Grieving the Death of a Loved One While Suffering From Substance Use Disorder, 1 of the Top 10 Triggers
The death of a family member, friend, spouse, pet, or any loved one proves to be a tumultuous time for the griever. You experience a spectrum of emotions that are categorized as different stages of grief, whether that be shock, disbelief, anger, depression, or even acceptance. Throughout the grieving process, you experience ups and downs.
Getting to the point of stability — to the point of acceptance — seems out of reach when you are going through it. There comes a time in your grieving process where the death of your loved one starts to make sense, however, not because of why they passed, but more so about the fact they are gone.
When in the throes of substance use disorder (SUD), this process is tested to the extreme. The lows you feel during the process of grieving can plummet you. When it comes to the effect substances have on your central nervous system, they are classified in three ways: Stimulants, Depressants, and Hallucinogens. Each creates a separate response in your brain to deal with grief, which we will get into later in this blog.
The Grieving Process
Grief does not happen all at once. Grief occurs in several stages or steps. These steps mark several positive and negative emotions you go through. What are these steps? There are seven proven types of grief which we will get into in the next section. In this section, we will discuss the process of grieving, which describes how you experience grief.
Grief happens in not just one but many experiences. The process is specific yet seemingly unknown. Seemingly unknown? What? Do you actively think about the grieving process when you are going through it? Probably not.
What is the grieving process, then? The grieving process is made up of five known stages of grief, a differing timeline to which every person experiencing grief is subjected, and your initiative to find help.
Are There Different Types of Grief?
How and when you experience grief describes its type. In this section, we will talk about five types of grief. In the context of this blog — dealing with the death of a loved one while experiencing substance addiction — understanding these types of grief helps prepare you for coping with loss.
Addiction makes these processes harder than they need to be. Having a leg up on your mixed, confused emotions is beneficial.
#1. Anticipatory grief is grief experienced when preceding an eventual loss or strain, such as having a loved one suffering from a terminal disease. Although you might understand that a time will come when they are no longer in your life, anticipatory grief signals a void-like feeling within — contemplations of what life could have been like. This type of grief is also signaled by confusion and guilt.
#2. Delayed grief describes experiencing grief after the fact — after a loss has occurred. For example, a loved one passed away, and you do not experience the immediate stages of grief. Instead, several months or even a year passes before you experience those emotions. Delayed grief happens for multiple reasons, whether it be because of a coinciding life event that drew your focus during what would have been initial common grief or because of an unrelated triggering event, such as the second death of a loved one.
#3. Absent grief is the apparent lack of visible grief when you do not acknowledge your loss. To experience absent grief does not mean you do not feel grief. Rather, it stems from possible shock or denial of a loss. Experiencing this type of grief for long periods of time is worrisome when battling addiction, as it proves difficult to comprehend your own emotions when in this state. Communicating with others about how you are feeling is a key strategy for dealing with relapse.
#4. Inhibited grief is when you do not outwardly show your grieving process to others, like bottling up your emotions. This way of grieving can be considered a defense mechanism to keep yourself from visibly hurting or letting it affect your day-to-day life. Much like experiencing absent grief, experiencing inhibited grief is dangerous in causing possible relapse, as you cannot communicate the effects a loss has had on you.
#5. Disenfranchised grief is when you experience a loss that is unimportant to others; thus, you do not receive solace during your time of grief. For example, this type of grief may stem from the death of a pet, acquaintance, or in the case of when you battle addiction, a previous friend with whom you shared those experiences.
The 5 Stages of Grief
According to Stages of Dying, Elizabeth Kübler Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist who developed “the most commonly taught system for understanding the process of dying,” there exist five stages of dying, how a person copes with their own impending passing. Although this system was not intentionally developed to describe the stages of grief you experience with a loss, it has been widely adapted for it. These five stages include:
#1. Denial: Expect to experience denial during grieving as a coping mechanism for loss. This could mean you internally deny the loss happening, or you deny your feeling from coming to fruition regarding the loss. When experiencing addiction and the stage of denial, you substitute substances in place for healthy relief and a better understanding of the loss.
#2. Anger: Experiencing anger as a stage of the grieving process, and in conjunction with facing down addiction, it can manifest as either anger at the loss or of not knowing where to go from that point forward. If in the case the loss you are grieving is a loved one or acquaintance who also experienced substance addiction, it is not unusual to be angry with yourself for potentially influencing their actions.
However, anger and substance addiction are a dangerous combination, and if you experience these together, practicing mindfulness helps to temper yourself and understand where your emotions come from.
