Q&A - Why do addicts lie and why is rigorous honesty key to recovery?

Today is another Q & A with our hosts, Tara McCausland and Justin B. 

Most addicts lie about their behaviors because they think it will protect themselves and not hurt others around them. Justin discusses how he eventually recognized the error in his thinking and how honesty has improved his relationships. They talk about how dishonesty is one of the most hurtful things for a betrayed partner.

Transcript

Q&A  - Why do addicts lie & why is rigorous honesty key to recovery?

Tara: [00:00:00] Hey, before we get started, I wanted to remind you of a couple of things. First, did you know, there is a transcript for this podcast? If you go to SAlifeline.org and click on “podcast,” you can find all of the transcripts for each episode. So we'd invite you to check that out. We have a wonderful gal who works really hard to get those transcripts up every week. So please take advantage of that. 

Also, if you didn't already know, we have our annual conference coming up. On September 9th, 2023 in Sandy, Utah. But if you can't make it in person, join us online and through a cool app called Whova. You can still ask questions in real time to the presenters. You can fill out feedback forms and survey forms. You can even engage on our community board. We hope that you'll join us. Come heal with us. And now on to the episode. [00:01:00] 

Tara: Welcome to the pathway to recovery podcast. I am Tara McCausland and welcome, Justin. Glad to have you here with me. 

Justin: Thanks, Tara. Happy to be here. 

Tara: And today we are going to be discussing the question, Why do addicts lie and why is rigorous honesty so key to recovery? Justin, what were some various justifications about why it was okay to lie about your behavior? 

Justin: Yeah, you know, as I [00:02:00] went through my life, I didn't really think I was a super dishonest person. I knew that I stretched the truth here and there. I knew that I withheld some things here and there. But overall when asked, “Are you generally an honest person?” I would say, “Yeah, I'm generally honest. I don't cheat. I don't, you know, cheat at games. I don't try to deceive people outwardly and openly in a malicious way.”

But as I came into the rooms of recovery for the first time and I recognized within about three meetings that I am a big fat liar. So many things in my life I have minimized. I've covered up in ways that I thought were protecting others and protecting myself. For example, I don't want to tell my wife what behaviors, what I've been looking at or doing because that's going to hurt her and to myself, that was a justification of, “I don't want to hurt my wife.”

And if I don't tell her, it's not going to hurt her. Her ignorance is bliss, you know, [00:03:00] but eventually for me, those series of lies just ate me up on the inside until I couldn't take it any longer and I had to tell. Now other times with other people, they get caught and eventually I would have gotten caught. There's no doubt about that, but they get caught and then all of a sudden they've got to unroll years of lies, years of dishonesty, years of covering things up. 

But that is the main reason why I think I was dishonest, especially in my relationship with my wife because I didn't want to hurt her. And I knew that what was going on would hurt her if she knew about it. But in the end, it was really just harming others and harming myself. So I think the role that dishonesty played there is that I was able to just fool myself, deceive myself into thinking that all was well. And that just perpetuates further spinning down in a cycle, a [00:04:00] negative cycle. 

Tara: We hear that frequently, and we've said this many times on this podcast, which is that betrayed partners will often say that it's the lying and deceit that was most painful, not the actual behavior.

And that can be a head scratcher for some people. Why is that, why is the lying and the deceit the most painful part? And my thought was that trust is the currency of a relationship and when we lie, it bankrupts that relationship.

I found a really great quote that I think speaks to this. Frederick Nietzsche said, “I'm not upset that you lied to me. I'm upset that from now on, I can't believe you.” And I think that for betrayed spouses, that's perhaps one of the main reasons why they say [00:05:00] that was the most hurtful thing because from here on out, I don't know how to move forward in an authentic way with you because I can't trust you.

Because telling the truth or lying doesn't always have an immediate positive or negative consequence, sometimes it is a mixed bag. Lying can, in the present moment, help us avoid some kind of pain or rupture in a relationship or preserve our ego and reputation. But I like to think of lying as a cancer that really slowly eats away at our soul. As much as we like to think that lying doesn't hurt us or others, that truly is one of the greatest ways that we deceive ourselves is when we justify that lying doesn't hurt anybody because we know it does. We know that in our soul. 

Justin: Yeah, and I know that in so many other areas of my life, and I mentioned this to you earlier, Tara, but I want to share this. You know, when it comes to a board game or a [00:06:00] card game or sports or things like that, I do not cheat. I don't. I'm honest in those things because, and this is my philosophy on that, because if I cheat and win, it's an empty victory. I know that I didn't deserve to win if I cheat and lose - what a waste of time. That just makes me angry to think, “Man I did all these things to try and gain an advantage and I still lost I. I stink at this.” 

But when it came in active addiction, when it came to cheating, cutting corners being dishonest, whatever it was, I justified it in thinking, “Well, if I get caught, well, that's going to stink, I'm going to lose and it's definitely not going to be worth it.”

But I thought that if I don't get caught, if I “win,” I don't hurt anybody. And I can now, as I look back at my life and I can see the total hypocrisy in that thinking. [00:07:00] But I can totally understand it because that's the way my thinking works. 

Tara: So let's contrast this a little bit. For years, you hid your behavior and were engaging in lying and deceit. How did telling the truth change the way that you felt about yourself and how others responded to you? 

Justin: Initially telling the truth was and still can be painful. But it was hard. It was like trickle truth. I trickle confession. I didn't, I still didn't want to tell the whole story.

