Are you struggling with addiction or know someone who is? Our fascinating discussion delves deep into the many forms of addiction, from substances like opiates and alcohol to compulsive behaviors such as gambling and social media. We shed light on the intricacies of addiction and how it affects individuals from various walks of life.
Register to attend the FULL course HERE
Together, we explore the different facets of addictive behaviors, the relationship between extreme risk-taking and addiction, and the increasing concern of technology addiction, particularly among young boys and women. We also discuss miasmatic states, their connection to addiction, and specific remedies for various addictions, such as alcohol, opioids, stimulants, and nicotine. Finally, we touch upon the role of hope and how homeopathy can offer valuable support in difficult situations, including the spiritual aspect of addiction. Join us as we share our insights and knowledge on this complex topic, and look forward to teaching a class together to help others better understand and navigate the challenges of addiction.
Are you struggling with addiction or know someone who is? Our fascinating discussion delves deep into the many forms of addiction, from substances like opiates and alcohol to compulsive behaviors such as gambling and social media. We shed light on the intricacies of addiction and how it affects individuals from various walks of life.
Register to attend the FULL course HERE
Together, we explore the different facets of addictive behaviors, the relationship between extreme risk-taking and addiction, and the increasing concern of technology addiction, particularly among young boys and women. We also discuss miasmatic states, their connection to addiction, and specific remedies for various addictions, such as alcohol, opioids, stimulants, and nicotine. Finally, we touch upon the role of hope and how homeopathy can offer valuable support in difficult situations, including the spiritual aspect of addiction. Join us as we share our insights and knowledge on this complex topic, and look forward to teaching a class together to help others better understand and navigate the challenges of addiction.
Bri Hurlburt 0:00
Welcome back to Homeopathy at Home with Melissa. Hi, Melissa.
Melissa Crenshaw 0:04
Hi, Bri. I'm excited to talk with you tonight.
Bri Hurlburt 0:07
Me too. We're going to cover a topic tonight. We're going to be talking about addiction. So I said tonight, today, whatever time of day, you're listening to this, I'm not sure why I said that. We're going to be covering addiction and we're going to talk about what that could be, what it could look like, and then, of course, some remedies.
I'll kick off by talking about what addiction is. Addiction is defined by a compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. It has to be positively reinforcing or intrinsically reinforcing. Typically in addiction tolerance builds up as you are on or using a substance or a medication, which means you need more of it to get that stimulus, and then there is a withdrawal process when you stop taking it.
If we look up compulsive behavior in a repertory, we find a whole range of remedies that deal with that type of compulsive addictive behavior. These substances could be opium and its derivatives like morphine, codeine, heroin, Demerol, Tylenol with codeine, Vicodin, et cetera, all of which I took as a teenager. Not abusive, like I didn't use them in an abusive way, but I was given them.
Melissa Crenshaw 1:42
Not heroin.
Bri Hurlburt 1:43
No, okay. Not heroin. Tylenol with codeine, I should say, and Vicodin. Both were given very freely to me as a teenager when I had surgery on my arm. I actually felt terrible taking them, I did not enjoy it, but I'm just throwing that in there to say it's crazy how easily those are esteemed and just given out. So it could be things like that. Alcohol, cocaine, cannabis. People will say that it's not addictive but I know, Melissa, you have seen otherwise in many ways clinically in people that we know.
Melissa Crenshaw 2:25
Yep.
Bri Hurlburt 2:26
And myself included. I think because it's become so common people act like it's also not a gateway drug but in our opinion, I would say it absolutely is. Amphetamines in general. Hallucinogens. Nicotine, so tobacco and nicotine addiction. Vaping. Gosh, that's also a big one right now. Coffee. Hey. I wouldn't say necessarily. I like that you put that in there though, because there definitely are people who are addicted to coffee.
And then substances that can be abused as a result of allopathic treatment, similar to Tylenol with codeine and Vicodin, but you have Prozac, antidepressant, sleeping pills, sedatives, et cetera. For some of those you might not think about the rewarding stimuli, but they are there. There's some kind of intrinsic reward even though there's an adverse consequence and then, when you're trying to come off of them, there's a withdrawal and that horrible reaction that comes along with that.
Hahnemann said the narcotic substances are those substances that have the most clearly defined primary and secondary action. There's a primary response and there is an adverse secondary response.
