The Rebound Effect (Tricks of Addiction)

Side note: I will refer to the “addiction entity” and the “moral entity” in this post. Please see Understanding Addiction From Inside the Mind for more on this.

Addiction is a very tricky and manipulative disease. It can often create thoughts, and then try to disguise those thoughts as if they were coming from the moral entity. One of the main ways addiction does this is by tricking individuals into thinking they are better at certain things in life as the result of a substance For instance, it’s extremely common for people to think thoughts such as: this substance makes me a better person, makes me more productive, makes me nicer, makes me more peaceful, makes me less anxious, makes me less angry, and the list goes on and on. As someone who has had a lot of these thoughts during active addiction, I can tell you that in the moment you would swear by those thoughts. With that said, after being sober for some time I can now see the true power of this trick addiction is using. You see, when using a substance for more than about a month (enough time for your body to get used to it) you are not actually any better at what you think you’re better at than you would be if you were without that substance for at least three months. The reason why I say for at least three months is because the substance makes you worse at doing that thing when you’re sober as a result of the rebound effect.

Example 1: I was addicted to Adderall for a long time. I thought it made me more productive. This thought began the first time I took the Adderall, and during these first couple of uses I most likely was more productive in reality. With this said this thought would be reinforced when I would run out of Adderall and be extremely unproductive. If I would run out, I could not get anything done, and I would think, “wow I really do need that to be productive”. In reality, after a week of my body getting used to the Adderall, I was no more productive than I used to be sober, although now if I stopped taking Adderall I was way less productive as a result of the rebound effect, leading me to think that the Adderall was continuing to make me so much more productive. So while the initial use may make you better at something, as soon as your body gets used to that substance your exactly the same at that thing as you would be three months sober (after rebound is gone), instead now your just much worse at that task sober because of the rebound, and this comparison then continues that thought that the substance is helping.

Example 2: During another point in my life, I used benzos because I thought they made me a lot less anxious. Now in the beginning this was true that the benzos made me much less anxious in social situations. Fast forward 1 month to where my body had gotten used to the benzos and now, I am once again anxious in social situations on the benzos, although in comparison with the now extreme anxiety I feel when sober as a result of rebound, the benzos are still making me much less anxious.

As you can see it is often the case that the drug helps you in an area for a short amount of time, although once your body has gotten used to the drug you now are as good in that area on the drug as you were before you started taking it. With this decrease in baseline, now every time you do not take the drug you are much worse than you were without the drug before you ever started taking it. And because your skill in the area decreases both on the drug, and sober the comparison still reinforces the thought process that the drug is making you much better in that area of life.

This is a very unfortunate, and true property of addiction, and substances. What is even more unfortunate is that Big Pharma has discovered this phenomenon and used it to profit from. Not only does this phenomenon trick you into thinking the drug is doing its job, but it also tricks you into thinking that the area you are treating is worse than it is (because of the rebound when sober). This causes a cycle of upping the dose and switching the medication, and the individual never actually knows how bad the area really is because they never take 3 months completely sober from any medication, and there for getting completely away from the rebound effect so they can accurately gauge their true baseline of the area in question.