Summarizing the Vortex Model of Addiction
Anyone caught in the vicious cycle of addiction can appreciate the term "vortex" as a description of their experience. Addiction is chaotic and painful. It leaves a trail of carnage in its wake that affects all areas of life. Addiction is a vortex.
Anyone who has experienced it knows the devastating grip of addiction and being pulled further into something they cannot escape. Those who struggle with addiction are often baffled by their behaviour. But, unfortunately, an honest desire to stop harmful patterns doesn't always lead to lasting change – no matter how strong the desire for change is.
What if there is a helpful way to understand the behaviours and consequences of addiction? What if there is a compassionate and supportive way to understand the process of addiction and what helps someone recover?
The Vortex Model of Addiction does just that. It demonstrates how circumstances, life events, and responses to overwhelming events contribute to the transition into addiction. It also provides information about how our brains and bodies are wired – invaluable information when addressing substance use and addiction disorders.
I'm excited to share a model of trauma and addiction I have developed over my 25 years as a clinical counsellor working in this field.
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
Before explaining the model, it’s essential to set the groundwork. My eBook, Trauma and Addiction: The Link We Can't Ignore, offers an in-depth exploration of this topic. It outlines how traumatic experiences can pave the way for using substances and behaviours to self-medicate the common impacts of trauma.
Research shows that someone with PTSD is four times more likely to have a problem with substance misuse than someone without PTSD. (1)
While trauma isn't always a contributing factor, painful life experiences are known to contribute to addiction. The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study reveals a strong correlation between traumatic childhood experiences and addiction. (2)
These two issues need to be addressed together for anyone with a history of trauma and addiction. If not, it leads to more significant struggles for both problems.
Substance use often starts as a way of managing trauma's overwhelming symptoms, including anxiety, shame, uncomfortable physical sensation, and intrusive thoughts.
The Vortex Model of Addiction draws from the work of many well-known researchers in trauma and neuroscience. Some of the research that strongly influences my understanding of trauma and addiction include:
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study by Dr. Felitti and Dr. Anda demonstrates the strong link between childhood trauma and the development of addiction. (2)
Somatic approaches to trauma therapy, such as the work of Peter Levine’s “Waking the Tiger” (3) and Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score”. (4)
Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory, a complex theory about the human nervous system and our biological responses to safety and danger. (5)
The "Window of Tolerance" introduced by Daniel J. Siegal. (6)
The Vortex Model of Addiction is built on understanding how our nervous system responds to stressful and traumatic experiences. The nervous system is our primary operating system – our body’s command center. Yet, too often, we know very little about what this system does, how it functions, or what happens when we encounter challenges. Our nervous system is responsible for various tasks: thoughts, emotions, memory, behaviours, reactions, movement, bodily functions, and instincts.
Understanding our biology is crucial to making sense of the impacts of stress and trauma. It also helps make sense of the move into unhealthy patterns of substance use or other addictive behaviours as a coping mechanism. This is especially true when our nervous system is exposed to trauma or chronic stressors. These tax our system making it more challenging to regulate in healthy ways.
When we experience adverse life events, it dysregulates our nervous system. As a result, regulating our bodies, emotions, thoughts, and behaviours becomes much more challenging. This sets the stage for the unhealthy use of substances or behaviours as a way to cope.
THE VORTEX OF ADDICTION
The Vortex Model of Addiction provides a way of understanding the move into addiction patterns with substances or behaviours. It speaks to the progressive nature of substance use and addiction disorders. Those who struggle know how addiction's impacts grow over time. But this model also speaks to the progressive impacts of trauma. Lastly, the Vortex Model also speaks to the journey of healing and recovery.
A Regulated State
We function best when most aspects of our lives are manageable. We are healthiest when our nervous system is regulated – when we can cope with stressors but still experience periods of calm and restoration. A regulated state includes our ability to:
Take good care of our physical bodies
Enjoy healthy and supportive relationships
Regulate our emotions and our reactions
Demonstrate good judgment and clear thinking
Regulate our behaviours and choices
Cope well with everyday challenges
Individuals who find it easy to experience a regulated state actively address issues in their lives. They typically take good care of themselves. They participate in supportive relationships and meaningful social, academic, or vocational endeavours. They tend to possess a healthy repertoire of coping skills and are good at reaching out for support when needed.
Most people who misuse substances or engage in mood-altering behaviours as a coping method tend to find it challenging to engage in life and relationships in these healthy ways. They rarely enjoy a sense of calm.
