FP Attachment as "Emotional Drug Addiction" in Borderline Personality Disorder

Very much at the risk of being stoned by some who have not come this far for so saying, but as one 17 years into truly committed recovery from suicidal BPD, it is as plain as the nose on my face that desperate, often though not always limerent, FP attachment is an addiction, and that we are so dependent (actually co-dependent) upon them that any pretense of mature, realistic relationship with our FP is just that, a pretense. Albeit one that is completely understandable in light of how awful we often feel when we don't have an FP, and moreover, an FP who seems to "get" us.

I appreciate that this is probably a stiff poke in the shoulder, but our relationships with our FPs are no different from our relationships with any other form of emotion-numbing drug or behavioral addiction. (In fact, the very same neurochemicals -- including endogenous opioids, oxytocin, dopamine and adrenaline -- are in play.)

I had to face up to that as part of my recovery. Most people with BPD direly need an FP attachment because we were conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized to be as terrified of abandonment, isolation and withdrawal from that addiction as we are terrified of more abuse... by the time we were no more than five years old.

I say this from not only 17 years in recovery but having known over 100 people with BPD and having dealt with many of them in their own effort to throw off the awful hair shirt, as well as from investing the time to learn from all those listed in the fourth section of A CPTSD Library.

I had to ask -- and truthfully answer -- the question "Will the Addict Ever Stop Using SOMETHING if He or She remains Depressed, Anxious or Shameful, especially once those emotions become part of the Cycle of Addiction?"

I had to dive deep into Why do we get so Desperate for Connection? An Answer from the Purview of Attachment, Early Life Research & Codependency.

I had to plow through my denials and bargaining with "intolerable reality" to get to the fourth and fifth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery once I realized that -- as they say in AA -- "Half measures availed us nothing."

I had to see that I am not responsible for my disease, but I am responsible for my recovery from it. I had to come to see my life as just another example of Codependency, the Drama Triangle, and the "Dark Diagnosis."

To shuck this addiction, I had to get out of my "protective delusions" and into the way things are and not the way they are not. To that end, I will share this:

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

I understand fully that all that is a lot to try to digest. (It took me about 15 years.) But if one is looking for a Roadmap Out of Hell, there it is.

Of possible further interest:

Functional vs. Dysfunctional FP Relationships

How do I Get Over Losing my FP or Lover? (in my reply to the OP on that Reddit thread)