Memory’s Huge Role in Relapse

 

General

It may sound strange, but one weakness of our brain that the disease of addiction and alcoholism manipulates to keep us addicted is our memory. After all, our memory is far from perfect. Our memory is not at all like a video recording of an event. If we had a computer that made as many errors in recording data, storing it, and retrieving it as does our brain, we would certainly throw out that computer. And we would definitely not rely on it. Why? Because such an unreliable computer would cause us to make too many mistakes. Likewise, our flawed memory system can lead us to mistakes. Fortunately, if we learn a bit about how our memory works and how addiction / alcoholism manipulate it, we can prevent these mistakes.


The biological purpose of our memory is to use past experiences to guide future actions. That’s scary for an alcoholic-addict in recovery, particularly if our substance use encompassed a large part of our life – we don’t want those past experiences to guide our future actions. Will our memories guide us back to where we were, or can they lead us toward a future of sobriety and life? Unfortunately, the latter won’t happen on its own. As is the case with all our higher brain functions, our memory processes are commandeered by alcohol and drugs and brutally used against us. To counter this process, we need to know how our memory works. Then we can understand how to prevent disaster and make our memory work for us… and not for the bottle or needle. We will discuss exactly how to do that in this article.

Human memory is highly unreliable

There is one aspect of our memory recall that has a particularly great impact on our ability to stay in sobriety: that is the tendency to remember the good parts of past events and forget the bad, no matter how crappy the events were at the time. Our memory is not like a photograph: it can be altered by many influences. Not least of these corrupting influences is the alcohol and drugs that intoxicate our brain.


Memories are impressions of events, our impressions. Psychologists speak of self-referent encoding, which means that as we form memories, we elaborate on the facts, interpreting them based on our brain’s needs and wants and our own perspective. The psychological process known as cognitive dissonance (see "What is 'Cognitive Dissonance' and Why Does it Keep Me Addicted?" Click Here) makes us warp our interpretations of our actions, so that we register the good times in memory. Addiction makes this memory-warping process to an extreme, making it a powerful influence on bringing us back to our substance when we try to break free.

Just like our memories are altered when we store them, so they are altered when we retrieve them. This is known as retrieval bias, where our recall of events is heavily colored by our impressions, wants and needs at the time of recall. When our lives are owned by a substance we feel crushing guilt over our wayward ways and our mind reduces this guilt by altering truth and logic about our actions; this is cognitive dissonance. Our mind needs to see ourselves as basically good, and our bad behavior contradicts that, so our mind feels pain over this contradiction. This psychological pain is what we know as guilt, regret, self-loathing, and shame. While we are actively drinking or using – and also when we achieve sobriety – our mind’s natural drive to reduce our psychological pain over what we have done pushes us to substantiate our actions by rationalization, by lying to itself. So, our mind suppresses our memories of the bad and promotes the memories of the “good” as an excuse for our behavior. This rationalization also leads us to blame others: “you’d drink too if you had my wife!”

How our memory works

When our brain commits something to memory, we refer to it as learning. There are different types of learning (besides the kind we do in school). Substances of abuse have a potent way of taking advantage of these learning types to make us addicted and to bring us back to them if we try to get clean and sober. Let's look at these now.



Classical conditioning. This is how we learn the triggers - also known as cues - for our substance use. This is the “Pavlov’s dog” effect, where a neutral stimulus – such as the sight of the face of a drinking buddy or a street where our favorite watering hole or our dealer is located – elicits a response, in this case a memory of drinking or using, because in the past it has been paired with our drinking/using. For example, whenever, in our drinking days, we saw that street or that drinking buddy’s face we were soon after getting our obsession satisfied and experiencing the euphoria of the alcohol. We associate these things with the “fun” part of drinking or using, our pleasant memories. We do not associate these cues with the bad things, because they are not present when we are sick and hung-over, fighting with our loved ones, being chased by bill collectors. We associate the cue with the part that happened right away, not the part that happened the next day. So, whenever we see these things in our sober days, they cue pleasant drinking memories. The cues that bring these memories on can be anything: sounds, smells, tastes, places, visual cues (including people’s faces), even emotions. Any alcoholic or addict will know how insidiously compelling these triggers can be. Classical conditioning is a powerful way that our brain learn, and it is repetition-based. The multiple repetitions of our substance use embeds these learned cues deeply in our mind. Usually for a lifetime.

