction Care
If traditional residential treatment is not feasible or desired, explore virtual care and in-home care options for addiction treatment. These services can build relationships and provide support at a lower cost and with greater accessibility.
34. Don’t Burden Children
Recognize that using children to meet your emotional needs is a covert form of abuse, as it burdens them with the job of caring for you and can negatively shape their future relationships and self-perception. Instead, focus on meeting their needs.
35. Discard Early Morning Thoughts
Choose not to believe thoughts that occur between 2 AM and 5 AM, as the brain is vulnerable and less strategic during these hours. Write them down if significant, but defer judgment until morning when cognitive functions are restored.
36. Integrate Your Shadow Self
Embrace all aspects of yourself, including the ‘shadow’ (Jungian concept of unconscious, often negative, parts). Running from the shadow is unsustainable, as light and shadow are intertwined and both serve a purpose in personal growth.
37. Thoughts Are Not Facts
Recognize that your thoughts are not always facts; they are inputs. Learn to observe and question your thoughts, especially those that trigger distress, rather than automatically believing and reacting to them.
38. Beyond White-Knuckling Recovery
While initial abstinence might involve ‘white-knuckling,’ long-term recovery requires building a sustainable life and finding pleasure from life itself, rather than solely relying on willpower to avoid the addictive substance or behavior.
39. Build a Dream Life
In recovery, strive to build a life that exceeds your ‘wildest dreams’ by focusing on personal growth, handling life’s stressors, and finding satisfaction in new experiences, rather than merely abstaining from the addiction.
40. Dynamic Life Balance
Understand that balance in life is a dynamic process, not a static state. It involves recognizing when you’re out of balance and having the tools and capacity to return to a regulated state more quickly.
41. Stabilize Blood Sugar for Recovery
Maintain stable blood sugar levels, as physiological stability can reduce the risk of relapse for individuals in recovery. Being hungry is one of the ‘HALT’ factors (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) that increases vulnerability to relapse.
42. Manage HALT for Relapse Prevention
Be aware of and proactively address the ‘HALT’ factors (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired), as these states significantly increase the risk of relapse or problematic behavior. Prioritize basic self-care to mitigate these vulnerabilities.
43. Stress as Nervous System Training
View challenging experiences, like intense training or difficult life situations, as opportunities for nervous system training. This perspective helps build resilience and the capacity to perform under stress without resorting to maladaptive coping mechanisms.
44. Accountability for Porn Addiction
For porn addiction, acknowledge it as a problem, talk to someone about it (therapist, community), and establish accountability. This may involve using software to block access or having an accountability partner to break the cycle of shame and secrecy.
45. Normalize Porn Addiction Treatment
Approach porn addiction with the same seriousness and strategies as other addictions, such as seeking therapy, joining 12-step groups, and finding community support. This helps reduce the isolating shame associated with it.
9 Key Quotes
Does it have you or do you have it?
Ryan Soave
Addiction is not the problem. Addiction is the solution.
Ryan Soave
Treatment can't really begin until the crisis occurs.
Ryan Soave
What I really do with them is help them learn how to feel bad.
Ryan Soave
Humility is an honest recognition of who and what we've become followed by a deep desire to become who we can be.
Bill Wilson (quoted by Ryan Soave)
Peace is not finding calmer seas. It's building a better boat.
Country singer (quoted by Ryan Soave)
We confuse discomfort with threat and respond to discomfort as if it's threat.
Ryan Soave
The breath is the mind made visible.
Amrit Desai (quoted by Andrew Huberman)
Secrets keep us sick.
Ryan Soave
2 Protocols
Emotional Weather Forecast for Daily Navigation
Ryan Soave- Start with gratitude, intentionally including something challenging.
- Lay out your plans for the day, not as a detailed calendar, but as key events.
- Identify your current emotional state (e.g., irritated, rested, fearful, angry).
- Predict potential emotional disturbances based on your plans and current state, recognizing personal 'character liabilities' (e.g., impatience, controlling tendencies).
- Determine what specific behaviors or reactions to watch for during the day.
- Define what you want to strive for in terms of your way of being (e.g., patient, tolerant, kind).
- Optionally, share this list with a trusted friend or community for accountability and connection.
Managing Stress Response in the Moment
Ryan Soave- Become aware that a stress response is actively happening in your body and mind.
- Ask yourself: 'Am I, or is anybody around me, in immediate physical danger?'
- If the answer is no, intervene on the automatic reaction by taking a break, walking away, or taking a few breaths.
- Actively activate the parasympathetic nervous system, for example, by focusing on long exhales during breathing.
- Create a pause to allow for conscious choice and an intentional response, rather than an automatic, reactive one.