Virtology GlobalAn initiative of Instituto Virtudes · Brazil
He is doing well, and your day is good. He disappears, and your day is over. Hope that rises and crashes with every piece of news is more exhausting than any night shift. There is something else that can take its place, and it is not giving up.
English edition of Isabella Becker’s Portuguese essay, adapted for international readers. The article presents Virtology’s interpretation; its specific theoretical mechanisms should be distinguished from independently established clinical findings.
You look at your phone before you open your eyes. If he answered last night’s message, the day starts light. If he did not, it starts with a tightness in your chest that comes with you to work, to the supermarket queue, to dinner. You recognize the sound of his key in the door before any other sound in the house. And you know, from the way he closes his bedroom door, whether the night will be calm or not.
People who love someone in addiction live like this, hanging on the next piece of news. One good week and you start making plans again. One relapse and everything crashes. In this article I want to talk about that particular exhaustion, the exhaustion of waiting, and about a difference Eduardo Casarotto places at the center of the family’s path: hope is not the same as the State of Certainty.
Someone’s addiction is not explained by the fault of one person in the family. And living on alert, after years of scares, is the response of a body that has learned the scare will come.
Nothing that follows asks you to ignore a real danger. If he is hard to wake, very confused, breathing slowly or with difficulty, or having a seizure, that is an emergency: call emergency services at once. Talk of suicide too: stay with him if it is safe, and call for help. What this article is about is something else: the alarm that goes off with no danger in the room, every day, for years.
And the State of Certainty I am going to talk about is not religion, not positive thinking, and not a promise that everything will turn out the way you want. I explain further on.
I write “he” and “your son” because it is the most common case, but this applies to a daughter, husband, wife, father, brother.
Casarotto describes this family’s life as a roller coaster. He stops, and hope rises. He relapses, and hope crashes. He stops again, and it rises again, a little less. Over time, the family learns not to hope, because hope hurts too much when it falls.
Look at what this hope is. It is an expectation tied to a result: “this time he’ll stop.” It depends on the facts. It rises when he is well and falls when he relapses. And because it depends on the facts, it swings with every piece of news. That is why it wears you out.
Many mothers reach this point and conclude that the problem is hoping too much. That the right thing would be to harden, to expect nothing more, to protect themselves. But hope that dies does not leave peace in its place. It leaves a bitter tiredness, and the alarm keeps ringing just the same.
This tiredness runs deep for a concrete reason: the way the brain reacts to what it does not know.
The amygdala is a structure the size of an almond, one on each side, deep in the brain. It is the threat detector. For most of human history, the unpredictable was dangerous, and it learned to fire at any sign of unpredictability. In someone who lives with uncertainty and no ground inside, it fires with an intensity far greater than what is actually happening.
Working with it is the salience network, a set of regions that decides, moment by moment, what deserves your attention. Virtology describes this network, when the State of Certainty is lacking, as hypersensitive to any ambiguity. A message with no reply. Silence in the bedroom. A delay in getting home. Each of these is treated as an urgent signal: the body tightens, the mind races, the urge to check one more time arrives. And this network does not switch off when you lie down. That is why the tiredness gets worse precisely when you try to rest.
The body pays. The stress axis, which releases cortisol, stays switched on by constant monitoring, even with no threat present. Sleep becomes shallow. Blood pressure rises. The stomach complains. Casarotto points out that the family falls ill too, and a large part of that illness lives here.
This network also learns. Virtology describes how, each time a person notices the ambiguity and chooses not to enter the cycle of checking, the salience network starts to register that kind of signal as information, not as an order. The uncertainty is still there. What changes, with months of repetition, is that it stops setting off the whole body. That is what the practice at the end of this article trains.
The phone rings at three in the morning, and the mother’s body is already at the funeral. His car did not arrive on time, and the father is already picturing the accident, the police, the hospital. He is quiet in his room, and his wife is already certain he has used.