These "cue" or "trigger" memories are the driving force behind craving our drug or alcohol.

The scary thing is that these "trigger" memories are an unconscious process requiring no effort, so we have no control over them. When we encounter a trigger the pleasant memory automatically pops up. We are at risk for drinking or using when we experience these triggers. Unless we can undo these learned triggers we will experience them long into our recovery, and we will continue to have cravings. We will discuss exactly how to do that shortly.



Operant conditioning In this kind of learning, we learn to associate a behavior with a reward. In our case, when we do what we do to obtain our poison – jump in the car and drive to the liquor store, or a bar, or a drinking buddy’s house, or our dealer’s house, or the casino – we soon associate it with the rewards we get from our intoxicant: relief from our obsession, euphoria (dopamine release), relief from our stressors. When we are in recovery and something stresses us or we are having cravings, our mind is inclined to recall the memories of the pleasant effect that result from our substance-obtaining behavior, and it tries its best to compel us to do that behavior as it seeks relief from that stressor. This is what happens when people say that something stressful happened and they found themselves almost unconsciously driving to the liquor store. This learning occurs from positive reinforcement, which means that our behavior of obtaining our intoxicant becomes associated with a reward: the pleasant aspect of our drinking or using. There is no negative reinforcement, which would make us learn to avoid that behavior, because the sickness and pain and remorse comes much later – the next morning – and is therefore not associated with the behavior. That is why we must make that association between the substance-seeking behavior and the misery, so that we over-ride the association between the behavior and the pleasant part. Otherwise, our mind will have an on-going reflexive desire to carry out the substance-seeking behavior, and our sobriety is in peril. We will discuss exactly how to do this.

Things that affect the strength of our memories

It is commonly thought that the most compelling pleasant memory of our substance use is the act of being high, or drunk. But that’s not so. The memory most responsible for the drive to get our next drink or drug is one that we are not even aware of. It’s the subconscious memory of the immense psychological relief we felt when the terrible anxiety of our obsession was satisfied when we answered the compulsion to obtain the next installment of our poison potion. That means that our mind best remembers the relief we got by stopping off at the liquor store or the dealer and not the high we got after.


When we form a memory of an event, the stronger our attention is directed at that event, the stronger the memory. For example, a groom who tries to recall what a certain guest was wearing at his wedding may not be able to, but he will definitely recall how his bride looked. That is because his attention was highly focussed on his new wife, but only peripherally focussed on his guest (hopefully so, for the sake of his marriage). So, the memory of what he focussed on most at his wedding will be the strongest. It is the same for our memories of drinking or using. When we are obsessed with getting a drink or drug all of our attention is focussed on that drink or drug. It’s all we can think about, which is why it’s called an obsession. So the memories around the pleasant feelings of getting that drink or drug and the effects of it are recorded very well in our memory. When we are sick and distressed the next day, we try our best to sleep it off, and most likely have already focussed our attention on getting the next fix. Our attention is brought away from the bad by our obsession. The memories of the bad will not be strongly recorded.

The memories of the “pleasantness” of getting a drink or drug will be reinforced by the fact that they are registered over and over again, multiple times. Many alcoholic-addicts have many years of daily drinking or use behind them, so these pleasant memories are going to be very solidly entrenched. Because using substances involves so many senses and behaviors, there are many cues that become linked to our memories of it. The sense of smell is especially powerful as a memory cue, and this is well provided for by our substances.

