On Addiction: The Root System

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast on addiction with Dr. Chip Dodd and Phil Herndon. This is a new weekly podcast recorded at the Center for Professional Excellence. Hey. Welcome back in to the Sage Hill podcast today from Center for Professional Excellence. Hello, Chip. Hey, Phil. I'm Phil Herndon here with, CPE together with Chip again on our addiction series. We started probably four or five Weeks ago. Ago. Mhmm. Or so. So we're working our way through. Last time, we, checked in on this idea of dissociation and denial, kind of in the lifeblood of addiction, and we've talked a whole lot about addiction and what it is, how it works, its prevalence, what keeps it going, what's it for, all that kind of stuff. So today, we make a little bit of a turn toward, some real basic things around, you know, kinda how the big ship turns. You probably all heard the analogy, you know, turning a jet ski is real different than turning an aircraft carrier. So, really, recovery is a bit more of an aircraft carrier experience, I think, than a than a jet ski. So let's talk about basics, Chip. From dissociation to denial, obviously, how we're not made to live into something completely different. Mhmm. Yeah. And and yeah. Thanks, Phil. It is,

I love that that aircraft carrier analogy because the addiction is really big. It's intergenerationally connected. It's very much in the public domain. There's people whose solutions to it don't work because it's have more control. So it is is a big, big solution. So I I this I love that example. And if it were that easy, just turn around a jet ski. Everybody would do it. Right? Mhmm. Everybody wants recovery, but, doing it is a really hard deal. So Yeah. Great idea. It's real scary, hard to do. And, you know, the the denial and dissociation, like you just mentioned, it's really they they they are symptomatic expressions of how we're really made. You have to be in denial and dissociated from who you're really made to be for there to be a foundation for addiction to actually be constructed. You know, I have to deny who I really am, what's really going on with me, what I really feel, and I have to dissociate from how I'm made to be able to, stay in an addiction. And it's also a way of shutting down how I'm made. So it's almost like the disease of addiction even points to that there is something to get away from or something, that we're made like that we're trying to numb, anesthetize, stop, change, or redirect. And so, you know, you and I have talked for years the essentials of the spiritual root system that you and I are created as emotional and spiritual creatures. And in that one phrase is included, we're created, we don't make ourselves, and we are creatures in need of, back that out, Acts. We are created and we don't make ourselves, and we as created beings, we are creatures of the earth. I mean, we are created, to move about the earth. Mhmm. So you and I are created as emotional and spiritual creatures created to do one thing in life, and it's live fully. We you know, some of you guys out there listening, you've heard it so many times, but we really and truly are not created to find meaning and purpose primarily, nor are we even, created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever in terms of of what that often turns into. Saint Araneus said that a human being who is fully alive is God, glorified and also enjoyed. So you and I are created to live fully, and the only way, because of how we're created, to live fully is through relationship. In fact, the science is showing us now that by by living connected to ourselves, head to heart, others' hearts, and the heart of God, you know, the relationship with God Mhmm. We find what is, fulfillment on this earth. And fulfillment, as we know, isn't painless living. It's capability of living connected and being in pain and living connected through pain and being able to take our pain to others to help it be reduced or changed or ameliorated or shared or whatever. Also, a relationship gives us capacity to to live fully in celebration. So, you know, living fully emotionally and spiritually in relationship is dealing with life on life's terms from one, the depths of grief, to 10, the most exuberant experience of celebration. So you and I literally are created to find fulfillment in relationship, and addiction, symptomatically, is an attempt to find connection without having to go through the vulnerabilities of of relationship.