Melissa Crenshaw 3:58
Awesome. There are some other addictive behaviors that are not just substances. Gambling. Shopping, where the person makes useless useless purchases or extravagant purchases. OCD, like purging, cleaning, cleansing. You can look at the OCD rubric in the repertory and you can pick out the compulsive aspects and think about to what extent does that apply to the addictive behavior in general? Food. A lot of people are addicted to food. Sugar. Sex. Self harm. Within self harm, pain that covers up another. There's pain that covers up another pain so it releases the equivalent of an opioid in the brain, the endorphins that make it addicting physiologically.
There's addiction to exercise, which I believe that I had in the past. I loved it so much that even when I was sick, I didn't want to stop to let my body rest. I wanted to exercise. I looked forward to it so much and I was in such a habit and routine of getting up every morning at five and really working out hard. I really loved how I felt, how I felt after. It gave me energy for the day. So exercise is good, and yes, it's great that it gives us energy for the day, but this relationship between sports and gambling. The same sort of personality that will push themselves to be the top sportsman, exercising like crazy, will be the same sort of personality that then often turns toward gambling when their sporting days are up, or they run kind of parallel to each other. Extreme risk taking can be within that. Pushing themselves to the limit. Then they become part and parcel of a bigger syndrome. I wasn't to that point but I can see how somebody could get there. I loved it, just the feeling.
And then there's the adrenaline junkie, the person that has to have some sort of risky behavior in their life just to feel alive. There's also, again, that link to gambling, the gambling addiction. There's hoarding as an addiction.
Technology. My goodness. These boys. Screentime is almost instantly addictive to these young boys. I don't know what it is. It does something in their brain. I'm not singling out young boys but that's what I see the most of, just video games, the gaming addiction. But, you know, women, really anybody, social media, but I think especially women can be addicted to that social media. We’re scrolling, we’re scrolling, we’re scrolling. Do you know how you can just all of a sudden realize, “How long have I been scrolling?” You don't even notice it. A part of that addiction to social media is I have this great idea, or I post this great thought or whatever, story, and you can become addicted to seeing how many people liked it, how many people commented on it, how many people loved it, how many people shared it? That gives you a good feeling.
Information addiction. I can totally see that. I love to go to school, like where can I go to school next?
Bri Hurlburt 7:50
I was just thinking that last night about you, like you would be in school forever if you could.
Melissa Crenshaw 7:54
Yeah, yeah, I do. I want to learn. Yeah, forever.
Self modification. We see these people with all of the tattoos and the piercings, and they don't just stop at a few. It's an addiction. They just constantly, they're just doing it, doing it, doing it. There can be an addiction to cleaning, power, work. We know the workaholic.
What do we mean when we say someone's addicted to alcohol or another drug? If you're a psoric type, remember the psoric miasm. If you don't know what the psoric miasm is, I did teach a class on the miasms and we can link that in the show notes, or you can find it on my website. If you're a psoric type, then you're hard working and then at the end of the day, you just want to relax. You want to just have a drink, or whatever you have. 20 years down the line, you would be considered to be addicted if you have to do that every single day. You work hard. You come home. You have to have a drink, or you have to have a smoke, or you have to have a pill or whatever your thing is, to unwind and be still and to relax. You have to have something to help you relax.
The typical sycotic type, which is another type of miasmatic state, is the person who is just sex, drugs, rock and roll, party. Party, party, party. Five years down the line, they're addicted.
The typical syphilitic type, which is also another type of miasm, is the very first drink, the very first drug, that's it. They're addicted.
Bri Hurlburt 9:51
I did not know about the miasmic link to addiction like that.
Melissa Crenshaw 10:00
Yeah, it just points. It's like your personality type.
Of all of our miasms, we would say the carcinogenic, so meaning the Carcinosin, the cancer miasm tendency, is the most compulsive.
Although the tubercular miasm would not be considered to be addictive in the sense that you get hooked on these, because they want to change and they don't want to be pinned down to anything. The fact of the matter is that they do like their risks, the Tuberculinum, the tubercular miasms. They like to take risks. They love the risk taking. That risk taking could then lead to a tendency to become addicted to certain things but it seems to be not the most addictive miasms to have.
Bri Hurlburt 10:51
Maybe less addicted to substances. Maybe more behavioral addictions or compulsions. Tuberculinum.
Melissa Crenshaw 10:58
Right, exactly.
Bri Hurlburt 10:59
And that does make sense. If you look up Tuberculinum, that does have a lot more behavioral elements to it.
Melissa Crenshaw 11:12
Absolutely. Yup.