We have a natural tendency to forget information from our past that isn’t compatible with how we see ourselves now. When we are in recovery we are enjoying life again (if we are working a recovery program that addresses our issues), we are finding comfort in our own skin. Every one of our senses is alert and alive. We now see ourselves as happy, useful, productive people, and our mind likes that. Our mind subconsciously revises history – our memories – to make itself feel better. Our mind doesn't want to face up to our ugly past, it just wants to sweep it away under the carpet. This can be dangerous to our recovery.

Science has identified that emotions can strengthen the formation of memory, and that they can also influence our recall of these memories. Emotionally-charged events are imprinted on our memory strongly. Specifically, the more down you feel, the more likely you are going to remember unpleasant memories. The better you feel, the more likely you are to experience the pleasant memories. This explains why so many people have described life being "too good" as a trigger to relapse. It also explains part of the danger of the “pink cloud” effect that many of us experience in early recovery (see "The 'Pink Cloud' Effect" Click Here).

The science of getting rid of unwanted memories

Our drinking or using triggers naturally diminish when we stop reinforcing the learned association when we are in sobriety. This is known as extinction, but this process is very slow and drawn out if not helped along, because these cues have been learned by the brain over and over again. But, they can be unlearned. The advice to seek “new people, places, and things” leads us to avoid triggers that may make us drink or use, but it also taps into what science calls cue-dependent forgetting, which is the decay of memories when the cues that trigger them are no longer there. When we avoid the people, places, and things associated with our drinking or using days, we don't run into our triggers and the triggers fade away.

As well, the science of memory tells us that we can change our brain’s interpretation of memories by an act of will. If we talk the talk and walk the walk of recovery, pretty soon we no longer see the “pleasant” part of our drinking or using as pleasant. Our mind will believe what we say and follow our actions. They say it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of acting. Our mind doesn’t like to see ourselves as liars, so if we act a certain way our mind will start to believe in the principles behind how we act. Connecting with others in recovery and participating in a recovery fellowship allows us to discuss our past and our recovery and keep things in the proper persepective. This is also a big part of the reason why hanging out with people who are still actively drinking and using will topple us. These people's mind will push them into positive interpretations of their drug or alcohol use in order to substantiate their harmful actions. Their stories of drinking and using will be fun, their interpretations of its effects in their lives will be falsely positive. They can easily color our memories in the same way, and push us to produce good drinking and using memories in an effort to fit in with the group.


The trick is to replace the dominant trigger memories of the good times with memories of all the misery that our drinking or using brought on. This technique is known as interference. Interference is self-explanatory: when one memory (the bad times when we drank or used) gets repeatedly recalled it disrupts another memory (the good times). This effect is magnified if we recall the preferred memory whenever the unwanted memory tries to assert itself. However, this process won’t occur on its own, as our mind is still geared toward remembering the good times. So, it takes some work on our part, and we must actively “remember when.” Unlike the process of extinction, which is slow and incomplete, unlearning harmful memories by interference is powerful and prompt, and can have a robust effect on defeating our alcoholism-addiction.

Research has shown that our memory recall can be greatly influenced by new information, and by suggestions that we insert into old memories, a principle known as creative re-imagination. This process involves creating a different interpretation of our memories in our mind, which can permanently change these memories whenever they pop. This creative re-imagination is what we use the “remember when” meditation technique, which we discuss below.

Telling our true story to beat our memory defects

As strange as it sounds, our memories are completely disorganized. Our minds contains a huge amount of information, scattered all over the place. It looks like a teenager’s bedroom up there in our brain. Our memories are not stored in discrete packages like a movie on a Blu-ray disc. They are stored in little bits of information called engrams, each containing a feeling, impression, thought, or belief. These memory engrams are all disjointed and jumbled in a disorganized fashion all in different places in the brain. When we think of something we pull the various little pieces out and loosely put them together. When we are done, the bits that make up the memory go back to their scattered locations.