Okay. So that's a big kinda almost like a paragraph. Like, a couple sentences together. Yeah. They're one sentences. Yeah. Creative beings, created to do one thing, live fully, are we emotional, spiritual creatures? Mhmm. So that's the the basic thesis statement. Mhmm. Right? So if you move on further into, you know, a system itself, spiritual root system suggests there's a lot of parts that come together to make one thing. Oh, yeah. Right? So Mhmm. So these there are five things, five basic things, root system that goes with this. Heart. Yeah. So take off on the on the heart roots. Yeah. And that that statement that we are, you know, essentially, we're created as emotional. We are creatures of the heart. We are emotional beings. No matter what we do to try to get away from that primary fact is, frankly put, impossible without self destruction. Mhmm. You can't get away. There's no such place as away we talk about a whole lot. So as as emotional and spiritual creatures, a child before a child can think and before a child can talk, a child is expressing what they need through the emotional responses they have connected to the emotional responses of other people. I mean, a child is born craving, attachment, connection, a sense of well-being through being, with another. Right? I mean, that's that's been proven, over and over and over again even before neuroscience was had discovered or was pointing towards oxytocin and how the endorphins are affected by connection and so on. So as emotional spiritual creatures, what what what I've written about and what you and I have been teaching for years is that we have five roots of the heart. There are five primary inborn qualities that we have, out of which we respond to life, out of which we reach for connection or reach for the water of life that feeds the roots that grow the fruits, you know, so to speak. And so the first one is feelings. The first root of how we're made is feelings, the tools we've been given to allow us to live fully in a tragic place, eight tools we've been given to allow us to respond to where we are in terms of connection, and all eight of those feelings are there in us to bring us to results through relationship. Sadness, for example, we've you know, most people who are listening to this have read voice of the heart. Sadness is a feeling we have that lets us know we've lost something or disconnected from something we wish were still there. So whenever we lose something that matters to us, whether it's alcohol or a spouse, there is the experience of sadness, loss of attachment. And if you have attachment to something, it means you're capable of caring. So sadness is an expression of caring and attachment and loss. The gift of sadness is that if we do it well, we do it through relationship, we do it truthfully, we do it through surrendering to how we're created, we wind up with a result called acceptance. In other words, we become capable of living life on life's terms knowing that it's difficult and tough, but we also know it's worth it, which means worth attaching again, worth caring again, worth risking loving again. So sadness is an incredible gift that we have, and we say we live in a difficult place because one of the most common experiences of living is losing. I mean, life is more full of loss than it's full of anything else. Right? Even, you know, you and I have gotten quite a bit older and we've lost some, what would you say?

Years? Yeah. That's a big one. Let's just say it that way. Let's just say we're becoming seasoned. You know? We're we're older. I mean, you don't look any older, but, you can't help that. It's just your Irish background, I guess. That's my great genes. So anyway, feelings. Right? What about the people that say, you know, seriously though, just take drinking or smoking. It's like it's really bad for you. Like, just just don't do that. It's terrible for you. Don't do it. Well, you know, I mean, there there are people, as you and I both know, who are capable of drinking successfully. And they're not drinking to get away from how they're made. They're drinking to get a little lift or to find a little elixir of of comfort. Mhmm. And they're not doing it to to to disconnect from, to to reality necessarily even though, you know, a lot of times they are. Mhmm. But They call it taking the edge off. Yeah. But but, you know, people who are addicted, don't have that, luxury because of genetic susceptibility plus a lust and a training in emotional avoidance equals the addictive outcome. I mean, we can't afford

to live without dealing with our feelings. I remember my mother, she was an OR nurse for years. She would still she would, through the years, come home astonished that she would be in surgery with a surgeon who had removed horribly cancerous lungs or some other organ or something, cut out some tumor and go take a smoke break, or was known to be this voracious drinker, you know, outside the OR. Like Yeah. The logic, the thinking, figuring stuff out Yeah. It just doesn't work. No. The the idea of of this whole thing being logical or, somehow manageable Uh-huh. Is part of our insanity, our delusion. We have the delusion if we can think about it or reason through it, then we can fix it. But see, you can't fix how you were born. Yeah. I mean, you can't fix how you were literally created any more than a pecan tree can decide to grow oranges one day. It can it can make the decision, but the genetic makeup that created a certain way created to find fulfillment in a certain way, pecan trees, water, sun, dirt. They grow pecans. It doesn't matter what they think, so to speak. In humans, it doesn't matter what we think. That's the big misnomer about CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. The idea of using cognitive behavioral therapy to stop drinking, drugging, fooding, gambling, sexing is insanity. We have to address what it's about and also what it's become, a primary illness, but that primary illness, Bill Wilson said, is about our inability to form a true partnership with another human being, a very, concise, there's a word, pointed,