This also has an address in the brain. The default mode network is the set of regions the brain uses when it is not busy with a task. It is what we use to remember, imagine and rehearse the future. When the State of Certainty is lacking, this network gets captured, simulating catastrophes that never happened. And the small hours are the worst time, because there is no task to occupy it.
The body reacts to the imagined scene almost as it would to a lived one. The heart races, the stomach closes, the night is over. The mother who imagines the funeral every night lives through the funeral every night.
The alarm goes off just the same. The difference lies in what comes next. Instead of going straight to the worst, the family breathes, waits, checks. Very often it was just a wrong number. And when it was not, the family that was not in panic decides better. The State of Certainty is not waiting for the danger to pass. It is deciding without panic, and that includes calling for help at once when there is a sign of danger.
Calling again. Looking at his location. Checking the bank statement. Searching his room. Asking his girlfriend, his friend, the group. Each check brings a small relief, and that relief has an explanation.
In the ventral striatum, a region deep in the brain linked to reward, dopamine is released when uncertainty goes down. The information that “settles it” arrives, and the body loosens for a moment. Virtology describes how this closes a loop: the person seeks a guarantee because the guarantee brings relief, and the seeking becomes compulsive. The relief does not last, because tomorrow the uncertainty is back in full. So you check again.
It is the same logic that holds the person you love, applied to another object: a relief that does not cover the lack and so has to be repeated. Nobody chooses this. It is a system everyone has, running at its limit.
Casarotto gives an exact definition of this movement: control is the attempt to wrest from the future a guarantee it does not give. And in Virtology, control is rooted in pride, in the demand that reality obey. I wrote about why trying to manage anxiety keeps it coming back in Why managing anxiety keeps it coming back.
The family of someone in addiction asks for guarantees all the time. The doctor: “will he get better?” The therapist: “how long will it take?” The group coordinator: “will he relapse again?” Him: “promise me you won’t do it again?”
Asking is your right, and good information helps you decide. But after every question has been answered, there remains a part that nobody knows. Nobody can guarantee that part. Demanding a guarantee for it is what Casarotto calls the arrogance of wanting to know everything. And that is what makes people ill. The State of Certainty begins where information ends.
The promise is the most common request for a guarantee. “Promise me you won’t do it again?” pulls out of him a sentence he cannot keep. And it gives you a calm that lasts until the next relapse. When the promise falls, hope falls with it, and the roller coaster goes round once more.
It is worth understanding why it falls, so as not to read a broken promise as a lie or as a lack of love. The one who promises is him at a calm moment, sitting with you, feeling your suffering. The one who decides to use is him in another state: in what Virtology calls the blackout, the moment an impulse overrides everything the person knows. A promise can be sincere and still not reach that moment. That is why demanding more promises protects no one. It only increases his humiliation when the next one falls, and humiliation is one of the strongest triggers of the blackout.
Casarotto proposes a simple exchange: instead of the promise, a concrete agreement. What he is going to do tomorrow, and what you are going to do. A promise speaks of a whole future nobody controls. An agreement speaks of one day. “Tomorrow you’re going to your ten o’clock appointment. I’ll take you to the door and then go to work.” “Tonight you’re going to your group, and I’m going to mine.” An agreement may also not be kept. But it fits in the hands of the people who make it, and you know exactly what your part in it is.
Now the difference comes into view.
In Virtology, the State of Certainty is believing without proof, being certain without a guarantee. Casarotto is careful to separate this from believing in yourself. Believing in yourself is having control. The State of Certainty is precisely the absence of control. It is not “I will manage.” It is “I do not need to know how and when.”
And the State of Certainty is not denial either. The mother who says “my son doesn’t use anymore, everything’s fine” while finding burnt foil in his room is not in a State of Certainty. She is forcing the forecast shut, deciding that the problem does not exist. The State of Certainty does the opposite: it sees everything, the relapse, the risk, the delay, and is still certain that change is possible. Denial switches the alarm off by erasing reality. The State of Certainty tolerates the alarm and keeps walking.
Nor is it religion. Many families find support in their tradition, and it sustains many mothers. But the State of Certainty is a competency that can be missing in someone who prays every day and present in someone with no religion at all. And it never replaces the doctor.
