The Strange Pride of Alcoholics/Addicts

Pride has brought down many people, and made a fool of many others. But, it can also be appropriate… properly applied. We should take pride in who we are and what we do, and not in how big our house is, how expensive our car is, how well-dressed we are. Coupling pride in those things with humility and gratitude is healthy. But the word "pride" itself is problematic, because it means different things to different people.

Addiction to alcohol or other drugs takes its hold on us by altering our normal thought processes. This is part of the reason it is referred to as a disease. Like a virus, which causes disease by altering our normal cell function to replicate and keep itself going, so does addiction alter our normal brain and mind functions to assert itself and keep itself going. The pride of alcoholism/addiction is a glaring example of this altered functioning of the mind.

One highly typical barrier to the path to recovery is the refusal to accept help. Asking for help is, to some, a sign of weakness. Their pride won't allow them to accept help. Ironic, considering that the same person would enthusiastically accept “help” in the form of a bottle of Vodka or a "bump" from anybody at all. The insanity of that sentiment of pride coming from a person whose disease has rendered them pathetic is absurd.

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The pride involved in the minds of alcoholics is distinct and unusual. For most people, pride is a by-product of accomplishment, possessions, their feelings of self-worth. In other words, they have something to at least partly back up their pride, over-inflated as it may be. In the practicing alcoholic, the pride is over-inflated, and defensive in nature… with nothing to back it up. Yet, it is powerful enough to prevent us from accepting our powerlessness over alcohol, and keeps us from accepting help.

When we do accept help, we do so only in a non-committal way and remain convinced we can get sober on our own. Unfounded pride, sturdy and unassailable. What’s bizarre about this pride is that it exists in a person who has long ago lost any remnants of self-esteem and self-worth. Another paradox. How can this be?

Sky high pride - rock-bottom self-esteem

Strangely, the pride that feeds our disease is driven by low self-esteem. This sickness-induced pride is an instinctive mechanism to help us compensate, to reduce the psychological pain that comes from knowing how low we have become. In order to compensate for our own sorry behavior and our pathetic situation, we will project a fabricated positive view of ourselves on others by inflated demonstrations of pride, and conversely by criticizing and nit-picking others in efforts to cut them down beneath us.

We become consumed by being “right” and can’t admit when we are wrong, and we can’t acknowledge our defects. An extreme example of this is the drunk trying to pick fights with people who even look at him the wrong way. You know you’re an alcoholic when you get in a fight at a yard sale, right? Small wonder others find us obnoxious and can’t stand to be around us – I think alcoholics had a role in helping “pride” find its way onto the list of Seven Deadly Sins. We must move from this bizarre, unfounded, dysfunctional pride to a healthy pride based on who we are and how we live our lives. And, perhaps we shouldn’t even call it pride, even then. Allow me to explain.

Types of pride

The word "pride" itself is confusing: it has positive and negative connotations. What do you think when you hear the word pride? Is it a good character trait, or is it a character defect? Merriam-webster.com offers two conflicting definitions, one being that it is “a reasonable or justifiable self-respect,” the other being “inordinate self-esteem.” Roget’s Thesaurus lists “symptoms of pride”: arrogance, insolence, ostentation, vanity, vain-glory, condescension, conceit, self-exaltation, self-glorification, self-satisfaction, self-admiration, self-love. No matter what you base your pride on, these are not symptoms that will help you in recovery and succeeding in life. And they certainly won’t gain you many friends. So, using the word “pride” can be unclear, as it can be interpreted in different ways by different people at different times.

Psychologists identify two types of pride: authentic (good) pride vs. hubristic (bad) pride. This has deep clinical implications, because psychotherapists risk making hubristic (arrogant) jerks out of patients who comes to them for help for problems of low self-esteem. They may be handing their patients a dysfunctional defence mechanism, in the form of hubristic pride, for their self-esteem issues. We don’t want to be likewise tripped up in our quest to rid ourselves of our character defects in our search for that elusive sobriety. So, the question: should we be using the word “pride”?

Pride by another name

Psychologist Dr. John Amodeo* suggests substituting the word “dignity”. He points out that if we allow our achievements or possessions to define who we are, we set ourselves up for misery, especially when we cling too tightly to these things, as they will pass. He suggests that: “a more genuine and stable self-worth is based upon validating, affirming, and valuing ourselves as we are.

Self-worth is a function of living with dignity, which exists apart from any accomplishments.” We must not risk tying our self-worth to external sources of gratification. As soon as the things that are defining and holding up our pride fail us, we head down a road that can lead to relapse.

Dr. Amodeo goes on: “In contrast, dignity can live inside us regardless of our successes and failures. We don’t have to prove anything to anybody – or even to ourselves. If an enterprise fails, this doesn’t mean we are a failure.” The crux of his point is this: “We can experience the dignity of living with integrity, regardless of outcome.”

To continue using the double-meaning word “pride” can feed our innate nature to exaggerate and lie to bolster our pride and lead right back to those ugly character defects that make us drink or use. So rather than try to qualify what we mean by “pride”, why not replace the word with “dignity”? No one will ever misinterpret what we mean by that.

When we live with dignity that comes purely from being who we are, a human being with inestimable value, we don’t need to depend on worldly accomplishments to keep our pride afloat. When we do pursue a goal, we do it for the right reasons – because it is fulfilling and meaningful for us – and not because we are trying to impress someone or boast about it or drive a better car. Let’s allow our pride be the result of living with dignity which derives from our integrity. If we relapse and our behavior becomes as despicable and selfish as it was when we were drinking, then our pride will collapse too, as it should.

Changing our desire for pride to efforts to find dignity with integrity not only helps us to stay sober, it also helps us to lead a better life. We are better liked by others, and we are no longer kept from doing things that are best for us by our pride. I'm proud to have let go of pride!

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