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In this podcast, we ask the question... What role do anxiety and fear play in recovery?

Those who enter into treatment and start to uncover their motives come to understand the dominant, even domineering, role that fear has played in their lives.

Fear was the subconscious thread that motivated much of what they did or avoided doing. There are two types of what might be called irrational fears - fears not supported by evidence such as "a truck is about to hit my car".

1. The first type of fear is the fear of losing something that we value. For an addict, it's losing access to his drug, due to lack of money or someone getting in the way. This fear is quite real to the addict and he will act it out in some insane ways.
2. The second type of fear is the fear of not getting what we want or demand. That may mean that the addict's instincts demand that he must have this or else! The outsize egomania shows up as King Baby, totally dependent and yet bossing mom around.

Anxiety might be seen as a low-level, persistent fear of what might happen but hasn't, and likely never will. It is a consequence of living in the future, playing a video which almost without exception is a disaster of one's own making.

These fears and anxieties carry over to sober life, for not all irrational thinking magically vaporizes when we put down the alcohol and drugs. It will take a new-found consciousness to recognise and face the fears that once owned us, but now they no longer have to terrorise our waking hours.