Good for you for learning the basics of addiction.
It may be difficult to view addiction as a disease. It may be hard to watch someone drink or use, and then say that the behavior is out of his or her control. Just don’t put alcohol or drugs into your body and you will not become addicted.
By learning the basics of addiction, you can see the bigger picture and even the smaller components that can lead to an addiction.
Have you experienced any pain that you did not know how to process? What did you do?
People handle pain in all different ways. Sometimes a person feels the need to escape from the pain for just a little while. “I will get drunk to feel nothing for one night.”
Addiction Is Progressive
Addiction is progressive. Handling residual pain by getting drunk does not help in the grieving process. Instead, alcohol, in this case, starts being a tool for coping. “I no longer feel the pain. This is working.”
From an outside perspective, it’s obviously not working. It’s like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound and expecting it to heal.
When we cannot deal with what has happened, and we do not have tools to properly heal, alcohol and drugs can seem to help.
Euphoric Rush
With drugs like heroin that are highly-addictive, the amazing euphoric rush tricks people into thinking that they have finally found a way to feel good in this life. What starts off as a temporary means of escape quickly turns into an addiction that has control of your life.
A substance will never appropriately fill a void, but it will fool you into thinking that it can.
As someone who cares about an addict, you have to know that no one wants to be an addict. Dealing with pain was the goal, but we need another strategy.
Addiction leaves us unable to stop using on our own.
Obsession Takes Over
We’ve become obsessed with using our substance of choice.
Even when bad things happen to us and our loved ones because of our use, we cannot stop.
We are forced to deny there is a problem, but it is our disease talking.
Relapse Is Common
We will most likely relapse even after we do successfully get clean.
We want to make changes and live a better life, we just really need your help, and professional help, to do it.
Blog Post By Dana Taylor, Admission and Business Development, Shadow Mountain Recovery
The post Learning The Basics Of Addiction appeared first on Extended Care Residential.