Coming Out of the Fog: Drug-Induced Numbness vs. Sober Awareness

Imagine not being able to see. You’re surrounded by a fog that only exists for you. Your arms and legs feel heavy and your body feels weird. It doesn’t exactly feel bad… but it doesn’t feel normal either. You’re numb. Now, imagine feeling that everyday. It’s become your norm, and, without that strange, fuzzy feeling, you don’t feel like you can function. You go through your days touching things but not really feeling them, looking at things but not really seeing them, and acknowledging things but not really knowing them. You’re existing but not really living. You can thank addiction for that.

Addiction casts a shadow of numbness over the addict. It takes over a person’s life and takes away anything that might have induced normal feelings (of pleasure and of pain alike) and places the drug (or drink) of choice as the center of existence. Nothing feels better than the high. But then again, nothing even feels like anything besides that high. Fortunately, that numbness does not have to be permanent. Sobriety will recover awareness again.

Addiction Creates Numbness

Addiction will take away a person’s sense of normalcy. When an addict is high or drunk, they’re living in that moment. All that matters is the high. When an addict hasn’t used, all that matters is the craving. The downtime between each use is dedicated to getting to that next high. That fact alone is enough to create numbness in place of normal awareness. Someone whose life has been absorbed by addiction will feel like sobriety is inadequate and their drug of choice gives them a sense of adequacy, causing them to never want to live in inadequacy again. But that inadequacy isn’t actually inadequate at all. It’s normal life. But it has been taken, never to be given back again as long as addiction remains.

The primary way that addiction creates numbness is through a kind of sensory deprivation. Most drugs induce some kind of relief or euphoria that will either mask or enhance normal feelings. For example, opiates are created to relieve pain; they’re painkillers. They can be incredibly effective but are also easily abused. Most people abuse opiates for the feelings of euphoria that they’ll create in higher doses. While that euphoria sounds like it can just be a sort of enhancement on normal feelings, it’s also paired with that painkilling effect. So, a person’s sensory awareness will essentially be replaced with a numb euphoria. A sober person will be open to pain and other sensory triggers. The addict will not.

Other Drugs that Will Create Some Sort of Numbness:

• Heroin – Like prescription painkillers, heroin is an opiate. It will hijack the brain’s reward center and induce feelings of extreme pleasure by releasing chemicals like dopamine. However, it won’t take long before a heroin user won’t be able to feel anything without the help of the drug. Without it, the addict will feel lost in a dark pit of numbness and depression.
• Xanax – Xanax is part of a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines and works by depressing the central nervous system. It inhibits communication between receptors in the brain and will cause a person to feel relaxed and drowsy, both of which contribute to sensory numbness.
• Alcohol – Most casual drinkers consume alcohol for stimulating effects. They use it to lower inhibitions and feel more open. But alcohol is technically a depressant. It doesn’t just lower inhibitions; it also slows down vital functions, which results in things like impaired thinking and unsteady movement. Consuming large amounts of alcohol (as with alcoholism) will result in numbness characterized by a loss of control, coordination, and sensory awareness.

Sobriety Restores Awareness

One of the biggest things a person will work towards in recovery is mindfulness. In basic terms, mindfulness is essentially being aware of our surroundings, ourselves, and our emotions as related to each other.

Interestingly, mindfulness comes naturally to us when we’re young. Have you ever noticed how the smallest things can distract babies and toddlers? We’re quick to pass that off as distraction, but it’s actually an example of mindfulness. No, your toddler is not Yoda. But young children are mindful in the sense that they live in the moment. They notice things and become almost entranced by them as they observe how these things are all a part of their world.

Unfortunately, mindfulness becomes harder to keep holding on to as we get older and collect more things that we have to constantly think about. It’s harder to stay in the moment as adults. Substance addiction seems as if it puts you in the moment. And if we’re being honest, it does… but not in the right way. And addict lives in the moment but that moment is dominated and controlled by the drug. Mindfulness isn’t dominated or controlled by anything. That moment a mindful person is living in is contrarily induced by the person’s awareness of themselves and the world.

Luckily, mindfulness and awareness can actually be taught. As I mentioned earlier, it’s one of the areas that people work on in recovery. One of the simplest (and perhaps most fun) ways to restore mindfulness is through sensory activities. Sobriety already inherently gives back some of a person’s sensory awareness, as their senses are no longer compromised or controlled by substances. But there are also sensory activities that you can do to help build up that awareness.

Sober Activities that Help Build Awareness:

There are five basic senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Sensory awareness activities can involve any one (or more) of these senses. They’ll also typically involve emotions and/or physical movement as well.

Sometimes – particularly when the various stressors of the day start to get overwhelming – we wish for numbness. But a drug-induced sensory numbness is definitely not the way to go. Especially when the side effects of that numbness can include overdose and death. That weird, thick numbing fog isn’t at all what we should be wishing for. And, once a person takes a step into recovery, that realization becomes clear.

Watch a child notice a bug in the grass or observe the rain from their bedroom window. That simple awareness that the child experiences is the kind of mindfulness we should be striving for. The drug-induced numbness that leaves you impaired, still, and unbothered as the rest of the world moves without you is not.