So any miasm can either be the precursor of, or the direct stimulant to, addictive behavior.
A crucial factor with addiction is the withdrawal state. If for some reason that thing that the person really loves to do is removed from them, what is the reaction? That's what we're going to be looking at when we use remedies. In this podcast episode, I'm going to talk about a few different addictions and a list of remedies. I'm not going to go into great detail on differentiating between remedies like I do in some of the other podcast episodes because there is going to be, if there's not already by the time you listen to this, a mini-course on addiction remedies, because addiction is so rampant in our society. In that course, I'm going to differentiate between the remedies and really break it down.
Alcohol dependency. Some of the remedies are Lachesis, Nux vomica, Sulphur,
Quercus, Sulphuric acid, Syphillinum, and Ledum. Just as a quick little note, the Sulphuric acid remedy helps people to wean off of alcohol.
Bri Hurlburt 12:49
And that is different from Sulphur?
Melissa Crenshaw 12:53
Sulphuric acid.
Bri Hurlburt 12:55
I'm saying I'm pretty sure that it is. I like clarifying because I had made that mistake before. Sulphur, just Sulphur, is its own remedy.
Melissa Crenshaw 13:05
That's right.
Bri Hurlburt 13:06
It's different from Sulphuric acid, so just remember that when you're listening.
Melissa Crenshaw 13:11
Yes, absolutely.
In the meantime, until you can take the course, just look each of these remedies up. There's not that many. We just said 7 remedies. Look them up in your Materia Medica. Read them and see. You can decide based on the remedy picture which one fits your picture the best. You can do that, unless you want to take the course.
The opioid dependency, which is opium, morphine, heroin: Avena sativa, Nux vomica, Passiflora, and Ipecac. Avena sativa can be used to build someone up after they become hooked on morphine, opium, or opioids in general. Ipecac is specific to that vomiting with the withdrawal symptoms.
Bri, do you want to do stimulants?
Bri Hurlburt 14:22
Yeah, so stimulants like coffee, cocaine and amphetamines. We have five remedies. We have Coffea, which most of you are familiar with. Camphor, Chamomilla, Nux vomica, Saccharum, right?
Melissa Crenshaw 14:44
I wonder if saccharine is the same as Saccharum.
Bri Hurlburt 14:50
Because it says sugar addiction. For sugar specifically, you could also do Sulphur, Calc carb, Lycopodium, or Argentum nitricum.
Melissa Crenshaw 15:03
We did a whole podcast episode on Saccharum.
Bri Hurlburt 15:07
We did, which is what made me think of that. So we have Saccharum milk sugar, Saccharum lactis, Saccharum officinale, which is white sugar, and that’s it.
Melissa Crenshaw 15:28
Saccharine probably, I'm just going to say probably, is Saccharum officinale. If we find out different then we will update the show notes.
Bri Hurlburt 15:47
Well, they're also is Saccharinum, which is from saccharin and says it's a derivative of benzoic acid and is made synthetically from coal tar. It's a white powder readily soluble in warm water, but to only a slight extent in cold water. It's the foundation for many low calorie and sugar free products. It's 300 times as sweet as sucrose.
Melissa Crenshaw 16:21
Based on the way it's spelled in the Materia Medica I want to say where it says saccharine here, maybe it’s just not supposed to have an E on the end of it.
Bri Hurlburt 16:33
Yeah, it's supposed to be
Melissa Crenshaw 16:35
Actually Saccharinum.
Bri Hurlburt 16:36
Saccharinum, which makes sense, the like versus like. It's not the actual substance is what I'm trying to say. So for sugar addiction, you can use like a like substance, and then I gave you those other ones, too, for a possible sugar addiction.
Melissa Crenshaw 16:58
All right, nicotine addiction. Avena sativa, Caladium, Tabacum, and Lobelia.
So what do you do if somebody wants to stop smoking? They can continue to smoke, but they need to smoke consciously. Often smokers are just unconsciously … They just reach. They don't even know how much they're smoking. They don't pay attention. If we look at most of our addictive behavior, there's a point at which we just switch off.
Bri Hurlburt 17:38
It becomes compulsive. That's where that compulsion comes in.
Melissa Crenshaw 17:41
As a general rule, you cannot do something that is detrimental to you and be conscious. When you become conscious about your smoking, like I'm really going to pay attention and be conscious about this, I keep trying to say the same word, and then you are going to be more likely to not have some of those cigarettes or vaping or whatever it is that you're doing, however you’re getting the nicotine in. You're going to be less likely to do some of those during the day then if you're just totally unconscious about it. You become conscious about it and use the remedies and the remedies will help you to have less cravings.
