Is it Addiction?

The first time a therapist told me that she likened hair pulling to addiction I was flabbergasted and offended.  I’ve spent so much of my life being a “good girl” and not trying anything I could get addicted to, that it just seem horrible for that to be possible.  I didn’t even know anyone  who smoked anything stronger than tobacco and I didn’t drink until after I was 21.  So that didn’t settle well.  (Honestly, I laugh a little at my naivete back then, knowing what has happened in my life since then.)

However, after studying hair pulling from the outside in (rather than from just a puller’s perspective), I see why she said that.  There are pleasure chemicals released when we pull, whether we like it or not.  It’s just like the endorphins that flood the systems of drug users.  They develop physical habits that go along with their addiction (that arm motion is hard for smokers to break), and it tends to happen in certain places time after time (favorite pub, the secret stash in the den).

Sound familiar, pullers?  Part of the reason our behaviors are so hard to break, is because our brain is drugging us when we pull, our hands, arms, even mouth, play a part in our ritual.  We have that place which triggers us to pull even if we have other things on our mind (for me that’s the car & computer).  It is REALLY hard to substitute all the parts of our ritual to satisfy our body’s need without pulling.  We do sort of go into withdrawal, but not generally as severely as a drug or alcohol addict.  But it can still be painful.  Just like with alcohol, our “addiction” is legal and around us all the time.   It is easy to get.  Ours is even free & rides around on our body.  It is TOO easy.

I’ve heard mention of 12 step meetings for people with body focused repetitive behaviors.  I’ve never been to one.  I don’t know if they’d help or not.  It probably depends on the type of person.

I was curious about our resources, so I emailed TLC to ask them how many support groups are ongoing right now for pullers to attend.  Here’s an interesting comparison:

There are 117 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings just in the medium-sized city near me. There are fewer than 70 Trich support groups in the ENTIRE USA that meet regularly. In said city, we have only one…and we’re lucky to even have that.

I dream of a time that we can walk to the corner church if we’re having a bad pulling day and converse with the dozens of other pullers in our community, instead of having to wait an entire month to drive an hour away to see the few brave souls who show up to support group.