Addiction is not an easy disease to treat and manage. It is unlike many other diseases and conditions, to the point where there are entire debates and arguments held to discuss whether addiction should be labeled a disease at all.
Yet despite its dangers and widespread societal effects, it can be treated. But not alone.
There are only two options when struggling with addiction – get treatment, or don’t. And when you don’t, it’s likely that the addiction you’re fighting alone will send you to your grave.
1. It Will Kill You
While grim and stark, the reality is that roughly 21 million Americans use drugs compulsively, and the death toll caused by drug overdoses and drug-related accidents is rising. There’s a reason they call it the opioid crisis: drug abuse is killing more people than all cancers combined.
If you are addicted to drugs, and you refuse to seek treatment, then it’s highly likely that your addiction will kill you. And it is not a particularly quick process.
Stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine strain the heart and breathing. Depressants like Xanax and alcohol can poison your body, cause seizures, and respiratory failure.
And heroin can leave you paralyzed, or worse. These drugs may cause minimal damage in the short-term, but taken over years and in high dosages, they slowly but surely damage the brain and other organs, leading to a myriad of painful conditions and diseases before death.
It begins in the brain, where an influx of dopamine and other neurotransmitters introduces the mind to a whole new substance. In the most unfortunate of cases, it only takes a few times for the dependency to kick in, and for the curiosity to turn into a need for more. Kicking the habit to the curb is not as easy as switching donuts out for kale, and that is something most people struggle with as well. We are not well-equipped to fight against our own brain, and it’s worse when the addiction is as hard-wired as it can be with drugs like oxycodone, methamphetamine, and cocaine.
Many people occasionally use drugs and never struggle with addiction. Some people use lots of drugs and don’t develop a habit. But that does not mean that addiction is easy to overcome, or something that can be left to stew until the very last second. The moment you realize you are fighting against a real physical dependency to substances, you must make a choice between choosing a longer and healthier life spent with the people you love, or an arduous and tragic battle against your substance use.
2. It’s Hurting Others
If you have any friends or family, then your addiction is sure to take a toll on them. There is a difference between hurting people and alienating your own family – members of an understanding family will do their best to help a relative through a difficult time, even through an addiction – but there are limits to what a family can take, and there are limits and boundaries between friends and partners.
Losing your friends and family to addiction is, in many cases, the last straw. We need others to depend on, and others who can depend on us. Accountability towards other human beings and security in knowing that there are people around us who can offer help and support when we need it the most.
An addiction can push all that away and create a miserable pocket of loneliness – thus making the urge to drink and use more powerful, to drown out the growing magnitudes of emotional pain.
Again, therein lies the importance of making the right choice. If you choose to get help, you can get ahead of the damage and find the professional support you need to tackle and manage this disease. But if it goes on with you struggling to stay clean, hurting those around you without meaning to, unable to stop, then sobriety becomes exponentially more difficult to achieve and maintain. Not only would you have to become clean for your own sake, but you would have to face the pain and shame of your actions in total sobriety.
The only way out is through – because any other way, like relapsing, will only make matters worse. So why is addiction so hard to break? Because despite being terrible for a person’s long-term health and wellbeing, it does wonders in the immediate and short-term. A high can make all the fears and problems go away, for a while. But the problem is that afterward, they are a little bit bigger than they were before.
What you do while addicted is not automatically excusable or inadmissible, but it can be understandable, and if you want to make it through this process, you have to find a way to forgive yourself and come to terms with everything you have done before you ask others to forgive you and give you another chance as well.
3. Being Sober is So Much Better
One big dread for many people facing the challenge of recovery is that sobriety ends up being nothing but an endless bore. However, that could not be further from the truth. Where drug use clouds the mind and glazes the eyes, being sharp and clean gives you the opportunity to experience life the way it was meant to be experienced.
However, sobriety is not a magic cure. It is simply the act of not drinking. This can give the mind and body time to heal from months or years of drug use, but sobriety is just the possibility of a better future, rather than the guarantee of it.
In fact, the term dry drunk refers to people in recovery who, despite their sobriety, continue to show symptoms of moodiness and aggression sometimes seen in addiction. This is because initially, sobriety is boring. And potentially frightening.
But sobriety paves the way to experiencing true and real joy again, without substance use. It is the path to being with others, creating meaningful and long-lasing bonds, and enjoying being within your own skin again. It is a path towards mental and physical health, wellbeing, and contentment. It is never a guarantee, but it is a solid chance, and if you are ready to take it then you’re ready to make the most of it.