This article has been clinically reviewed by Dr. Sean Barlow.
There’s a kind of silence inside that isn’t peaceful. It’s the kind that creeps in when nothing feels real, when emotions don’t register, when people are talking but it’s like you’re behind glass watching your own life happen without you. That’s detachment, and while it might feel like protection, it’s actually the nervous system’s version of a circuit breaker. Too much pain, too much fear, too many internal alarms going off at once—and the system shuts down, numbs out, goes quiet. And when this happens, it is not uncommon for a person to find a connection between detachment and drug use.
Detachment and Drug Use
Because when the body and mind are in chaos, the smallest relief feels like a the right choice. Even if it isn’t. Drugs certainly can offer that pause. That disconnection.
And for people already slipping into emotional detachment, it’s easy to see why they’d reach for something to make the numbness easier to bear.
What Comes First: The Drug or the Disconnection?
There are plenty of things in a person’s life that can lead to detachment. Trauma, neglect, depression, stress, so many of these things may lead someone to find relief in drugs. Also, these types of disorders or constant mental health issues in a person’s life can bring on detachment. Add drugs to that and you get a double-whammy—neurochemical shifts and emotional suppression at the same time.
Drugs CAN Cause Detachment
On the other hand, substances themselves can cause emotional detachment. Stimulants and depressants both mess with the reward system in the brain. This means your emotions might run rampant, or they might get a major voltage drop. Pretty soon, it’s tough to know what you feel on your own, or if you feel anything at all.
Addiction or Numbness: How Can You Tell?
So people will often ask, am I addicted or am I just medicating my detachment? Here’s where drugs are ruthless. It doesn’t matter why you started them or how you try to use them to help you feel good; drugs eventually take over.
And when a person starts using drugs not for euphoria, but simply to feel something, or to avoid feeling anything, that addiction is going to be very close at hand. That’s when the brain makes an agreement with the chemicals in the substances that it is going to do whatever it can to get those supplied.
A Therapeutic Understanding
This is where detachment and drug use become clinically significant.
When people describe feeling “blank” or “hollow,” or when they say they can’t remember the last time they cried or felt joy, we’re not just talking about moods—we’re talking about clinical shutdown. And that’s something treatable.
Not overnight, not by grit alone, but with the right tools and support. But using drugs will only hurt the situation.
How to Reconnect: One Small Step at a Time
Feeling connected again and re-associated takes more than quitting substances. It involves repairing parts of your brain that needed to “numb out”. The process is subtle and slow, but it’s measurable and real.
A dual diagnosis treatment option is the best way to go in order to help rewire what trauma or substances disconnected, as well as help with a physical and psychological dependence.
And while everyone’s path is different, here’s what reconnection often includes:
- Nervous system regulation: learning how to calm or activate your body safely
- Therapeutic support: working with someone who can witness the hard truths without judgment
- Healthy attachments: forming real connections, even if they start small
- Body-based practices: movement, grounding, sensory awareness
- Compassionate curiosity: replacing shame with a desire to understand yourself
You Don’t Have to Stay Numb
If you’ve been living with that feeling—like you’re outside your own life, or like everything is muted—it doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It means your brain did what it had to do. But you don’t have to stay there. Addiction treatment that understands detachment and drug use as two sides of the same coin can help you move toward feeling again—not all at once, but at a pace your system can handle.
At SolutionPoint Behavioral Health in Palm Springs, we specialize in treating addiction and mental health issues with a deep awareness of what’s happening beneath the surface—emotionally, neurologically, and psychologically.
If you’re tired of not feeling anything, or of feeling too much and needing to shut it all down, we’re here to help.
Call us today at 833-773-3869. You don’t have to fake being okay. There’s a way to heal that honors what you’ve been through—and brings you back to yourself.