Manageable Stress
We all know life does not remain in a blissful state of calm. Our modern lives are far too complicated for that. There are numerous sources of stress: deadlines, traffic delays, minor illnesses, or a quarrel with a loved one. In addition, daily situations can place higher demands on our self-regulatory processes. Frustration, work pressure, excitement, and performance require more physical, emotional, or cognitive energy.
It's important to note that not all of this increased stress is negative. For example, delivering a speech or falling in love increases the demands on our nervous system but are not necessarily unwanted or unpleasant experiences.
People who are well-regulated find ways of engaging in more challenging or taxing activities but are not overwhelmed by these demands.
At the end of a stressful situation, they can decompress and find a way back to a calm and regulated state. Perhaps a good meal, connection with a loved one, exercise, or a good sleep helps "reset" their nervous system enabling them to return to a more regulated state. In addition, their nervous system is flexible enough to allow them to move in and out of more challenging situations relatively easily.
The following three categories (Mobilized, Shutdown, and Oblivion) become more problematic for those who struggle with substance use and addiction disorders. Patterns of harmful substance use and mood-altering behaviours begin to take root in these two stages because they help people manage trauma symptoms.
Mobilized
If only life remained manageable – but it clearly doesn't. Unfortunately, for most who struggle with addiction, some aspects of their lives have become overwhelming or unmanageable. Traumatic and stressful circumstances are painful and inevitable: accidents, illness, violence, abuse, natural disasters, death, and broken relationships are, unfortunately, common occurrences. Yet, even when these painful situations occur, our nervous system can heal and recover with the support and resources we need.
But the healing process doesn’t always occur for everyone. Some people don’t get the support they need to recover from overwhelming life events.
A mobilized state occurs when our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is activated. The SNS is the branch of the autonomic nervous system responsible for mobilization and our fight or flight response. Our nervous system automatically initiates changes to help us fight or flee the threat we face.
Ideally, our nervous system then shifts us back into a more manageable state of activation by engaging the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. But unfortunately for many, this shift back into a regulated state may not happen easily or often enough. They may not have had the healing resources or support to do so. This means their nervous system stays activated following a trauma.
In my eBook, I discuss the two categories of trauma symptoms: hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal symptoms. Hyper-arousal category includes symptoms where there is "too much" occurring: trauma triggers, nightmares, overwhelming emotions, and physical distress. Those who have experienced trauma can experience many other challenging symptoms including:
Nervous system activation: jittery, startle easily, hypervigilance, insomnia
Physical Symptoms: tension, digestive problems, elevated heart rate, uncomfortable physical sensations
Mental Symptoms: difficulty concentrating, overthinking, anxious thoughts, difficulty concentrating
Emotional Reactivity: defensiveness, inappropriate anger, heightened anxiety, fear, shame
Re-experiencing Symptoms: nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive images, trauma triggers
Unhealthy Coping Behaviours: self-harm, disordered eating, problematic substance use
When in a chronic state of mobilization, people often "take the edge off" by doing something that keeps them in a mobilized state but acts as a way to "check out" or "numb out". For example, they may use substances or behaviours that keep the nervous system in sympathetic nervous system activation. This means the person's state doesn't change – it's still mobilized. But they are just giving themselves a different experience of mobilization that numbs or gives them a break from the discomfort they otherwise experience.
Here are some examples of mood-altering and numbing keeps someone in a mobilized state:
Stimulant drug use (cocaine, methamphetamines)
Compulsive exercise
Gaming
Gambling
Compulsive sexual behaviours
High-risk activities
The second way people take the edge off being mobilized is to disconnect from themselves, others, and the world around them. Shutdown is the next stage in the Vortex Model of Addiction - it's all about disconnecting and shutting down painful thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Shutdown
But people who have experienced trauma will also have an entirely different set of symptoms – those belonging to the hypo-arousal cluster. Rather than a state of mobilization and hyper-arousal, hypo-arousal shows up as a state of “shutdown” that results when traumatic stress becomes overwhelming, and the nervous system moves into dissociative and disconnected responses. Hypo-arousal refers to experiences with "too little" going on – relational isolation, emotional numbness, feeling disconnected from reality, and disconnected from self.
Disconnecting and shutting down feels better – that's why it is a typical response to the exhausting experience of chronic mobilization.
