The Unhooked Well-Being Sessions

A one-day seminar that seeks to understand addiction as a lack of well-being, as a story that doesn't have to be lived, as the shape we give our distress, not the truth.

There are many states of being that we don't enjoy but which we don't call illnesses: exhaustion, hangovers, unwanted pregnancies, worry, fear, grief to name but a few. They are part of the human experience. They pass. We can talk about them. The condition we call addiction is no more an illness than is grief or hunger, even if its physiological symptoms often make it look like one.

Maybe it is not a problem to be fixed but an expression of distress that can be counselled, a story that can be changed. It presents as a problem because that's what families, society, criminal justice and the medical profession – indeed the addict him or herself - ask of the distress: give me a name and a shape for my misery. The stories have to have an extreme degree of "fix-me-I'm-broken" drama for anyone to take notice.

But maybe these stories are misunderstood at every level. Maybe the "addiction" a user talks about is actually a saga whose title could be "my life is a mess – it has no meaning". We have become so inarticulate about our distress; we have to shout in code. We don't know how to articulate our own or listen to other peoples' stories of distress. The need to manifest it, to make it the core of our stories, is so strong for everyone: addict, families, politicians, law courts and the rest of society, that the obsessions frequently have physiological proofs of their reality and importance: the withdrawal symptoms we can so easily mistake for the real distress behind them.

Recently, it has become sensible and scientifically-respectable to ask how can we find, and keep, wellbeing, confidence and meaning. What do they feel like? How can we get in the flow? Wellbeing is more than the absence of unhappiness or distress. Its positivity is something we can nurture, along with sensations of an enjoyed, meaningful and fulfilled life. Positive Psychology, Cognitive Behavioural and other therapies all show that the stories behind the usual auto-destructive patterns we associate with addiction can be interrupted. We can change. The statement "I can't stop" is only true as long as I haven't stopped.

The enormous success of the first Unhooked Thinking conference in April this year (http://www.unhookedthinking.com/Reviews/) indicates there is a strong appetite for new approaches to the treatment of addiction. In an informal and participatory format the Unhooked Well-Being Sessions will be facilitated by speakers from the conference and others bringing the Unhooked approach to more intimate settings where all participants are encouraged to explore questions like: What actually is addiction? Can well-being and addiction co-exist? Is addiction a story? How do you change your story? How can we find the flow of well-being? It is hoped that such brief interventions could have life-changing outcomes, especially when reinforced by follow-up therapies and groups.

The facilitators and content of the Unhooked Well-Being Sessions will be tailored for the audience. The Sessions will work as well in a prison context as they will for the families of addicts and those training to be addiction counsellors.