I didn't want to expose myself completely as being a liar. Well, a big fat liar. And that makes it really hard. And it still is something that for example if somebody says, “Hey, did you call that person?” like an assignment or a responsibility I had. And I called them once. I sometimes could say, “Yeah, I called them two or three times and I haven't heard back [00:08:00] yet,” to try and soften the blow of my own maybe lack of following through. But I think that telling the truth, however, and I've done this several times when I've said, “Yeah, I called him two or three times. Oh, wait, no, that is not true. I just called them once. I will follow up with them again now.”

Now I feel better about that because I get that immediate guilt trip in some sense for not following through as I should have, but also the ownership, the responsibility that happens. And that's something that I find very meaningful in my life is when I take responsibility for something and actually follow through on it, that's a boost for me.

Tara: And did people respond to you in the way that you thought they might as you began revealing your true self to others? 

Justin: Initially, no. My wife and I recently recorded about this, but when I disclosed, and you know, it was a trickle disclosure, but when I disclosed my addiction [00:09:00] to her and the things that I'd been doing, I was shocked at how hurt she was by that initially.

And that shock made me justify not being completely honest still for a while, you know? And continuing to hide the truth because I didn't want to hurt her and I didn't want her to hurt me in her anger. I was protecting myself, I was protecting her and those were the thoughts. But... more recently, as we continue to work in our recovery, when I am honest and she says, “Thank you for being honest about that,” that does make me feel a lot better.

When I'm honest in a professional setting and even if it hurts because I made a mistake or there's something that's not hunky dory and happy on the horizon and I'm honest about it, I feel better about it and people are typically grateful that I'm willing to speak honestly. 

Tara: Telling the truth can be painful, but another great quote by, I can't pronounce the name, so [00:10:00] I'm not going to even attempt, is “Better to be hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

So I'll speak from my experience as the daughter of an addict. I remember well the confusion and the sense of shame that came as a result of my father hiding and lying, even though I didn't really know the extent of his problem. But when he came forward in his third disclosure, rather than just telling my mom and telling a faith leader, he got really brave and he told all of his children, including all of their spouses.

And while the truth was painful, and while the initial reaction was anger and sadness and frustration and fear, that really was the catalyst to our healing to start moving in a different trajectory as a family. And so, I always tell people [00:11:00] that yes, while the truth may be painful, it's the only way to move forward in a positive way.

Honesty, rigorous honesty has the ability to heal in ways that we really don't understand, to heal the addict brain. The next episode that we'll share is with Anna Lemke, who is the author of Dopamine Nation. And she talks about how honesty strengthens our brain and how we do get a reward from the brain when we tell the truth and it helps give us that motivation to keep being truthful moving forward.

There are so many positives to truth telling that if we can get onto that path, onto that trajectory, I think that we'll find that we don't get rejected in the way that we may be afraid that we will. 

Justin: Yeah, I agree. And I think my experience with that is similar. Yes, immediately if I'm dishonest, tell a little white lie to protect the person I'm talking to, in my mind to protect them from harm I get a little [00:12:00] reward. But if I'm honest about it, and I'm regularly honest, I'm rigorously honest and consistently honest, there's some intimacy that comes back.

There's some emotional intimacy. There's whatever intimacy that comes back from that that makes the reward that much higher. And let's be honest, if I'm a sex addict and it's not just the physical intimacy I crave, it's intimacy. It's a connection. And if I'm dishonest, if I'm lying, that connection is empty. It's empty.

But if I'm honest, and even when it hurts, that connection can become much more meaningful. I've shared this before, I've heard other people share it before, and it's super meaningful to me. I don't know if this is something I can blame on the addiction or just blame on me being a man or blame on whatever genes or whatever it may be, but I really do have a very poor memory and if I'm dishonest, I'm going to trip myself up in that memory, trying to remember what I've said [00:13:00] before.

But if I'm honest, I can have a really poor memory and still be okay. I can say, “You know what? I don't remember, but I'm sure that what I said before was honest.” Or I can just say I experienced it and not worry about having to remember this lie. So three or four days or weeks or months down the road, I have to come back to it.

So just a couple of thoughts that I had there. Yeah. 

Tara: So what I'm hearing from you is that some of the benefits of honesty are that it is a way to build intimacy, emotional intimacy and connection. It's a way to help build up and preserve self respect, even memory and not having to complicate your life by having to recall, “How did I tell that lie so I can save my butt? I'm trying to explain this situation.”

It gets very complicated when we lie and habitually lie. I think peace is something that [00:14:00] we all desire and an honest life is one of the surest ways to peace. Not easy, but worth it. 

Justin: Worth it and it's meaningful. If I'm living my life in integrity and in rigorous honesty, the outcome is when I win the game it has weight. When I lose the game, it's because I gave my best effort. I was still honest, but I gave my best effort and there's meaning to that. 

Tara: It wakes us up. Honesty allows us to live fully awake, I think, to experience the joys of life as they were meant to be experienced. Otherwise we're hiding in the shadows, always afraid that someone's going to find out who we really are. I think it's often that thought of, “If people knew who I really was,  they wouldn't love me.”

And that is, I think, the greatest lie of all. It often keeps us in the shadows because we all want to be [00:15:00] loved. And my experience is that honesty promotes love. As dark as our secrets are, people will come to your aid if you will just be honest with the desire to change. 

Justin: I agree a hundred percent. Vulnerability and honesty invites connection, invites love, invites intimacy. 

Tara: And that all breaks the cycle of addiction.

Justin: Absolutely. Yes. 

Tara: Well, we've kind of been talking about this a little bit, but to our listeners, I hope this has been helpful. Stay tuned next week. We will hear from Anna Lemke; I’m excited to share that episode with you and we'll catch you next time. [00:16:00]