Are You a Narcoholic?
Narcissist Addiction is Real and Deadly
--
“Hello, my name is Jenna, and I am a narcoholic. I have been sober for three years and ten months, but the craving is with me daily.”
Sound familiar?
12-step programs begin like this. And there is a similar dynamic at play with the detachment from a person with malignant narcissistic psychopathy. What happens to their partners is the stuff of science fiction horror movies. Most likely, there is no malicious intent from a narcopath. The narcissist simply must feed to survive, and the psychopath simply must achieve their goal. . . it’s nothing personal. It’s not about you. A predator has to do what they must in order to survive and remain king of the jungle.
A narcoholic is a person who is addicted to relationships with narcissists. That is their drug of choice. The dynamics of the disease is the same as drug addiction or alcohol addiction or food addiction or porn addiction. The dopamine hit to the brain when indulging in the drug of choice is powerful and life-changing.
This pathological attachment is actually a survival strategy which enables the victim to dissociate from pain. The narcissist disowns themselves while the victim disowns the terrible reality of the abuse. Through the narcissist’s projection and transference, they accept the abuser’s perspective in ways that seem like brainwashing or cult-mentality.
Over time, the victim becomes enmeshed and engulfed by the abuser, ignoring their own healthy boundaries and basic needs. Their brains have been co-opted in a way so that they no longer have agency, and they develop a kind of learned helplessness. The narcissist takes their traits and characteristics and claims them for their own because they are empty and hollow and have no identity of their own. In a way, it is identity theft. And the consequences after they are gone is nothing short of an existential crisis.
The victim has become so dependent on the person with NPD that it is impossible to detach. There is parentifcation with both partners playing mother to one another. This means that the victim not only loses her partner. They lose themselves through the course of the relationship and they lose their proxy surrogate mother which is a relationship so…
