In my work with addicts and their families, the phrase “hitting bottom” often comes up. The addict, so the theory goes, will not recover until he or she has hit bottom. “How can I get my daughter to hit bottom?”, the parent wonders. The addict hopes, “Have I finally had enough? Is this the rock bottom they’re talking about?”

What is hitting bottom, and what does it have to do with change?

Think of falling into a pit in the middle of the night. If the pit is deep enough, hitting the bottom of the pit will hurt. If it hurts badly enough, you may decide to make a change. Maybe I shouldn’t walk through old Ms. Lankry’s field after dark (even though the stolen strawberries are so delicious)! Or maybe you won’t learn your lesson, in which case you are prone to continued and probably more painful nocturnal pratfalls.

I like the old AA definition: hitting bottom is when you stop digging.

There is no objective state of hitting bottom. For some a change-causing bottom can be a hangover, while for others it is when they are living homeless on the street.

What we are hoping for is an internal shift, a bit of internal dialogue that says: I can’t live like this anymore. I need to make some real changes, and I need to make them now.

We can’t make that shift for anyone. It needs to come from within. And it almost always comes because of pain. (This is why we discourage enabling: it prevents the addict from hitting bottom.)

Pain is an excellent motivator; it is the body’s built-in redirective system. Pain says, OUCH! Stop that! Don’t do that again! If we ignore pain - and we can choose to do that for any number of reasons - our body protests louder and louder, until we eventually listen.

Now, here’s the point that I’m getting at: we can decide how high our pain threshold is. If we are resistant to pain’s messages, it will take a lot more pain to get us to change. But if we can be receptive to the lightest of pain, and use that to redirect ourselves…..

Why, we may just save ourselves a lot of trouble.

Shimmy Feintuch, LCSW CASAC-G maintains a private practice in Brooklyn, NY, and Washington Heights, NYC, with specialties in addictions and anxiety. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. Contact: (530) 334-6882 or shimmyfeintuch@gmail.com. 

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