Accepting Responsibility
A Story about Struggling with Addiction After Brain Injury
Having a brain injury will affect how a person interacts with the world physically, cognitively, and emotionally. It is also likely that changes in these qualities will contribute to behavioral and social difficulties — at times a survivor may seem ignorant of social conventions or even lash out in a manner that brings physical or emotional pain to those who are close. When such issues arise, it can be tempting for a survivor to blame all such behaviors on “the accident”, but this is a dangerous habit. It should be a survivor’s goal to return to society without carrying the tag of “brain injury”, and part of that means owning up to one’s actions and to not copout of responsibility by using “the injury” as an explanation. In this article, I will present my personal struggle with rage and substance abuse as an example of first avoiding, but then accepting responsibility.
I am a brain injury survivor of fifteen years, and after my accident it became apparent that I struggled with both rage and substance abuse. I must clarify — when I say, “...it became apparent...”, I mean that other people could see these faults while I refused to acknowledge any responsibility. This struggle could be seen in petulant temper tantrums, drug soaked blacked-out nights, intoxicated rages, emotional and physical destruction, and yet I faulted my injury for all such actions. If there was a problem when I was drugged, I would appear the following morning dressed in what seemed to be appropriate guilt and say, “Hey, look, I’m really sorry. I know I have these issues ever since my injury, and it’s not okay that this happens, but I’m really working on trying to...stop...I don’t know...calm this down. It’s because of my brain injury, and I’m really trying to fix it, but...I mean, just know that I know it’s not alright.”
Yet these words allowed me to believe it was “alright” for fifteen years.
Each time this sheepish apology would fall from my lips, I was lying to myself and to those I had harmed. Perhaps the incident would be forgiven, as my honest eyes and soothing words could at times work rhetorical magic — or sometimes there was simply no more forgiveness and I would be cut off from a lover or friend. When a loss of this sort happened due to some combination of rage and intoxication, I would weep-away and damn the accident for cursing me with this burden. In that moment my vow to conquer this “beast of rage” would be renewed — and then I would usually go and get high in order to “sooth the pain”.
Let’s be clear, there are mountains of research that show a connection between drug use and rage, and I was aware of this — but I was also aware of studies that recognize the tendency for outbursts of violent anger after brain injury. I decided to ignore the first pile of knowledge and focus on the second because the brain injury was what I wanted to be wrong — that way I could persuade myself that I didn’t need to stop drugs and alcohol, I just needed to introspectively heal a little bit more. And I convinced myself I was getting better by internally reciting egoistic monologues — something to the effect of, “My stupidity doesn’t happen all the time, it could be weeks, sometimes months when, yeah, I’m getting messed up on the weekends, or weekday evenings, or a quiet afternoon, but I wasn’t doing anything really stupid. Not that I remembered, anyway. I didn’t yell at anyone the night before and I don’t think anyone’s mad at me, so I must be getting better. Look at how well I’m doing, I’m really working on this rage leftover from my accident.”
If I could blame my injury I could ignore the problem, despite a trail of consequences. I lost my place at a university, jobs, friends, lovers, and always I weaseled away when the blame came to me — it wasn’t because of choices, it was my accident’s fault.
Until I lost too much. A meaningless spat exploded, I drunkenly raged, and the woman I loved and lived with chose her safety and sanity over our relationship. The morning found me hungover on the couch, and she had ended our romance. It was necessary, it was clean, it was over, it was what I would have advised any friend to do. And it was the unexpected crispness of this consequence that flipped a switch and convinced me to accept responsibility. It didn’t matter whether the initiating factor of my anger issues came from the accident or substance abuse — the issue existed and I needed to help myself by getting some help. It was time to try something new and get sober.
As a survivor, it is easy to blame personal faults on brain injury, and it is true that TBI can exaggerate or create less than amiable personality traits — but that cannot be a reason to allow a challenge or flaw to go unaddressed. The injury is an event that happened, but how you live your future is your choice. If you are a survivor, the physical, mental, and emotional consequences of the injury are now a part of you, but should not be how you allow yourself to be defined. In fact, it should be embarrassing to define yourself merely as the product of your tragedy — you are so much more. Blaming rage on my accident allowed me to hide in an addiction, yet this only amplified the anger I claimed to be trying to fix. It was only after I accepted the flaw of substance abuse as my responsibility that I was truly able to grow.
It’s tempting to praise the above scene — when I made the choice to become sober — as the moment my life turned around, but it was only the first step in a long path that I am still following. When I made the decision, I had to change friends, locations, and find sources of support for my sober way of life, and this took some time. The romantic relationship I had been in was over because I had behaved inexcusably — yet circumstance and situation conspired to keep my former parter and I working close together. She saw me make the decision to deal with my anger issues by staying sober, and as time passed a new, different relationship formed in a manner that allows us both to grow. That said, it must be recognized that the rejuvenation of a prior relationship is not a good reason to fake responsibility for your behaviors. Your actions will be able to change only if you want to be a better person, actively make decisions to foster this new life, and are willing to make an infinite commitment to personal growth. In my situation, I do still occasionally feel fury begin to swell inside, but now I accept that I must be in charge of my anger and seek to calm it with a sober mind. This struggle with rage and feeling an urge to use drugs will continue all my life, and it may be that these tendencies were amplified by my accident, but now they are a part of me — a PART of me, not the whole of me — and it is my responsibility to ensure they do not take over my life. Brain injury is no excuse for who I am, because I am alive and that gives me a choice of how I show myself to the world. My accident happened, but I must allow it to be in my past so that I can flourish as who I am now.
