One Foot In
My husband Nick craved naps in the way others drool at pastries. He woke up tired, needed “wolf naps,” and could sleep sitting up.
His iWatch suggested he had sleep apnea, and so a few weeks ago, he got a CPAP machine. It pushes air into his trachea all night.
Since he’s gotten his CPAP machine, guess who hasn’t jumped on the couch for a midday eyeball check? The same guy who whistles as he makes the bed in the morning.
Cheerful Nick is going to take some getting used to.
What did people do before the CPAP machine?
Which started me thinking about the parallels between sleep apnea and addiction. Nick dealt with his obstructive airway by napping, but that didn’t solve the problem. Similarly, Nicholas dealt with his anxiety with pills.
Hopefully, someday soon, someone will discover a way to appease the addiction monsters. Instead of telling people to use their willpower, we’ll give them a CPAP-like solution.
What if Nicholas didn’t have to beat the screaming pain down with grit and fortitude?
Neurologically, it’s hard to understand what someone does to the receptors in their brains without a little education on receptors and homeostasis, so, instead, I’m working on an analogy using trees as a stand-in for receptors of neurons in the brain.
Nicholas watered the three or four ‘trees’ he had in his forest. The trees grew.
One day, he found a fire hydrant, found the tool to open it, and blasted water all over the loamy soil. Seedlings popped up. He cultivated a small forest.
The water from the hydrant was plenty for the baby trees, but as they got bigger, they required more water. His big, beautiful pines competed with one another for water, and some started to turn auburn, dessicate, and crumble.
Through the cries of the trees, Nicholas diverted water from a nearby dam. He drenched those trees. Life was good.
Hundreds more saplings sprouted.
Now, he had acres upon acres of a rich, lush forest.
And again, those trees on the outskirts began to scream for more water.
Here, the water was his drug of choice - xanax and oxycodone, the trees were his receptors for those drugs.
What happened when he stopped taking the drug and stopped watering the trees? Obviously, the trees died. I watched Nicholas when he was detoxing, and his “trees” were crying, and we handed him a thimble full of water. Horrific isn’t a strong enough word.
When Nicholas was in the thick of his addiction, society looked down on him and told him that he should be ashamed of needing more water for his trees. Everyone else was managing their forests. Why couldn’t he?
For those of us who love someone struggling with addiction, we are told to detach, change the depth of their ‘bottom’ with our boundaries, and to practice our own self-care. Which is like me setting fire to some of his trees, telling him I couldn’t help while having a tree festival right next to his tree farm in crisis.
Why can’t we transplant those trees?