Understandably, some want to feel "nothing" rather than "everything", especially when dealing with the unrelenting painful thoughts, feelings, or sensations associated with anxiety, chronic stress, or trauma.
A wide variety of experiences occur in this shutdown stage. Clinical symptoms can include depression or dissociation (feeling disconnected from self, others, and the world around you). Other typical experiences of shutdown include:
Emotional Numbness
Relational Avoidance and Isolation
Painful Emotions: despair, hopelessness, chronic shame
Exhaustion and fatigue
Memory problems or being forgetful
Unable to cope with essential parts of life
It makes sense that those who spend significant time in a state of shutdown want to mood-alter to make their life more bearable in that state. They may want to feel "nothing" rather than "everything". Or they may find shutting down with substances or behaviours more tolerable or pleasant.
Some may numb even more by using opiates, cannabis, or alcohol to soothe their painful experience. But those who live in constant numbness may be more drawn to high-risk behaviours instead. They may experience an increased desire to engage in risky behaviours or sensation-seeking in dramatic ways, including high-risk substances. Behavioural addictions such as sex or gambling addiction are another way. Some may want to feel something rather than nothing.
Whatever the goal of using, it creates a destructive pattern that pulls someone deeper down the vortex of addiction. Using substances and behaviours to manage painful experiences accomplish two things:
They pull someone deeper down the vortex of addiction
They increase disconnection from beneficial resources, coping tools, and supportive relationships.
Oblivion
It isn’t difficult to see what happens when people disconnect from overwhelming and painful symptoms of unresolved trauma with mood-altering substances or compulsive behaviours. It creates a fast track into addiction and all the devastating negative consequences that result from addiction: self-destruction, loss of control, loss of self, and all the profound impacts on health, relationships, and overall functioning.
Although “Oblivion” isn’t a clinical term, it’s a good description of the detachment someone feels when addiction has taken over their lives.
Oblivion is when someone is disconnected from themselves, others, their future, and even reality.
This final stage includes such things as:
Chronic Addiction
Severe negative consequences
Devastating impacts on health
Mental health challenges
Withdrawal seizures
Over-doses
Substance-induced psychosis
Suicidal thoughts or behaviours
Homelessness
The loss of self that comes with addiction.
When someone in addiction reaches Oblivion, they often cannot break the addictive process alone. Therefore, they will usually remain there until they receive some intervention. They will need some form of help, such as medical support, addiction treatment, joining a recovery program, or seeking out therapy.
It is essential to reach out for support. The possibility of hope and recovery does exist.
SUMMING IT UP
There you have it: a quick summary of the Vortex Model of Addiction. It’s a model that identifies how trauma and stress overwhelm us. When someone doesn’t find the resources to help them recover, mood-altering often becomes a way of coping – but serves to disconnect them from the things that assist in the recovery process.
I hope this model has given you a new way of looking at the process of addiction. I trust it gives more insight into how substance use and mood-altering are a symptom of unresolved trauma or chronic stress rather than just the "problem".
It is essential to find a qualified therapist to help you address both addiction issues and the overwhelming life experiences that have created the desire to numb and disconnect.
I appreciate your interest in "The Vortex Model of Addiction” - it doesn't just speak to the journey into addiction. It also speaks to the process of recovery and the journey of healing. I am grateful to have an opportunity to do my part in bringing more compassion and more science to the field of addiction recovery.
What more information about the Vortex Model of Addiction?
This article offers a more in-depth look at the model and how it relates to substance use and addiction disorders.
References
(1) Office of the Surgeon General: Addiction and Substance Misuse Reports and Publications https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/addiction-and-substance-misuse/index.html
(2) Recovery Research Institute https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/1-in-10-americans-report-having-resolved-a-significant-substance-use-problem/
(1) Khantzian, Edward J. "The Self-Medication Hypothesis Revisited: The Dually Diagnosed Patient." Primary Psychiatry Archive (2003). Primary Psychiatry. 2003.
(2) Felitti, Vincent J.; Anda, Robert F.; Nordenberg, Dale; Williamson, David F.; Spitz, Alison M.; Edwards, Valerie; Koss, Mary P.; Marks, James S. "Adverse Childhood Experiences". American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 14 (4): 245–258. (1998)
(3) Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. 1997.
(4) Van Der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. 2014.
(5) Porges, Stephen W. Clinical Application of the Polyvagal Theory. 2018
(6) Siegel, Daniel J. The Developing Mind. 1999