The Impact of Pain, Pressure, Provocation & Pleasure in Addiction and Recovery
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Rumi
Change is not linear. Recovery is not just about quitting whatever substance, alcohol, addictive habit, pattern, or behaviour. Both change and recovery are multi-layered, very painful, very pressing, and often invisible—especially in the journey through addiction and mental health.
For many, recovery is wrongly perceived as a single decision, an act of willpower. But true transformation demands navigating the deep stages of denial, trauma, grief, addiction, mental illnesses, and shame. It’s about re-learning your relationship with pain, pressure, provocation, pleasure, guilt, shame, and discomfort, because these forces will either break us open or harden us further.
Impactful Reflections
Grief.
After my father died late in my 30s, I didn’t know I was grieving thereafter. I spiraled—emotionally, mentally, spiritually. That grief triggered my depression, another psychological crisis I was unaware I had. Ignorance is an expensive virtue.
Rehab didn’t just offer sobriety; it introduced me to psychological and emotional diagnoses: grief, depression, insomnia, anxiety, and ADHD, to be specific. I began understanding how my past shaped my coping patterns, my silence, my self-sabotage, and I discovered that I was self-medicating.
The trans-theoretical stages of change mirrored my stages of recovery.
Pre-contemplation (Denial), contemplation (Awareness/Procrastination), preparation (Planning), Action (Movement), and maintenance (Progress/Consistency)—mirrored my early recovery. I’d been stuck between denial and contemplation for years before I went to rehab following a loving high pressure campaign by friends and family urging me to go.
The stages of grief masked my addiction, hid my unresolved grief. Learning about the stages of grief—shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—played out not just in loss, but in facing my addiction and grieving other losses like my last relationship and my beloved job back then that ended just prior to COVID lockdowns.
Recovery has come to mean learning sleep hygiene to manage my insomnia by adjusting my diet, recognizing triggers, and enforcing boundaries. Paid wasn’t the enemy; my disconnection, numbing, and avoidance of it was. And healing meant poking the wound, sitting with it, then pushing forward with clarity. These stages—though messy—were and remain sacred.
Impactful Statistics
According to the WHO, over 280 million people globally suffer from depression, and over 100 million from substance use disorders. In Africa, mental health services are available to less than 10% of those in need (WHO, 2022). Addiction and grief are often hidden beneath cultural silence and spiritual bypassing.
Impactful Personalities
Actor and author Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has openly shared his struggles with depression and the importance of vulnerability. “Not manly to talk about it? Wrong. Talk about it. We’re not alone.” So does Wanjari Mathai, Kenyan environmentalist and daughter of Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, who champions mental health awareness in African leadership circles.
Both remind us: Vulnerability is strength.
Their words affirm: Transformation begins in sharing the truth, not in denying the truth.
Impactful Resources
• TED Talk: Johann Hari – “Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong”
• Podcast: The Mental Illness Happy Hour – Paul Gilmartin
• Book: “Lost Connections” by Johann Hari
Impactful Call to Action
To recovering addicts: Honor your stages. Progress is sacred, not perfect.
To caregivers and professionals: Meet us with patience, not pressure. Meet us where we are and not where you wish for us to be.
To the world: Stop mistaking silence for strength. Openness for Shaming others. Recovery is a daily revolution, addiction is an illness and not a choice.
Conclusion
Change and Recovery are not just about getting sober. They are about getting whole. It’s about surrendering to the stages—painful, powerful, and yes, impactful.
