In this eye-opening episode of the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, Margaret Swift Thompson dives into the emotional and psychological grip of addiction through the lens of the powerful visual metaphor, The Addiction Dance.
Please watch the video of this incredible visual on the Embrace Family Recovery Youtube channel. The dance was first aired on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ in 2023.
With a haunting portrayal of addiction’s manipulative pull, Margaret unpacks how codependency, denial, and confusion can entangle even the most loving relationships.
She reminds us that we can’t do this alone—and we don’t have to.
Tune in to gain clarity, hope, and connection. 💙
🌐 For more support and resources, visit embracefamilyrecovery.com.
00:00
Music.
Margaret 00:15
Hello, everyone. Margaret Swift Thompson here of Embrace Family Recovery, and I wanted to just talk to you about a video that I adore using and have used in both Hazelden Betty Ford treatment center and retreats that I do and Family Programs that I do now, since I’ve launched this business.
I’m going to show you the video in this solo, in this clip, because I think it’s powerful, and I want you to please take a moment before you watch it, and use the lens watching this video of your disease, or your loved one’s disease, is the male figure in the dance, and you, or your loved one who has the disease of addiction, is the female figure In the dance. So, I’d like you to just take a minute and watch this video from that lens that the person’s dancing, the female represents the person with the disease of addiction, and the male represents the disease. And we’re going to come back, because I have a few thoughts about it. So, enjoy what I think is one of the most profound visual manifestations of this disease in action. It’s called the Addiction Dance, and it was aired on ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’
01:39
Music from the video playing – to watch the video please go to the Embrace Family Recovery YouTube Channel with this link.
Margaret 03:06
Yeah, oh, powerful, isn’t it?
I remember the first time I watched that I was taken back to being not in recovery with my food addiction, imagining that the man in that movie was my disease, my addiction. And it rang so true, the power it held over me, even when I wanted to get away, how beautifully it manipulated me back. And in my opinion, that’s how this disease works. This disease is all around us, grabbing at us, maneuvering us, pushing us, and it takes us in directions. We never thought we’d go, doing things. We never believed we’d do. Saying things and behaving in ways, we just can’t believe we’ve done.
So, when you watch that, I wonder what you were struck with. Things I’ve heard from people who watched it for the first time were like, wow, that was powerful. Manipulation was so profound. The woman’s attempt to get away and not being able to. The pain in her face, being defeated by it, but yet still rising up to fight it. And the arrogance of the disease. In the face when it ends, and they zoom in on the male dancer’s face was just eerie and true.
And one of the things I want you who are loved ones of the disease of addiction, the person with it. Where is there room in that dance for you, if your loved one who’s addicted as a partner, where is there room? If it’s a child, where is there room? If it’s a parent, where is there room for you to get between the disease and them? There isn’t, and yet we spend our whole existence when we first realize the disease of addiction is in someone we love, trying to do exactly that, get between the person and their drug of no choice or a behavior of no choice.
And what happens is, the disease manipulates the person to push us away or make it about us or blame us or be angry with us or lie to us to survive.
I believe dishonesty in this disease is a symptom, because if a person who’s active in their addiction were honest with the people who love them the most, what’s going to happen? They’re going to try to intervene. And the person who’s in active addiction does not believe they can survive without their drug of no choice. And the disease is telling them they definitely can’t, which was shown very visibly in this dance you just watched.
I want to also bring it back to the parallels, because I don’t think this is that different for us on the family side, either.
When I think back to my original relationship with my ex-partner, who had addiction. They were doing the dance with their drug of no choice, and I was doing the dance with them. I was trying to do it a little more creatively, a little more subtly, but I was doing it. My preoccupation and obsession with them was through the roof. And their preoccupation and obsession with their addiction was through the roof, and there wasn’t a lot of room for relationship between the two of us, because there was the monkey and the addiction all at play. As well as the two of us, and they were manipulating both of us.
So, I wonder if we looked at the dance again from the standpoint of monkey chatter, that voice in our head that continually gets us to fix managing control, because that’s what our feeling like, our life depends on. If we don’t fix manage control, something is going to go really horribly wrong, so we better figure it out. So, if we were to look at that same video of the dance around the concept of codependency or being a loved one of a person with a disease who is constantly fixated on that person, what they’re doing, not doing, how they’re doing it, will they do it? What’s going to happen? What different options do I have if a B or C happens, would the dance really look any different? And when we think about that, how do you have communication without awareness and learning about the impact of this disease and monkey on us? It’s really hard.
I know for me; I had no idea what I was doing. I had no awareness of what I was doing was not healthy for me or him. I was clueless because I hadn’t learned what I now know about this disease of addiction. I was clueless because I had not learned what I needed to learn and deserved to learn about being a loved one of someone with a disease of addiction. Because this disease is different than any other chronic, progressive or potentially fatal illness there is in the world, and that is baffling when you’re living in it without that understanding. And the understanding is that the tools that help us and help the person we love, support them in the healthiest ways, are counter intuitive to every ounce of our being, and that’s hard to navigate.
So, I hope that this video reached you in maybe a different way than just hearing a lecture of the powerlessness that a person with addiction has over their drug of no choice.
There is, however, hope, maybe one day there will be a beautiful video made of what recovery looks like in a dance form too, because there is hope.
The people that can get between me and my drug of no choice. Your loved ones and their drug of no choice are other people who walk the path with the same illness, the same disease, because they can speak to us, reach us in ways our loved ones can’t.
That goes for you, too, as a loved one as a family member or an affected person by this illness, the ones that can reach you are others who walk the same path you do.
So, my hope for everyone who are impacted by this disease is that you find connection with other people on the path who can show you how they found their way out from underneath the power of the monkey and the power of the disease.
It is possible we can and do recover.
Until next time. Take care of you.
Please find resources on my website, embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson, until next time,
please take care of you.