You can also look up gambling in the repertory. Some of those remedies that we see are Lycopodium, Nux vomica, Medorrhinum, and Veratrum album.
Extreme exercising and sporting rubrics in the repertory are Sepia, Carcinosin, Rhus tox.
Overeating is Antimonium crudum, Calc carb, Lycopodium, and Iodine usually because there's a thyroid malfunction that causes them to overeat.
Lack of susceptibility to anything that actually might lead you into an addictive behavior, so that rubric in the repertory shows us Carbo veg, Moschus, and Opium.
A Prozac addiction would be Fluoric acid because Prozac is fluoxetine.
Bri Hurlburt 19:32
That's such a specific one.
Melissa Crenshaw 19:36
Say that again?
Bri Hurlburt 19:38
That's so specific. There's one so that's a great one. I mean, there you go. It’s right there if you have that, or you know someone that way.
Melissa Crenshaw 19:46
There is an addiction to plastic surgery. because it really has to do with your ego, your appearance, the obsession that your appearance has to be a certain way to go with your ego. Palladium. That's interesting. I want to make sure. Is there actually a Palladium? You often find remedies faster than I do if you want to look also.
Bri Hurlburt 20:17
Yeah, I'll look it up.
Melissa Crenshaw 20:24
Partly probably because I don't have my glasses on.
Bri Hurlburt 20:26
Yeah, Palladium metallicum.
Melissa Crenshaw 20:28
Okay, good. Okay, Palladium metallicum. Good. I just wanted to make sure that was not supposed to say Caladium.
Bri Hurlburt 20:36
Yes. That was a good idea.
Melissa Crenshaw 20:39
All right. So Palladium is one and then Thuja. Thuja will have all of the sycotic aspects and all the fanatical compulsive behavior.
Bri Hurlburt 20:50
So interesting.
Melissa Crenshaw 20:52
Yeah. There's your addiction remedies. Like I said, read them in the Materia Medica and decide which one matches your picture the best, and then look for the mini course to come out where I will actually go through those and differentiate between the different remedies and when you would use which ones.
Bri Hurlburt 21:14
Just to ask a question, because that's what I do. What about people who have already started … Are we specifically talking, or could it be either? One, they're still addicted, an active addiction, but they're willing to take remedies. I think you had said it would help curb that desire. And they can be used throughout the withdrawal process?
Melissa Crenshaw 21:42
Yes, both. That’s right. Whatever withdrawal symptoms you have, then you would look those up in the repertory. In the course, we'll do that. We'll go through specific withdrawal symptoms and what remedies would be good for those also.
Bri Hurlburt 22:01
Oh, okay. The ones we mentioned, are these sort of like a chronic remedy that you're going to take longer term as you're withdrawing or in active addiction? And then if you have other symptoms, you would take some other remedies to match those, like the vomiting or shakes or headache or delusions or whatever? Those would all be other remedies you could add alongside the ones we named tonight?
Melissa Crenshaw 22:30
That's what I would do. As a practitioner, that's exactly what I would do. Yeah.
Bri Hurlburt 22:36
I keep feeling this thread of hope in sharing homeopathy. Some of the situations we talk about are ones that people walk into. They walk into these situations just so discouraged. And to know that there are things that can help, that you can use alongside that are safe and work well, and work long term, is just so good.
I also had a last little thought. Some of the things we talked about, I just was sitting here thinking the spiritual aspect of some of these things are good things. Obviously, some of the substances are not in any way good for your body, but some of the stuff. I mean, there's many of them: foods, sugar. I mean maybe not sugar. Food. Technology can be good. Exercise. Cleaning. Work. God designed them to be good. And it's just really sad the way that we distort them to serve ourselves and then they become bad.
Melissa Crenshaw 23:50
Addiction creeps in when we focus on our own worldly fleshly desires. When I'm focused on what do I want? Let me get what I want. Comfort. When we reach for comfort, then it can be, whatever the thing is we're reaching for comfort for, when it's taking the place of Jesus, there's a likelihood or a way for addiction to come in.
Bri Hurlburt 24:24
Yeah. Okay, thank you.
Melissa Crenshaw 24:25
Thanks for talking through this with me, and I look forward to teaching that class with you soon, Bri.
Bri Hurlburt 24:31
Yeah, that's going to be great.