Why Alcohol Doesn’t Help You Cope with Dr. Ashish Bhatt, MD, MRO (E104)
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Gill welcomes Dr. Bhatt, MD, MRO to the podcast. We think that alcohol helps us cope with our problems, but in reality, alcohol prevents us from learning how to deal with life. Once we stop drinking, we have no idea how to handle anything. Dr. Bhatt helps us understand resilience- where it comes from, how addiction breaks it down, and what steps you can take to improve your resilience.
Dr. Ashish Bhatt, MD, MRO, is recognized as a leading physician, addiction medicine specialist, and psychiatrist. He has extensive experience in a variety of substance abuse treatment programs, psychiatric and co-occurring diagnosis programs for both adults and adolescents, and has served as the Chief Medical Officer for regional and national behavioral health companies. Dr. Bhatt’s philosophy is that there is no compromising in medicine, that each patient should be treated as we would our own family.
In this episode you’ll learn:
What resiliency is and what determines whether or not you are resilient
How your belief and confidence in yourself impacts your resilience
How addiction break down resilience
How alcohol and drugs prevents us from learning to deal with life
Why your emotional maturity stops when you start drinking or using
How drugs and alcohol distort our perception of reality and leads to inaccurate conclusions about what’s going on
The challenges you might face in early sobriety that might make you want to drink again
How to develop resilience in sobriety
How to deal with intense negative emotions in early sobriety
The idea that you “should” be able to do it on your own and not wanting to get help
Why low self-esteem exists in addiction but not in other medical conditions
Connect with Dr. Bhatt:
https://www.addictioncenter.com/drbhatt/
https://www.addictioncenter.com/community/bubble-of-addiction-broken-resiliency/
https://www.addictioncenter.com/community/addiction-absence-presence/
https://www.addictioncenter.com/
Here are some of my favorite Dr. Bhatt quotes from the episode:
"When you're surrounding yourself with this artificial protection where drugs and alcohol don't allow you to feel, it makes you feel protected and invincible. Those things that need to be getting into you so you can actually deal with them and process them, no longer happen when you're inside the bubble of addiction. So unfortunately, you're never going to be able to cope with things while you're using substances."
I think this was my favorite thing that Dr. Bhatt said in this episode. Alcohol does make us feel protected and invincible because it allows us to control our feelings and experience. We can use alcohol to instantly change the way that we feel, and having that “power” over yourself can make you feel very secure. The problem is, using alcohol to change our feelings prevents us from learning anything, so we never grow or mature. That means we become incapable of dealing with problems in the future. We feel like we're “strong” because we've been through so much, but we haven't actually gone through anything, we have just survived it by pouring alcohol on the problem and checking out.
“You don't know when 0 to 60 is going to happen again, so unless you've worked on identifying those associations of those people, places, things, that led to those emotions and the thoughts that ultimately tied into those behaviors, then you won't be able to combat them. This is part of the recovery process, it does not happen overnight.”
This is the most important part of staying sober. If you don't understand what sets you off and you don't have tools to deal with triggers, then it increases the chances that you are going to drink to cope. I see this all the time from people. They drink and then say they don't even know what happened. If you don't know what happened, then how can you protect yourself next time it happens? I recommend doing this work with a therapist who can help you make connections and understand what upsets you, why it upsets you, and steps that you can take to calm yourself down that aren't alcohol. Making alcohol a non-negotiable in your mind also helps. If you know you can't drink no matter what, then you are more willing to tell yourself, “we don't do that anymore” when the urge to drink shows up.
Cite this episode
Bhatt, A., Tietz, G. Episode 104: Why Alcohol Doesn’t Help You Cope with Dr. Ashish Bhatt, MD, MRO. Sober Powered. 2022.
