Charles Hanna shares with Dr. Leslie his addiction story. From entrepreneurial success, power and material wealth, Hanna plunged to the doors of death when his inner world collapsed. Far from living a ‘picture-perfect’ life, he descended into sustained cocaine use.
Listen to the full interview here
“We are born with incredible gifts that we take for granted: our health, life itself, the ability to love, to connect with other human beings,” says Hanna.
But he’s learned from his own experiences that events in your upbringing can rob you of your ability to trust and value the gifts of life. And as you grow into adulthood, NO amount of success or fame or power or money is going to compensate for that.
Hanna feels that early loss or emotional trauma is likely an underlying cause of fatal addictions. He cites Whitney Houston, Phillip Seymour, Michael Jackson, Prince.
“We puzzle over how they could sink so low when they seemingly had so much going for them. Something robbed them of their ability to connect with the world,” says Hanna.
Something deep inside was undermining all of their success and status.
Hanna explains how tragedy touched his own childhood with the deaths of two of his sisters (aged 6 and 3). Of course his parents were devastated and inconsolable. His mother was on suicide watch. In the face of their anguish, Hanna grieved alone, becoming more and more isolated and confused.
Dr. Leslie comments that science has recently shown that the grief a parent feels on losing a child never diminishes for the rest of their lives. They must continue through life managing intense grief that never dissipates.
For Hanna, his parents’ preoccupation with grief left him feeling that he couldn’t trust anyone to be there for him, so he taught himself not to connect with, or depend on, anyone.
Denial: the devil’s foothold
Decades later, Hanna had achieved everything he’d dreamed of and more. But a series of events in his life triggered that deep-seated fear of abandonment he’d experienced in childhood. He began toying with cocaine and rapidly fell into the habit of lulling his newly exposed pain with drugs.
How can a person move through pain that deep in order to heal addictive behavior?
“I will tell you, I could not think my way through it,” says Hanna. “My mind only took me deeper into anger and resentment.”
Then, when he had lost all hope, a miracle occurred. An accident of perception allowed him to see the truth that addiction was possessing him, taking over his clever mind and using it against him.
Listen to the full interview here
The Dr. Leslie Show is produced in North Carolina by Bridge Holistic Healing and can be heard on BlogTalkRadio, iTunes, WSIC 100.7FM and TuneIn Radio.