anyway. Succinct kind of. Succinct. It's a very succinct way to say a whole lot. Yep. And goes back to our created as being emotional, spiritual creatures made for relationship Yeah. Etcetera. Yeah. So these feelings are like the language, I don't know, language of relationship or language that undergirds the same thing. Of life. Language of living. Yeah. Language of heart. Yeah. So this system, first root feelings, eight feelings you went through, kinda sadness, a real quick jet tour through sadness, they all kinda follow that pattern. All eight follow pattern. And one connects to the other. What's amazing is that denial denial is about I don't see, like we talked about in the last podcast, I don't see so that I won't feel. Because eyesight is directly connected to emotions. Mhmm. In fact, the way the the the neurochemical process of the nerve nerves of the eyeballs experiencing light, it's a neurochemical process that goes through the limbic system or passes through the heart before it hits the visual cortex. In other words, we feel before we see. Mhmm. No matter what we think about that, that's a fact. Mhmm. So we block seeing what's really happening so we won't feel. So denial is based upon the goal of not feeling. And then if I don't feel, I won't have needs.

Which is going back to feelings take us to needs. Take us to needs. Yes. As soon as I've had sadness about a loss that's occurred, I'm really needing to connect with caring. Mhmm. I'm really needing, help for someone to assist me because, you know, grief will knock us down. I mean, you've heard so many people say, hey. You need to sit down before I tell you this. You've seen it in movies or heard it in real life. For sure. Or or have had to say it. I've I've both. Yes. You know? Because it will take us down. It will knock the breath out of us. It will take us to our knees. So a person who's on their knees also needs a comfort, caring, a promise, a holding, someone to walk them through the process, or to leave them to themselves while being at a close distance to help. You know? Mhmm. Yeah. Sometimes grieving is a lot about being with myself in solitude to sit and to sit and to sit. So is it is it accurate to say, like,

when I I, you, whoever, a person has feelings, it's kind of like stepping on the the automatic door of a grocery store. When I have feelings, is it automatically gonna open up this door, like, to my needs? Yeah. And and and the more we've lived dissociated or in denial or with the common common parlance of our society and the world itself, huge, SID, significant ignorance disorder. We've we've we've all practiced SID, whether you're in denial or you're dissociated. I mean, people get accepted for remaining ignoring of their hearts. I mean, you know, coaches love it. You know, bosses love it. Mhmm. You need to ignore what your real needs are, and that way you can be used a little longer. You know? So this whole idea, we're needy creatures, that's not some little poster or meme thing. That's a real deal. We we are created for dependence, and what is alcohol but dependence? Mhmm. Everything and everyone is dependent upon something. We're created to be to be dependent in connecting to relationship with ourselves, others, and god. Ourselves so we can have a voice to connect as with our real identities, but we're made for connection. And so we're either gonna depend

based upon how we're created, or we're gonna depend upon something that takes us away from how we're created because how we're created is painful. For sure. No. So And we don't know what to do about it. So these feelings open up to needs. Now there's a line in the movie called the kid, and CPE got to remember that movie. There's a line that says, now this is where it gets a little dicey. So so needs opens us up to this kind of strange sounding word called desire. Mhmm. We step on that mat, like, I know I'm needy. I need nurture. I need to grieve. I need to know I belong. I matter. Yeah. Now this desire all of a sudden is in me. So Yeah. Desire. Yeah. Desire.

Feelings awaken us to needs, and, you know, I've done the book of the, needs of the heart. Mhmm. It just very simply and specifically says these are a bunch of the needs we have, and this is what they're for, and this is what they do, And these are the things that we've got to have fulfilled to live fully. And, if we don't have them fulfilled, we will not live fully. So being needy is actually a way of being of getting to a point of full strength so that we can give ourselves away. So neediness is not a weakness. It's, it's coming to get our buckets full so we can go pour them out onto what matters to us or what's where we see thirst, we pour out water. So but desire is, simply put, two things. One is it's biological. It's the cellular, absolute craving for life, and then it's also the emotional and spiritual craving for connection and to matter. So desire is biological and also spiritual. K. I mean, it's simply we're created to fully participate and and have a full life.

