[Guest blog by Rick Kuplinski, Facilitator, SMART Recovery Henderson, NV]
If having a favorite among the four quadrants of the Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool makes me a SMART Recovery nerd, then so be it. I am letting my geek flag fly. I’ve got a favorite I want to tell you about, and it’s that top left quadrant that asks us to list the benefits of our addictive behavior, i.e., drinking, using, or doing another behavior of concern.
Talking about the benefits of my addiction at a SMART Recovery meeting felt weird at first. I couldn’t believe that I was being asked to share what I liked about drinking. At a meeting about addiction recovery! But I soon discovered that this was an important step in using the SMART Recovery tool called Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). And disputing those benefits led to my declaring shenanigans on the illusion that alcohol was my friend . . . once and for all.
If you are not familiar with the Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool, it is a simple one-page worksheet of four quadrants, two on top and two underneath those. These quadrants are blank spaces for writing lists. The two on top are labeled “When I do this behavior. . . ” The quadrant on the top left is for writing a list of “Benefits (rewards and advantages)” and the top right is for listing “Costs (risks and disadvantages)” The bottom two quadrants are labeled “When I don’t do this behavior . . .” with one asking us to list benefits on the left; and costs on the right. (See the SMART Recovery handbook and www.smartrecovery,org for more specific information about the CBA Tool.)
The focus here will be on just that top left quadrant, the one that asks us to list the benefits of our behavior of concern, whether it is alcohol, drugs, or any behavior that we suspect we are doing in unhealthy ways (e.g., eating, shopping, gaming and gambling, sex, internet and social media).
When listing these benefits, we are encouraged to think of at least three to five things, which most people can easily do. The items listed should answer the question “Why do I do this thing?” And these answers usually have to with three somethings . . . relief from something (like sadness, stress, anxiety), enhancement of our ability to do something (like relax, be confident, conquer a procrastinated chore) and associations with something we enjoy (like going out with friends, enjoying a hobby, relaxing at the end of a workday).
After making these lists, we are encouraged to label each item as either Short-Term (ST) or Long-Term (LT). When it comes to that list of benefits in the top left quadrant, most people recognize that the benefits they’ve listed have a relatively short shelf life, especially as compared to the costs of addiction listed in the top right which tend to be longer term and longer lasting; even permanent.
But wait, there’s more . . . what follows makes that top left quadrant my favorite. For me, its true power comes into focus when we ask the following questions about our list of benefits:
Do I need to call bullshit on some “benefits” because they’ve never been true or are no longer true? For me, yes. For example, “social lubrication.” I told myself that when I drink, I am more comfortable being around people, more outgoing, quicker with a joke and so on. But the truth is that I was ashamed of my overuse and preferred to drink alone where I could secretly consume the quantity I needed to eventually pass out. So much for being sociable! Another one was “helps me sleep.” I told myself that alcohol helped me deal with frequent work travel across time zones that constantly disrupted my sleep patterns. B.S.! Using alcohol as a sleep aid is self-defeating because it results in low quality sleep that only makes this issue worse, which is related to . . .
Are there better ways to achieve the desired “benefits”? Let’s take my issue with sleep, for example. I was abusing alcohol in part because I wrongly told myself it was helping me. What I completely ignored was all the information that was readily available on developing better sleep habits, including not drinking alcohol as a sleep aid. Here’s another one: Boredom. I sought refuge at the bottom of a bottle as soon as I felt—or even anticipated—the discomfort of sitting still and doing nothing. I’ve come to learn that relief from boredom just became my go-to excuse for getting drunk anytime I wanted and I have learned now to more effectively manage boredom without intoxication. What about you? What relief are you seeking from your addictive behavior? What are more effective, healthier, and more permanent ways to do that?
Are there some “benefits” I just need to learn to live without? I thought of alcohol as a convenient “off” switch. Whenever I didn’t want to think, feel, or do, it became my habit to get so drunk that nothing mattered. If I decided not to drink, then the closest thing that might have the same effect is hitting myself over the head with a rubber mallet. So, here I had to tell myself: “Suck it up, buttercup. Life doesn’t work this way. You need to get over this idea of being able to completely check out on demand.” Fortunately for me, SMART Recovery gave me a whole toolbox of more effective ways to deal with all of life’s ups and downs while keeping all systems “on” and engaged with reality.
What “benefits” pose the greatest potential for recurrence and how do I prevent that? Finally, the focus on the “benefits” quadrant of the CBA helped me better understand the things on my list that made me most vulnerable to the temptation to continue my addiction. An example for me was all the rituals and positive associations I had with alcohol, like mixing a drink while making dinner or watching a football game with beer goggles on. These are some of the things I knew would be the most challenging because they coincided closely with my sense of self-entitlement (“I deserve this!”) This recognition did not immediately solve these issues, but it placed me on hyperalert that I needed to work on finding strategies to get me through these dicey situations enough times to disempower their triggering effect.
So, there you have it. While the top left quadrant of the CBA asks us to list the benefits of addiction, its ultimate purpose is to encourage us to dispute these ideas and perhaps decide, like I have, that some rewards are not rewards at all, some can be attained through better means, and some are just not worth the costs—a subject we’ll discuss in more detail at another time.
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