Addiction, Recovery & the Nervous System: A Different Way Home

If addiction has touched your life, you already know this: it’s not just about the substance, the screen, the food, or the behavior. It’s about the part of you that feels like it can’t stop—and the part that feels like it disappeared a long time ago.

I’m Dr. Tad Schexnailder, a chiropractor and Certified Addictionologist practicing in Colorado Springs. I work with people navigating everything from process addictions and compulsions to long-standing substance-use disorders—as well as the loved ones, practitioners, and recovery communities who walk alongside them.

At Organic Living Chiropractic, we see addiction as a disease of disconnection—disconnection from your own body, from a self you actually enjoy being with, and from relationships that feel safe and nourishing. Addiction is a strategy, not an identity. Your nervous system is trying to solve a problem with the tools it currently has.

Our work together is not about “fixing” you from the outside. It’s about helping your nervous system reorganize—so the shape, position, tension, and tone of your spine, and your life, can change from the inside out.

The Hidden Struggle of Addiction: Disconnection in a Hyper-Connected World

Addiction rarely starts with a substance. It starts with a state.

  • A state of being overwhelmed or numb.
  • A state of not wanting to feel what’s in your body.
  • A state of not trusting that anyone—including you—will be there when pain shows up.

In that state, the brain is hunting for reliable relief. The nervous system doesn’t care whether the strategy is socially acceptable (work, exercise, scrolling) or socially condemned (opioids, porn, gambling). It cares about one thing: “Did this reduce pain or increase pleasure fast enough to feel survivable?”

Over time, those repeated choices carve deep grooves in the brain’s reward pathways. Modern neuroscience calls this Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS)—a pattern where the dopaminebased reward system is under-responsive to everyday joys and over-hooked on high-intensity stimuli like drugs, gambling, or compulsive behaviors.

When that happens, “just stop” is not a treatment plan. It’s a misunderstanding of how your nervous system is wired right now.

And underneath all of it is tone.

Understanding Addiction Through the Reward Cascade

The Reward Cascade: When the Orchestra Falls Out of Sync Add Your Heading Text Here

Think of the brain’s reward cascade like an orchestra:

  • Different neurotransmitters (serotonin, GABA, dopamine, endorphins) are like different sections—strings, brass, percussion.
  • When they fire in sequence, we experience things like motivation, satisfaction, and connection.
  • When trauma, chronic stress, or genetics shift that sequence, the music of life gets distorted.

Research on Reward Deficiency Syndrome suggests that when dopamine signaling is lower or less responsive, people may feel less satisfied by normal rewards—connection, nature, a good meal—and are more likely to seek intense stimuli to “feel normal.”

That’s not moral failure. That’s tone.

  • If the system’s tone is too high (hyperaroused), we feel anxious, driven, restless.
  • If tone is too low (shut down), we feel flat, numb, disconnected.
  • Addiction becomes the unauthorized sound engineer—cranking the volume, cutting the lows, blowing out the speakers—because the nervous system has lost its finer knobs.

Neuroplasticity: The Good News About “Broken” Wiring

Here’s the hopeful part: the same brain that wired itself into addiction is capable of wiring itself out.

Studies on neuroplasticity in substance-use recovery show that with sustained abstinence and supportive environments, neural systems involved in reward, craving, and self-control can partially recover, reorganize, and form new patterns.

Lifestyle interventions—sleep, movement, stress regulation, and body-based practices—can strengthen healthy neuroplasticity and support long-term change.

Our job at OLC is to help your nervous system become a better conductor of that orchestra again—so recovery isn’t just gritting your teeth, but living in a body that can actually enjoy being alive.

Trauma, Disconnection & the Body That Keeps the Score

When the Past Lives in the Body

Most people I see who are struggling with addiction are not “weak.” They’re adapted.

Trauma—especially chronic, developmental, or relational trauma—reshapes the brain and body. Research and clinical work around “The Body Keeps the Score” show that trauma can lead to chronic nervous-system dysregulation: swings between fight-or-flight activation and collapse, altered stress hormones, and persistent changes in brain regions involved in threat detection and emotional regulation.

In that state:

  • The body feels unsafe even when life is “fine.”
  • Ordinary sensations—hunger, loneliness, tiredness—can be misread as danger.
  • Compulsive behaviors become a way to override or escape the body’s signals.