So how does that connect with the alcoholic who says, I really like, I can't help it, man. It's just a desire. I get home at the end of the day. Yep. I just have a desire to just get away from it. Yeah. And, the the the You know, we mistakenly in addiction, even in evidence based detox, you know, for insurance purposes, they talk about cravings. Have their cravings gone down? Are they reduced cravings? Are they still having cravings? And based upon the amount of the craving, they regulate, in terms of medication. But see, I think that's a terrible misnomer. I wish we could use the word lust. Are they still lusting? Do they still have lust? Do they and see I know it sounds so weird. But, see, craving is normal. We're made to want what we want when we want it. But in real life and in and and in real maturity that comes through the steps, really working them with our hearts and gaining spiritual connection. But in in mature people want what they want when they want it, but they're capable of hear of hearing the word no and wait. Mhmm. See? So maturity is being able to handle waiting and hearing the word no, because to an an alcoholic, no means never, and wait means being forgotten. Yeah. So we we're living in that fear of what happens if we lose control and we're just in need and some you know, it's not gonna work out. So craving is wanting what you want when you want it. It is actually a craving for the fulfillment that comes through relationship. That's what cravings actually are. Lust, on the other hand, is the physiological demand of the body to find a way to avoid feelings that come with craving, wanting life completely. Do you know, you can have sex with a prostitute and and satisfy a lust. Yeah. But sex with a prostitute won't touch a craving. Mhmm. Because what you're really hungry for is the intimate connection that comes or is expressed in a sexual, bond, a sexual joining. And so you can join with a prostitute and and get the biological urge quelled and still walk away incredibly lonely. Janis Joplin, I'm I'm gonna tear this quote up just so it's paraphrased. She said something that that I've never been more alone than walking off the stage after, you know, performing for 20,000 people. Yeah. In other words, she got the hit, of of of of really, like, doing something incredible, and people celebrate him. She walks off the stage, and her cravings haven't been touched.

True desire. True desire for life. Mhmm. For life. For life. And I think everything that has cellular, everything that's animate, everything that carries DNA is after the same thing, specifically drawn to what feeds it most. Mhmm. Like, you know, I know I've used this example before, but slugs eat geranium leaves. You and I can eat all the geranium leaves in the world, and we're not fed. If we were slugs, it would be. If we were slugs, it would be, but we're not slugs. And so feeding ourselves that which doesn't feed us, feeding ourselves that which doesn't nutritionally gratify the heart is ultimately detrimental. It'll temporarily satiate, but it won't fulfill. So So that's desire in a nutshell. Yeah. Desire. And then it's like, okay. Great. So I'm fully aware of my desire. I'm I'm desiring. Yeah. Which makes me needy. I have these feelings. Yeah. I'm gonna my needs come to the surface, then this desire that's in me, craving for life shows up, and I'm not done yet as a human. No. So I'm not. I see. And that's what's so amazing is we we are amazing

creatures, and we're we're we're we're not so much complicated as we are amazing or, frankly, glorious in terms of there's much to us. We're not big, but we're a big deal, as Psalm eight says, you know, in the middle of Psalm eight. Well, it didn't say that, but, I mean, it references that. Yep. So desire, isn't it amazing that the more you crave and hunger for life, the more you want life, which is a willingness to go after it, the more needy you are and the more feelings you're gonna have. And but then also it points the other direction towards more of us, that we are creatures who are really have a spiritual nature. We long to be connected to a place where we are ultimately safe, where there is peace, where we always have a home, we don't have to leave, and where there's justice. So we long to live in a world which I think speaks to the eternal within us. Yeah. You know, the Ecclesiastes says that we were born with eternity in our hearts. Mhmm. Do you know? God placed it there. Yeah. Yeah. And, what a what a tough thing to have in us in a place where it can't happen. Mhmm. So, longings are a sense of the taste of what completely fulfills us, but we can't have as much as we want. Like, taste of the most wonderful pie in the world. And and so here's here's a piece of pie, and then you take a bite and then the person says, you only have one bite. Mhmm. So we would say to ourselves, well, the heck with it is not worth it. Don't even give me the bite. Mhmm. See, that's running away from what can be done. Just because all justice won't, be fulfilled and injustice will continue to occur doesn't mean we stop fighting for it. Just because we can't have perfect peace doesn't mean we stop struggling for it, and just because even when we create the most beautiful experience of comfort of home, just because it isn't really what we're looking for ultimately doesn't mean we stop building it. You know? Mhmm. So longings are a willingness to enter into pursuing that which we can't have because it's worth having what we can. Do you know? So it's like so automatically, you've just been introduced to you better be willing to deal with pain and life on life's terms and have desire and face it as how you're made. You better be willing to grieve, and you better be willing to celebrate because lies the warp and woof of living between those two things and everything in between. So longings are cravings for the full absolute fulfillment that can't be fulfilled here. And now, you know, guys like me and you, I mean, we believe we will go home someday. I believe we, you know, we came from somewhere and we're going somewhere. I'm not talking about reincarnation I'm talking about God. We wound up living in a broken place, and then we're going to go to a place where we are completely repaired. Heaven, so to speak. Not so to speak, heaven. I was going to say nothing that's kind of a little old. Yeah, it's not so to speak. And then the last one is hope. You know, with feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope. Yep. Sweet, precious Pesky.