However, if we communicate our thought, our brain has to put all the information together and then organize it in a logical way for us to communicate it. That's the only way we can put it all together in a package and explain it to someone. This is why students learn so much better when they write out the information they are studying or, even better, explain it to someone else. When we explain something to someone, our mind is forced to pull out all kinds of this disjointed information from multiple different brain pathways and organize it coherently so that we can verbalize it to the other person.  Just thinking about things doesn’t do it, because your mind will jump around to these different pieces of information but not organize them together; we have to actually explain it to another person. If we don't tell our story, we may never organize it and analyze and understand it in our mind. But it has to be the real story.


We alcoholics and addicts naturally tend to avoid talking to others about our past behavior, because it is hurtful to our pride and we don’t want to bring others’ negative regard upon ourselves. If we do explain it and are not truthful and we leave stuff out we will have an organized collection of untrue thoughts, incomplete and filled with lies. It is only when we tell our TRUE story that we realize what we really are. We can’t address our problems if we can’t even admit to them. Since we are likely to sugar-coat our story when we tell another person, we should tell our story to another alcoholic or addict in recovery. Only they can understand why we did things we did without us fearing they will judge us. It is surprising to find out how liberating it is to be able to do so.

And that is why telling our story truthfully is absolutely key to our finding recovery.

Memory's link to "insanity"

When these trigger memories of our substance-using days come up, the danger lies in what our mind will do with them. The danger of these memories of how pleasant it was to be in the company of our drug of choice is that there is a characteristic of our disease which somehow leads us to think that if we capitulate and pick up that first drink or drug, this time it will be different. This time, we’ll be able to drink, or use, or gamble responsibly. We have all tried countless times to control our use of our substance, over and over again, and have failed every time. That is why we call ourselves powerless over our substance. That is why this thinking is known as “the insanity of alcoholism-addiction.” This thinking is simply our mind rationalizing, trying to manipulate us into getting it its dopamine fix. Insane and illogical as it is, it occurs and it pushes many back down a dark and familiar path. (See: "The 'Insanity' of Alcoholism and Addiction" Click Here).

 The "insanity" of alcoholism / addiction

Crushing addiction's power over our memory

So far we have focussed on spontaneous mind-driven memories, our trigger memories. The other type of memory, known as recall memory, is when we deliberately try to remember an event in the absence of a stimulus. Unlike trigger memories, this type of memory recall requires a conscious effort. As we discussed above, these trigger memories are the driving force behind our cravings. This works against us finding and maintaining sobriety.

However, with a little effort we can replace these automatic trigger memories with recall memories. This is a huge step in ending our cravings. By far, the most effective way to release our addiction's grip on our memory is by a type of meditation that I refer to as "remember when" meditation. The idea is to turn our recall memories into automatic trigger memories, so that we can end the cravings. This uses the scientific principle of memory interference, as we discussed above.

Meditation is not a complicated thing at all. Also, it is not mystical, religious, or other-worldly. It is a very practical thing. The United States Marine Corps teaches it to its recruits. I learned meditation as part of my martial arts training a long time ago. There it is used for self-control, and for staying focussed even if we are in pain. It is backed by science as well, which recognizes it as a powerful healing and health tool. Best of all, I attribute "remember when" meditation to the extinction of my drug and alcohol cravings. I will always be an alcoholic and addict, and I know that I can never again safely use drugs or alcohol. However, living without cravings has made doing so infinitely easier. I have my "remember when" meditation to thanks for that.

Interested in trying this meditation technique? For a how-to guide see "Craving Cessation Using Meditation" (Click Here).

Try it! You have nothing to lose except harmful memories and bad cravings.



To learn more about the science and psychology of addiction and recovery, and to understand why alcoholics and addicts behave the way they do, see the author's book The Alcoholic / Addict Within.

Available in print and e-book editions from amazon.com (Click Here).