The Fuel Behind Finance: Using DBT to Succeed Without Cocaine
The world of finance is ripe with opportunities for cocaine use—enough to send many down the path of dependence. But Dialectical Behavior Therapy can help. Through therapist-guided DBT, you can get at the root of your cocaine addiction, and for many, that’s the first step towards healing and recovery in the workplace.
“You call your dealer who is driving around town in his car. He picks you up, you get in, and he tells you to open that box, take out the drugs, and put in the cash. Or you pay by bank transfer.”
It’s not your typical drug deal—or at least, it’s not what comes to mind when we think of a typical drug deal. But addiction lives on Wall Street whether we can picture it or not (though it certainly looks a little different there). There, addiction’s demographic is the busy, high-profile financier dealing with an insurmountable amount of pressure and a desire to succeed so large that they need some sort of escape to match its intensity.
For financiers striving to kick their cocaine addiction, the question is how to manage that pressure in a way that doesn’t rely upon substance abuse, and that’s where Dialectical Behavior Therapy comes in. DBT helps people who struggle with addiction think critically and honestly about what causes them to use; that way, they can learn from those things, and move forward with a set of coping skills that they can use to react to them in the future.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Behind DBT is the belief that people who live with certain disorders (like borderline personality disorder and substance abuse disorder) experience heightened states of emotional arousal in stressful situations. Through mindfulness techniques, DBT helps those who practice it take a step back and work towards managing that intense emotional arousal. With consistent, prolonged DBT, we build alternative neural pathways in the brain (pathways that don’t lead to cocaine use), and that makes it easier to control the emotions of those states of arousal in healthier, more productive ways.
If you decide that DBT is an option you want to explore, you’ll attend psychotherapy sessions with the goal of identifying and accepting the thoughts and emotional states that led to previous cocaine use. Then, your therapist will help you come up with a new set of skills that you can use the next time they arise. The end goal is to connect these positive behaviors to the emotions that drive your cocaine use—that way, you’ll have a ready-made set of coping skills that you can tap into when you feel driven to use.
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866-922-1350Using DBT to Navigate Cocaine Addiction
In the world of finance, stress is a universal part of the job. Brokering new business deals, communicating with stakeholders, connecting with potential investors—they’re all situations in which the stakes are high and the stress is higher. As you move higher and higher up on the ladder, your responsibilities grow, matched only by the pressure you feel to succeed. And because cocaine makes those who use it more sensitive to other triggers, it’s a particularly problematic variable to add into that mix. Increased levels of corticosterone (released into the body during those moments of intense emotional arousal) will often trigger the desire to use in someone who has previously used cocaine, and that means that even moderate use of the drug can lead to serious addiction.
Through DBT, you can learn to stop that process in its tracks by accepting the thoughts that lead to your cocaine use, and coming to understand that they must change before you can stop using. When used for substance abuse, DBT emphasizes “failing well,” and relapses are seen as learning experiences, windows into your state of mind. Through these windows, you learn to pinpoint why you reacted the way that you did in a way that’s free of personal judgment. Nobody’s perfect, and through DBT, you can continue down the path to sobriety no matter how many times you fail.
Success in the Workplace Starts with Acceptance
Cocaine might offer immediate, temporary relief, but in the long run, it can have severe and lasting effects on both your mental and physical health. That’s why it’s so important to seek treatment as soon as you can: because it’s an investment in both yourself and your career.
Using DBT in an individualized residential cocaine treatment program, you can learn to be critical of the things that cause you to use, learning from every failure and misstep along the way. There, you’ll be supported by a network of dedicated addiction professionals who can help you persevere through every step of the process—even when it’s hard. Through this process, you’ll gain a newfound understanding of both your strengths and weaknesses, and see that there’s life outside of the stress and addiction currently defining your workplace.
Alta Mira offers comprehensive addiction rehabilitation for people looking to free themselves from the grip of cocaine addiction. If you or a loved one is suffering from cocaine addiction, contact us today to learn more about how our treatment programs can use dialectical behavior therapy to help you take control of your drug use so that you can continue to be successful in the workplace.