Addiction, then, is often the nervous system’s attempt to manage unresolved physiological stress—the echoes of experiences that were too much, too fast, or too long.

Reorganizational Healing: Not “Back to Normal,” But Forward to Coherence

At Organic Living Chiropractic we use the lens of Reorganizational Healing—a framework developed by Dr. Donald Epstein and colleagues that describes how people can use symptoms, stress, and life crises as catalysts for higher levels of organization, meaning, and resilience rather than just “getting rid of the problem.”

Instead of asking, “How do we get you back to who you were before addiction?” we ask:

  • What if the breakdown is an invitation to reorganize at a higher level?
  • What if your symptoms are messages from your system about where energy is stuck or misdirected?
  • How can we help your body access enough safety, resource, and awareness to use those messages wisely?

We map this through the Four Sacred Seasons of Wellbeing (Discover, Transform, Awaken, Integrate), which you’ll hear me talk about often:

  • Discover: Seeing the problem and the pain clearly.
  • Transform: Mobilizing energy, courage, and new strategies.
  • Awaken: Experiencing deeper connection, gratitude, and meaning.
  • Integrate: Weaving it all back into your everyday life.

Addiction recovery is not a straight line. It’s a seasonal process. Our care is designed to support you in each of these seasons.

How Chiropractic & NetworkSpinal Support Recovery

Gentle Adjustments, NetworkSpinal & Neural Coherence

Traditional chiropractic focuses on restoring motion and alignment to the spine. That’s important. But at Organic Living Chiropractic, we go a step further with NetworkSpinal—a gentle, advanced form of chiropractic that works with the spine as the central organ of perception and organization for your nervous system.

Instead of forceful cracking, NetworkSpinal uses light, precise contacts to help your body:

  • Notice and release where tension is being held.
  • Develop new breathing and movement strategies (waves through the spine).
  • Shift from defensive patterns toward relief and greater coherence—more synchronized communication within the nervous system.

Research on Network-related approaches suggests improvements in self-reported health, emotional well-being, and adaptive life behaviors, framed within the broader Reorganizational Healing model.

It is often said: the shape, position, tension, and tone of your spine is directly related to the shape, position, tension, and tone of your life. When your spine learns new options, your whole system gets new choices.

Autonomic Tone, Heart Rate Variability, and Regulation

Why does this matter for addiction?

Because recovery is easier in a body that can self-regulate—shift between “on” and “off,” stress and rest, in a fluid way.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is one way we and researchers measure autonomic nervous system flexibility and vagal tone. Several studies have explored the effects of chiropractic and spinal manipulation on HRV and autonomic balance:

  • A multiclinic study found that chiropractic care was associated with increased HRV and reduced pain, suggesting improved balance between sympathetic (“fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) activity.
  • Some trials report improvements in cardiac autonomic control following chiropractic adjustments in people with musculoskeletal pain.

What we can confidently say is this:

  • Chiropractic and NetworkSpinal aim to reduce mechanical and neurological interference in the spine and nervous system.
  • For many people, this corresponds with feeling calmer, clearer, and more present in their bodies.
  • That improved regulation can make it easier to notice cravings earlier, tolerate discomfort without immediately reaching for old strategies, and stay engaged in therapy, groups, and real-life relationships.

We don’t “treat addiction” in the medical sense. We support the organizing system—your nervous system—so you can do the work of recovery with more internal backup.

Somatic Integration & Healing Intimacy

Intimacy as the Opposite of Addiction

One of the most powerful truths I’ve seen in my work is this:

The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is intimacy.

Not just sexual or romantic intimacy—though those matter—but the simple, profound ability to:

  • Be in your own body and like who you are.
  • Let another human being see you, hold you, and be with you—without needing to hide or perform.
  • Feel your feelings in real time, instead of outsourcing them to substances or compulsions.

Addiction, in this frame, is a strategy to patch over a rupture in intimacy—with self, with others, with life itself.

Somatic Integration at OLC is about rebuilding that felt sense of connection:

  • Learning to track sensations safely.
  • Finding where your body says “yes” and “no.”
  • Re-training the nervous system to associate connection with safety and pleasure, not just risk.