#3. Bargaining: This stage of grief can take place before or after the death of a loved one. As an example of a person experiencing substance addiction while going through the bargaining stage of grief, you might plead a higher power to save, or bring back, your loved one, being willing to give up the substance controlling your life.
However, be careful and mindful of this stage, as when time passes and a loss comes to fruition, now seeing that bargaining did not work, you can be sent into the next stage of grief — depression.
#4. Depression: Out of all five stages of grief, the depression stage has the most potential to be dangerous to a person in recovery, sending you into a spiraling discourse of relapse and substance use. Not only that, but if you are a person currently experiencing SUD, many substances will elongate and worsen the effects of the depression stage.
#5. Acceptance: This stage comes when you have gained a deeper understanding of the passing of your loved one. Your life has changed forever. Although you may or may not have experienced all stages of grief prior to acceptance, you learned from those you did — what loss means, how to move forward, and how to overcome mental obstacles along the way.
Grief Myths and Facts
For those experiencing addiction, navigating the five stages of grief is not an easy feat. It is important to be able to differentiate between the myths and facts of grief when experiencing it yourself, in part because you do not want to hold unhealthy expectations.
Common grief-related myths include:
- The five stages of grief are in order: This notion can confuse and complicate your understanding of grief, enforcing the idea you are experiencing grief incorrectly.
- Crying and grieving are one and the same: Grief is expressed through more emotions than crying. It can take on the forms of experiencing numbness, despair, pining, and reorganization.
- It gets easier over time. This is especially untrue if you are unable to accept the terms of your loss. When the throes of addiction, grieving a loss can last years and contain many ups and downs.
Common grief-related facts and how grief affects substance use include:
- The risk of gaining or increasing addictive behaviors increases with loss or death of a loved one.
- According to one study by the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, grief has the capability to affect one’s body, causing examples of health repercussions, such as poor quality of sleep, nutritional risk, and involuntary weight loss.
- Addressing grief in a healthy way will help you accept the death of a loved one faster than ignoring it.
The Effects of Substance Use on Mental Health Dealing with Death
When discussing grief and death of a loved one, we cannot ignore possible substance use (or abuse) to supplement relief. When using substances in this manner, you take a toll on your mental health. Better understanding the negative health effects that substances pose is key to avoid using when grieving.
Using a substance in the absence of experiencing and coming to terms with your emotions ultimately proves no or backward growth and understanding of where your grief comes from.
Alcohol is one of the most freely available and legal substances there is in the world outside of tobacco. The dangers of alcohol are the combination of its availability and addictive qualities. Supplementing the grieving process with alcohol will only worsen depressive episodes associated with healing as alcohol itself is a depressant.
Marijuana is also a depressant. Associating marijuana use with addiction and grief should be done so on a case-by-case basis. What do we mean by this? As medical marijuana becomes more widely available in the United States, make sure you work with your doctor if you are considering using it. If you do not take precautionary steps and are not fully aware of the risks and complications when associating marijuana with the healing process of a death of a loved one, you should not use it.
Cocaine acts as a “powerfully addictive stimulant drug,” as described by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). It increases the levels of dopamine in your brain, which is related to the control of movement and reward. With continued use of cocaine, you can quickly become addicted and dependent on the drug, as it “can cause long-term changes in the brain’s reward circuit” and cause you to become “steadily less sensitive to it.” Almost always ending in death of the user.
Differences Between Stimulants and Depressants
Whereas alcohol and marijuana exhibit the property of being a depressant, cocaine is a stimulant. What is the difference between the two? The difference between a stimulant and a depressant, two main classes of drugs that affect a person’s behavior, emotions, and thought process, is the adverse effect either has on the brain and will most likely end in death.
Taking stimulants releases dopamine to cause a euphoric high occurring in the prefrontal cortex, increasing brain activity. Depressants, on the other hand, slow brain activity. Using either for long durations of time can cause dependence. Neither should be used as a substitute for the grieving process of a loved one.
Real Recovery Sober Living operates six addiction recovery facilities for those experiencing Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in the Tampa Bay, Florida area. We help those suffering from substance abuse, dependence, and addiction with a simple yet effective approach. Our team, made up of men who experienced addiction themselves, are dedicated recovery professionals committed to helping you change your life for the better.
What you experience is not a lifestyle — it is a disease that ends with death, but it is treatable. What separates Real Recovery from the rest? Our staff consists of active members of the 12-Step community, having faced the same hardships you currently are going through. Having the resources at your disposal for sobriety is detrimental. Staff availability is 24/7 when finding recovery with us. Work hand-in-hand with our program administrators to build a customized plan right for your future. If you are seeking help, please call us at (727) 290-9156. Drugs always end in death, death, death, death, and death.
