Trauma is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that can have long-lasting impacts on your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. While trauma affects everyone differently, a significant and well-documented consequence of experiencing trauma is an increased risk of substance use and addiction. But how do you go about understanding the link between trauma and substance use?
What is Trauma?
To understand this link, you first need to understand what trauma is. Many experiences are disturbing or distressing: physical abuse, sexual violence, natural disasters, accidents, or even prolonged exposure to stressful environments like war zones or abusive relationships. But what makes an event traumatic (in the psychological sense) is when your nervous system remains stuck in its survival response to the threatening event rather than returns to normal regulation after the threat has passed.
Trauma can be acute (from a single incident), chronic (resulting from repeated and prolonged exposure to distressing events), or complex (from exposure to multiple traumatic events, often of an invasive, interpersonal nature, particularly in early life).
Trauma impacts the brain’s functioning, particularly in areas responsible for emotional regulation, fear response, and memory processing. The brain’s attempt to protect itself from the overwhelming stress of trauma can lead to various coping mechanisms, including substance use.
The Connection Between Trauma and Substance Use
Research has consistently shown a strong correlation between trauma and substance use. The bottom line is if you’ve experienced trauma, you are more likely to engage in substance use to cope with your pain. Different underlying factors contribute to this.
- Self-Medication: Many people turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the emotional pain or anxiety that stems from traumatic experiences. Substances may provide temporary relief or escape from intrusive thoughts, nightmares, or flashbacks related to traumatic events. However, self-medication can progress into addiction, which compounds the suffering.
- Dysregulation of the Stress Response: Trauma disrupts the body’s natural stress response, leading to heightened anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Substance use may initially help in managing these overwhelming emotions, but over time it can exacerbate the dysregulation, leading to dependency.
- Social and Environmental Factors: Many people who experience trauma, especially in early life, often grow up in environments where substance use is prevalent or normalized. The combination of a traumatic past and a substance-permissive environment can increase your likelihood of substance use as a coping mechanism.
- Co-occurring Mental Health Issues: Trauma often leads to mental health disorders like PTSD, depression, or anxiety, which are themselves risk factors for substance use. Other times, mental health disorders may be present before trauma occurs. Either way, the presence of both trauma and a mental health disorder can create a cycle where the individual uses substances to manage their symptoms, which in turn worsens their mental health. In individuals whose PTSD precedes substance use, the trauma is often linked to childhood abuse. In people who develop PTSD after substance abuse, the trauma is often traced back to the procurement and use of substances.
Related Reading: Stages of Addiction
The Cyclical Nature of Trauma and Substance Use
The relationship between trauma and substance use is often cyclical. While trauma can lead to substance use as a form of coping, substance use can also lead to further traumatic experiences, such as accidents, legal issues, or relationship breakdowns. This cycle of trauma and substance use can be challenging to break, as each reinforces the other.
For example, if you drink to cope with trauma, you may find yourself in dangerous situations that lead to more trauma (e.g. accidents while under the influence, involvement with the courts, etc), increasing your reliance on alcohol. Over time, this recurring cycle can result in a severe substance use disorder, accompanied by compounded trauma that makes recovery even more challenging.
Related Reading: Addiction and Substance Abuse
Treatment for Trauma and Substance Use
Breaking the cycle of trauma and substance use requires a comprehensive approach that addresses both the trauma and the substance use disorder. Some effective strategies include:
- Trauma-Informed Substance Abuse Treatment: This model recognizes the impact of trauma on your life and integrates this understanding into all aspects of care. Trauma-informed care prioritizes safety, empowerment, and collaboration, helping you regain control over your life and build resilience.
- Therapy for Trauma: Therapies like Somatic Experiencing, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Internal Family Systems, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) are effective in addressing both trauma and substance use. These approaches help you process traumatic memories, develop healthier coping mechanisms, and reduce reliance on substances.
- Support Systems: Building a strong support network of friends, family, and/or support groups is important in the recovery process. Support systems provide emotional encouragement, accountability, and a sense of community.
- Co-occurring Disorders Treatment: Integrated treatment programs that address both trauma and substance use simultaneously have shown to be more effective than treating each issue in isolation. These programs often combine therapy, medication, and holistic approaches like mindfulness and yoga to promote overall healing.
At Life Care Wellness, we understand the importance of treating the whole person. We treat addictive disorders and co-occurring mental health disorders at the same time, increasing success rates and quality of life. We have masters-level therapists on staff with specialized training in substance abuse treatment to ensure that you have an integrated recovery plan designed to address the effects of mental health conditions while supporting addiction recovery.
Rhonda Kelloway is the owner and principal therapist at Life Care Wellness, a group psychotherapy practice in Glen Ellyn, Sycamore, and Chicago (Jefferson Park neighborhood), Illinois. She is a trauma specialist using a Somatic Experiencing framework to utilize the body’s wisdom in healing. She also uses EMDR and a variety of traditional psychotherapy approaches in her work. In addition to being a psychotherapist, she is a trained divorce and family mediator.