There is a second exchange, as important as the first: taking your peace out of his results.
The family that works on itself discovers, one day, that it can be at peace even on a day when he is not. Not because it stopped loving. Because it stopped placing in him the completeness it was its own task to build.
There is one more reason certainty is so hard, and Virtology calls it the unlived experience. We also suffer from what we have never lived. A family that has never seen their son go a year without using does not have that picture assembled inside. It is not only that they doubt. They cannot see it as a possibility, because they lack the record to compare against.
Casarotto insists on one point: the fact that something has never been lived does not mean it does not exist. That is why family support groups matter so much. The mother who arrives desperate and sits next to another mother, whose son has gone five years without using, sees for the first time the picture she did not have. What is seen becomes possible. If it was possible for that family, why not for yours?
In Virtology, no virtue works alone. For anxiety, uncertainty, control and waiting, the canonical combination is Humility, State of Certainty, Patience, Acceptance, Individuation, Gentleness and Gratitude. And the order follows the Pyramid of Virtues.
Humility comes first, paired with Selflessness, as on every path. Humility comes before the State of Certainty for a direct reason: control is pride. Someone who cannot admit not knowing cannot trust without knowing. A line from the affirmation of the State of Certainty says it plainly: “I let go of the arrogance of wanting to know it all.” Selflessness comes in because without it there is no Patience or Gentleness later on.
Then, from the Treatment Foundation, Acceptance, which goes together with the State of Certainty: there is no certainty without accepting what you do not yet understand. Individuation, so that your certainty is your own, not borrowed from the group, the family or his mood that day. And the State of Certainty, the virtue that gives this work its name. It forms a trio with Acceptance and Perseverance: Acceptance deals with what has already happened, the State of Certainty with what has not happened yet, and Perseverance sustains the path between the two.
Only then comes Development. Patience, to live through the time of recovery, which is not your time. It requires Humility and Selflessness first. Gentleness, which gives the body a calmer rhythm and needs a whole Foundation underneath it. And Gratitude, which notices what exists today without anyone asking: the other child who is well, yesterday’s good conversation, your own health. It requires Acceptance and Responsibility first.
For the days of waiting, Casarotto suggests rehearsing another line of the same affirmation: “I do not need to know how and when good things will happen, for I know they will happen.” It is not a forecast. It is a way of standing upright while the forecast stays open.
The goal is not to stop feeling the alarm. It is to stop obeying it when there is no danger, and to keep acting fast when there is.
None of this makes the waiting light. He will go on having good days and bad days, and you will go on feeling both. What changes is where your peace lives. While it lives in his results, every piece of news decides your day. When it comes back to you, the bad news still hurts, but it no longer brings the whole house down.
Casarotto offers something simple for the worst moments: all pain passes, tonight’s and this phase’s. When it tightens, breathe slowly and remember something good that has already happened. The body remembers that it has come through others. I wrote about the day after a relapse in A relapse does not erase the path, and about how to hold an agreement when the pressure builds in A boundary is not a punishment.
If the pain does not pass, if you cannot sleep, cannot eat or think about disappearing, that is a sign to seek help now, not to wait: see a doctor, and if you are in crisis, contact a local crisis line or emergency services. On his side, signs of overdose (difficulty waking, confusion, slow breathing, seizures) and talk of suicide call for local emergency services at once; violence calls for the police. Local addiction services can guide the family, and family support groups are usually free.
Continue with SNO and SNE: two systems at the root of neurosis, Pride is not what you think, or the 12-Step guided trail.
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Write to Isabella Becker · EMEA →Write to Ana Karolina Cejudo · Americas →Want the whole framework, for yourself or to help others as a professional? Start with the short course, or take the full training with Dr. Eduardo Casarotto.
The Institute’s Professional Formation with Dr. Eduardo Casarotto is the complete training: the entire framework, the clinical method and the certification to practice.
Explore the Professional Formation →Translated and edited from the Portuguese essay.