Somatic Practices, Trauma & Nervous System Coherence

Body-based, or “bottom-up,” therapies are increasingly recognized as essential companions to traditional talk therapy for trauma and addiction.

Research on Somatic Integration approaches shows promise for reducing PTSD symptoms, improving stress resilience, and working directly with the psychophysiological consequences of trauma—rather than only its mental story.

Reviews of somatic and touch-based interventions for trauma suggest these methods may help:

  • Regulate autonomic arousal.
  • Increase HRV and vagal tone.
  • Decrease symptoms such as anxiety, hyperarousal, and dissociation.

In our office, we blend:

  • NetworkSpinal entrainments (on the table).
  • Somato Respiratory Integration (SRI)—guided breath, movement, and attention exercises you can practice at home.
  • Simple “orientation” and grounding tools to help your body distinguish now from back then.

The goal is not to push you into big emotional releases. The goal is to teach your system how to stay with itself—little by little—until intimacy with your own experience becomes a skill, not a threat.

The Collaborative Path to Recovery

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

As a Certified Addictionologist, I want to be very clear:

  • We do not replace medical detox, medication-assisted treatment, or psychotherapy.
  • We do collaborate with your existing team—therapists, psychiatrists, medical providers, sponsors, treatment centers, and family. Recovery is a team sport.

Our role in that team is to help you:

  • Build a more regulated, responsive nervous system.
  • Experience your body as an ally instead of an enemy.
  • Access the energy and awareness you need to use the tools you’re getting from treatment, therapy, and community.

When your system has more coherence—better communication between brain, body, and field— everything else you’re doing tends to work better.

What Care Looks Like at Organic Living Chiropractic

Your path with us might include:

  • Comprehensive assessment.
    • History that honors both your biology and your biography.
    • Core Score and nervous-system scans to measure how your system is organizing and adapting. We can literally see, objectively, where your body is holding trauma and defensive patterns that are interfering with your healing.
  • NetworkSpinal care
    • Gentle entrainments designed to cultivate spinal waves, release defensive tension, and foster new strategies for movement, breath, and perception.
  • Somato Respiratory Integration (SRI)
    • Breath-based practices matched to the Sacred Season you’re in (Discover, Transform, Awaken, Integrate).
    • Classes (including Thursday evening groups) where you can learn these tools in community.
  • Education & Reorganizational Mapping
    • Helping you identify where you are in the process of change, which intelligences (body, emotional, mental, etc.) are leading, and what the next wise step might be.

We don’t do healing to you. Your system learns to reorganize. We simply create the conditions and input for that learning to unfold so that YOU become the healer in your body and life!

Hope, Science & Human Potential

The science is clear on a few essential points:

  • The brain and nervous system are plastic—they can reorganize, even after years of substance use and chronic stress.
  • Trauma lives in the body and nervous system as much as in the mind—and body-based approaches can be powerful allies in healing.
  • Chiropractic and somatic practices appear to influence autonomic regulation and subjective well-being for many people, though the research is still developing and not all studies show the same outcome.

And your lived experience is clear on one more: white-knuckling is not enough.

If we don’t choose pleasure, pain will choose us. Recovery that ignores the body, ignores intimacy, and ignores the nervous system’s need for connection will always feel like a war.

There is another way.

Your body is self-healing, self-organizing, and self-growing when given the right conditions. You are not your addiction. You are the field in which new strategies, new seasons, and new levels of coherence can emerge.

Your Next Step: Let’s Start a Different Conversation

If this resonates—even a little—here are some ways to connect:

  • Schedule a Discovery Call: Explore whether our approach is a good fit for your recovery journey or for someone you love.
  • Book a New Patient Assessment: Get your spine, nervous system, and Core Score scans evaluated through the lens of Reorganizational Healing.
  • Join an SRI or Education Class (Thursdays at 6pm): Learn practical, body-based tools for self-regulation and the 12 Stages of Healing in a supportive community.
  • If you’re a clinician or recovery program: Reach out to explore collaborative care for your clients who could benefit from nervoussystem-centered support.

You don’t have to wear snorkel gear in a Colorado winter. Translation: you don’t have to keep using survival tools that no longer match the season of your life.

Let’s help your nervous system remember what it’s capable of.

References

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