Yeah. Won't go away. Dynamo dynamism of of hope. Uh-huh. How small a thing and yet how powerful it is. Cause it's the one thing that no matter what you do, you and I cannot rid ourselves of that. Even ourselves won't stop reaching for, grasping at, clinging to staying alive. And hope is the absolute wish to be fulfilled. So feelings, needs, desire, longings, and then hope. And hope brings us back to feelings. I'll say more about hope in a second, but hope brings us back to feelings because hope is a wish for something we do not have. Mhmm. I'm hoping that so and so I'm hungering for so and so. I'm thirsting for so and so. So hope automatically points to a deficiency or an incompleteness or a a hole. Mhmm. And so the moment we have an incompleteness, we have a fear. So hope brings us to feelings Yeah. Fear. And fear brings us to needs and desire. And so hope is a very courageous thing because it makes us vulnerable. But ultimately, hope is that thing that brings us to taking risks. You know, I hope that I'm longing for a desire, a need, and I have feelings related to it. Mhmm. So I'm gonna hope that when I call Phil, Phil will be able to answer the phone, and I can I can tell him what I'm wishing, and I can tell him where I'm hurting, and I can tell him what's going on with me? And he might say something to me that will allow me to stay connected to myself, keep me from doing anything that would send me back into relapse, that he would, offer to, have a cup of coffee later, and then all of a sudden my hope is not just a risk, but it's a a fulfillment. Mhmm. And that becomes hope actually is the is the foreground upon which we build faith. The book of Hebrews says that the ancients were commended for this thing. They were sure of what they hoped for, which was a willingness to be vulnerable, to face how they were made, to be in need, to have feelings, to face the condition of their reality. They were sure of what they hoped for, and they were certain of what they did not see. They had a vision of life over the horizon Mhmm. Or over the hill. Mhmm. And they were going over the hill. So hope is that flame, that energy that can't stop wishing for a better tomorrow, for five minutes waiting for five minutes before the miracle comes. It's it's how we're made. And and every child of life is born just like that. Oh, there are varying degrees. Some people are more sensitive to feelings. Some people are more desirous. But still, the five basic roots need to be fed so we can grow into who we're made to be, so we can go do what we're made to do, which is live fully. And then you know what? What happens is we end up discovering by living fully our meaning and purpose. Yeah. And we find that incredible experience of, of glorifying God by being fully alive and enjoying God, you know, forever. Right on. You know? So that's the first turn of the aircraft carrier. Yeah. The re you need to turn one. Yeah. The reawakening, like the awakening to, al there's not enough alcohol. Yeah. There's not enough x y z, whatever that thing is to to to to make me go away from how I may and admitting powerlessness over how how I am made. Yes. So that's the first turn.

We'll head next time, we'll look at a more specific model and pick up right here with this reawakening, idea as the thing turned. So kinda headed toward, I guess, for lack of a better term, a solution Yeah. To this thing. So, thanks for joining us, and I hope you join us next time on the Sage Hill podcast. Hey. Thanks, everybody.