Real healing begins only after drinking stops

Here are two questions I have wondered about off and on for a while:
1. Why are alcoholics, and for that matter recovered alcoholics, the most self-dramatizing people I know? I'm never surprised to find that a self-dramatizing person is an alcoholic. I mean people whose lives are "epic" -- no one has ever had as great a joy, as deep a disaster, as brilliant an idea, more eloquent (and usually broken) promises, that sort of thing. Or is it a chicken-and-egg sort of deal? Does problem drinking create that kind of personality, or is that sort of personality drawn to problem drinking?
2. A friend said to me, "I was really down last month, did x, y and z, and got over my depression. But then I figured, if it really were depression, then I couldn't have cured myself of it."

Can you cure yourself of depression?
-- H.R., New Mexico
While it's not true that all alcoholics are self-dramatizing, you might well be on to something when you wonder if self-dramatizing people are more vulnerable to compulsive/addictive behavior such as alcoholism.
Larger-than-life personalities often are larger than life precisely because they need to stimulate an artificial drama/enthusiasm around them so that they can dodge the deadness/emptiness within them. And it is the emptiness -- and companion depression -- that compulsives are trying to self-medicate.
You also are describing other common companions in the lives of most compulsives: some combination of narcissism, grandiosity and entitlement. "Ordinary" is just not enough for these types. And so they spin a dramatic narrative yarn. Their lives are epic, as you say.
Ah, life as hyperbole! And life as dichotomy! Every moment is narrated as "the best of times" or "the worst of times." Fame or infamy. Sainthood or sinner.
This is why, when treating alcoholics, the work is so much more than the mere cessation of drinking. It would be more accurate to say that the real work begins only and after the drinking stops.

H.R., you notice a self-dramatizing drive in alcoholics. For me, the opposite also is true. I recognize authentic recovery in compulsive personalities because I notice an essential humility. In recovery, people make peace and find peace in ordinary, neutral and average. Life can occasionally be epic, but human beings don't tend to be epic.
As I write, I'm smiling an embarrassed smile. While not an alcoholic, though they swing from the branches of my family tree, I certainly lived too much of my adult life with a need for the artificial stimulation of self-dramatizing. Alas, poor Yorick!
I knew I was growing up when a colleague said to me, "How are you today, Steven?" And I said, "About a B."
"What?" he said.
"I'd give the day a B," I said. Then I shrugged and added, "It's not a bad grade." And then I chuckled with the freedom and relief an ordinary man feels living an ordinary life on an ordinary day.
2. Episodes of mood disorder -- including depression -- strike most people at least once in their lifetime. Some people have chronic struggles with mood disorder. Still others appear to have been born with the bad luck of genetically crummy brain chemistry -- a brain that produces insufficient or the wrong combinations of serotonin, dopamine, etc.
Modern pharmaceuticals, especially in combination with talk therapy, often are very helpful for mood disorders. But, in the recent past, a new array of interventions have brightened the future for these patients.
Some depressed patients can and do "cure" -- or greatly mitigate -- their symptoms through art, meditation or other contemplative discipline, intentional breathing exercises, laughter/comedy or the machinations of better self-talk. One of the most promising disciplines to come along recently is Brain Training. There is now excellent reason to believe many patients can "teach" their brain to "fire" differently. Better. Especially as it regards the emotional centers of the brain.
Sometimes I tell myself I could put pharmaceutical companies out of business if only depressed patients would exercise and eat better. Spiking and collapsing blood sugar levels are typical of modern American diets. And moods track those spikes and those collapses hand in glove.

So, yes, many depressed patients can and do "cure" -- or greatly mitigate -- their symptoms with the help of pharmaceuticals or talk therapy or new, emerging interventions. But not all.
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns also appear on Sundays in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.