What’s the cost of suffering?
This has to be one of the toughest questions you might ask yourself when you are considering psychotherapy. This is especially true if you have immediate financial and time constraints that mean you can’t engage in therapy. However, for some who struggle with addiction. Therapy is a cost they prefer not to absorb rather than a cost that they cannot absorb. And that’s OK, after all it is your hard earned time and money.
Then every once in a while, a client will say:
“I just wished I had done this earlier”
Every time I hear that, I understand it, as “I wished I chose to have a better life earlier”. This thought often lingers with me for the afternoon.
For some, the reality is, delaying recovery means more suffering (i.e. longer time or larger intensity of suffering). Which leads to the question, what’s the cost of suffering or delaying recovery?
I’d admit it’s not easy to answer but I’ll try very crudely here.
Source: Road Trip with Raj, Unsplash
Let’s consider a hypothetical but very common gambling client “J” who spends about $500 a week on gambling, and after 10 sessions of treatment he has successfully quit gambling. Things are going well, and at 6 months he still hasn’t gambled. “J” like many others, tried to quit many times on his own prior to treatment but was unsuccessful. So let’s assume if he hadn’t gone to get treatment he would still be spending $500 a week.
If “J” delayed his recovery by 6 months i.e. 24 weeks,
The financial cost is $500 x 24 = $12000
The time cost at 2 gambling sessions per week is 3 hours x 2 x 24 = 144 hours (which would be available for something else)
The emotional cost = feeling regretful, miserable, shameful and guilty for 24 weeks
The relationship cost = further strained, taking longer to repair
It’s hard to look at that and not think “I just wished I had done this earlier”. In a strange way, you don’t experience the cost of delaying recovery from addiction right now, it’s your future self that suffers and deals with it. So it’s understandable that your short term goals are often selected over long term ones. It often takes hard work to reverse this pattern and start taking care of your future self.
There are often very real barriers to recovery from addiction that might be helped by a psychologist or other mental health professional. Sometimes those who struggle with addiction aren’t quite ready for counselling. However, there is no denying that delaying recovery has very real costs just like the immediate problems you might face day-to-day. Perhaps the best way to look at it is to see the cost and suffering you would avoid if you started reconnecting to a life where addiction isn’t a problem. There’s a good chance that the immediate problems would become a little easier to solve as well.