How Addictive Behavior Leads to Pathological Lying

Alcohol withdrawal can begin within hours of ending a drinking session. You may attempt to confront a loved one about their drinking problem, but be prepared for your friend or family member to lie or brush off their need for a conversation with you. Lying might occur because people are no longer making rational decisions about their lives and their behavior. Lying often serves another important purpose, which is to avoid getting caught. This might be due to the fact that the individual is addicted to an illicit substance, and they are concerned about the legal and judicial ramifications of their addiction coming to light.

As a friend or a loved one of an addict, there are a number of considerations to be mindful of with regard to pathological lying. An individual’s behavior impacts people around them, whether they like it or not. Drug and alcohol abuse hurt family, friends, coworkers, and the community.

Understanding Cravings Helps Explain WHY Addicts Alcoholics Lie, Cheat, Steal

In the meantime, you might lie to your doctor or spouse to prevent them from issuing an ultimatum. Alcohol is expensive and people who have developed a tolerance to or physical dependence on alcohol may acquire alcohol from others or find ways to obtain the money to buy it themselves. Lying may seem like a great way to ensure that you can buy more alcohol. You may borrow money under false pretenses or use money intended for other purposes on alcohol.

• Signs of addiction include taking more than the prescribed dose or taking the prescription more frequently than recommended.
• The person who is active in addiction has a unique choice relative to all other diseases.
• Others lie to maintain their relationship with alcohol to hide other mental health or social issues they may be dealing with.

It is almost as if each alcoholic/addict is given the very same playbook by which to draw their denial from. Each of these people will tell you earnestly why they believe certain things about their substance abuse and dependency. Lying is a common symptom of addiction.1 People living with addiction often lie to themselves, their families, or their medical team. Learn more about the relationship between lying and addiction and find out ten reasons why people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) may lie. Along with lying to you, many alcoholics lie to themselves. These lies are usually because the alcoholic is in denial about their drinking problem.

Lie # 2: I am in control of how much I drink, and what drugs I decide to do.

Blaming others for the consequences of their substance abuse is easier on the conscience than realizing your life is spiraling out of control. Your brain responds to the changes in neurotransmitters by shutting down some and releasing others to maintain homeostasis so that the body stays alive. Over time, your quest to re-create those pleasant feelings can change your body, so cravings for more of your chosen substance arise. At that point, your body is physically dependent on the substance. It’s more than liking the feelings — now you must have the substance to avoid negative feelings that come in the substance’s absence.

For someone with an addiction, life can often revolve around their addictive behavior. Although they plan to quit “one day,” for today, life without their addiction seems frighteningly empty. If you don’t understand how this emptiness drives people back into their addictive behavior, they will tune in to that and lie to shut you up.

Alcohol Poisoning

Everyone likes to be relaxed, happy, energetic, or whatever the feeling is that substances give you. But those substances give you more than pleasant feelings. Justifying your own drug and alcohol use by pointing to someone else’s habits is also a means of deflecting criticism away from yourself. As with quantity, timing and frequency aren’t hallmarks of addiction, either. Addicts who use infrequently may still find themselves spiraling out of control as their tolerance and the need for greater amounts rises.

In many cases, alcoholics and addicts knowingly or unknowingly suffer from depression and anxiety due to the chemical imbalances in our brains caused by the substances we abuse. When we are suffering from these psychological illnesses, including addiction, we can end up with warped ideas about our self-worth. The most interesting part about the self-deception attributed to an addict or alcoholic is that regardless of gender, ethnicity, or age, the lies are essentially the same. If you took two very different people that had never met each other, for example. One in their 20’s and the other in their 50’s, that lived in different places, and asked them about how they perceived their own alcoholism/addiction, you’d get nearly the same responses.

To Escape Shame

Learning how to support your loved one through their addictive behavior can be very challenging. It can be difficult to not get your feelings hurt when you feel like you’re constantly being lied to, and that’s perfectly normal. It’s important to try and remember to not take it personally, as the lying is not actually about you, but the addiction itself.

If someone close to you, like a family member or significant other, develops an alcohol addiction, you may notice that they behave differently than they usually do. The signs of alcoholism and alcohol use disorder often include problematic physical and behavioral changes like avoidance, defensiveness, and lying. As you understand all of this, you will be better able eco sober house complaints to focus on what you can and cannot do. In a nutshell – you can control your brain and therefore your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. You cannot control the brain of another – especially that of someone who has changed the way their brain works as a consequence of their brain disease of addiction. Tranquil Shores offers a caring place to begin your recovery.

But knowing the behavioral consequences of alcohol addiction can help people understand the disease and help loved ones seek treatment. In the age of technology and mechanical things, it is not uncommon to find that sometimes, things just don’t work the way they are supposed to anymore and that we are in need of an upgrade. We’ve adjusted to the idea that we can always just go out and get a new gadget, or a different version of anything, instead of trying to build something or even invest in fixing it ourselves. When we’ve done the work in rehab and came out on the other end, our sobriety was sparkly and new. For however long we were able to maintain and take care of our new lease on life, at some point, we are all faced with the temptation of relapse.

There are hundreds of wise sayings amongst alcoholics in recovery. Some are meant to make you think and some are meant to be taken very literally. Alcoholics Anonymous refers to, “the insanity of our disease.” This is a very literal statement. In recovery groups, they say that there is a strong link between addiction and loneliness, both in the physical and emotional sense. My secrets kept me isolated from myself; I told lies so I could become someone else, and in the aftermath of lying I often withdrew from those closest to me. It was a vicious cycle that kept me trapped in shame, and I was ready to break free from it.

Admitting that you have a problem can be hard, so alcoholics make excuses when it comes to their drinking. For many people with drinking problems, it is often easier to lie to themselves than to admit that they have lost control and need the help of a professional alcohol detox center. You are worried that your loved one’s drinking is getting out of control, and on top of that, they just said something about their drinking that you aren’t sure is the truth. Many people struggle to deal with the lies alcoholics tell them, especially when it is someone they are close to. Banyan’s Palm Beach rehab is here to help you distinguish between fact and fiction and give guidance on how to approach a loved one struggling with an addiction to alcohol.

Let’s explore some of the reasons why alcoholics lie

They don’t want to believe their need to get drunk or high has hurt their children when they aren’t there for them after school, at sports, or for other events. They don’t see that their inability to be present with family and friends is hurting others. What’s too much for one person https://rehabliving.net/ may not be enough for another. This means the body adapts to ever-increasing amounts of alcohol or drugs, requiring more to achieve the original high. The freedom to tell the truth, to embrace a lifestyle of rigorous honesty … these are necessary on the path to sobriety.

Thirty per cent of creative writers, 38 per cent of male film stars and 22 per cent of female film stars are alcoholics, according to research. Graham argues that creative writing is an egocentric occupation, offering young alcoholics with alcoholism created egomania precisely the sort of short term ego gratification which they seek. Of the seven Americans who won the Nobel Prize for literature, five were alcoholics (Sinclair Lewis, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and O’Neill). The writer Lillian Hellman is another American writer who can be mentioned in this context. Putting blinders on a horse leaves it with no peripheral vision – such is the worldview of the alcoholic. They may attend to many things, but in order to do so they must turn their attention away from one thing and toward another.

When a person starts drinking, alcohol serves a purpose for them. Maybe they drink to relax, be more sociable, to enjoy themselves. Others drink to suppress extreme emotional pain, while for others, drinking is socially expected and an important part of their culture.

If they feel they can stop at will, then it’s okay to continue, they tell themselves. Unfortunately, by then it is often too late to stop voluntarily. Your loved one would probably rather avoid feeling this way, as these are very strong emotions.