Drug addiction is a two-fold monster. It takes control of your body and your mind – but separately, and in different ways. Addiction can be both physical and emotional, and the repercussions of this disease mean that it is not just an enemy to combat, but it is a friend, someone who stands by your side and whispers sweet lies to you, comforting and distracting you from the ongoing struggles you continue to face because of your friendship.
Breaking the addiction is hard. It’s very hard. That much is blatantly obvious simply by the number of people who struggle with addiction.
However, no one ever said this would be easy. Recovery from addiction is hard, but it’s meant to be. An addiction is something that changes you, and it can go deep, repressing emotions and hindering your own personal growth (and cognitive function) as a negative coping mechanism. Tearing yourself away from that and into the total opposite is like forcing all that missed growth onto yourself, withstanding it, and coming out the other end a changed person.
Why Addiction Keeps Coming Back
When some people hear that addiction is a disease, it sparks in them an irrational anger – “addiction is a matter of responsibility”, they might say. “Addiction is a matter of weakness, and insecurity.” The country’s official stance is that addiction is a matter of mental illness and neurobiology – your brain chemistry changes immensely under the recurring influence of drugs, to the point where your concept of pleasure is skewed and distorted. Fixing that takes time, not just time for your body to detox every trace of a drug, but time for you to emotionally and neurologically recover and develop in another direction.
However, there is a kernel of truth to the ramblings of those who say that willpower lies at the center of addiction prevention: willpower lies at the center of recovery. You must genuinely want to get better to even start getting better.
That won’t guarantee that you won’t relapse, though. Relapse rates are high early on in recovery, especially for substances with an immensely high addictiveness, such as heroin and other opiates. The fact that many people relapse on these drugs doesn’t mean most people are spineless and incapable of controlling themselves – it’s a testament to the sheer power of drugs. It’s also proof that recovery is something you cannot give up on.
That much needs to be repeated – you cannot give up. In many cases, an addiction can resurface or constantly fight to get back into your life, and you need to show equal tenacity in your fight to stay clean, sober, and find a way to live without drugs.
A lot of that is about self-empowerment and finding ways to make yourself accountable towards others – but a lot of it is also about learning to forgive yourself for a relapse, forgive yourself for intrusive thinking, and learn to start being grateful of the progress you’ve made rather than being angry at your own missteps.
Long-Term Sobriety Requires Transformation
You can’t break an addiction without change, that much is obvious. But long-term sobriety – being both emotionally and physically sober and maintaining abstinence – that requires a transformation.
Addiction is part of a greater problem, sometimes either because of the addiction itself, or as a problem that existed before the addiction began. When someone struggling with addiction falls deeper and deeper into their habit, they’ll continuously find themselves in situations where their habit makes things worse. What might have started as a stigmatized pastime could turn into broken relationships, a lost career, the loss of friends and the destruction between an addict and their bonds towards family.
Before you know it, addiction can have destroyed your life. Some people hit rock bottom and bounce back, taking the revelation as an opportunity to get their life together. Others find that moment to change earlier. Yet in many cases, addicts begin to develop symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other mental conditions as part of a continued state of hopelessness.
On the other side of the coin, there are many who turn to addiction to cope with existing issues. Common factors for addiction include cases of depressive thinking, as well as childhood trauma and other examples of abuse. When certain mental scars become too painful to bear, an addiction can develop as part of an attempt to self-medicate the pain with certain substances – including actual painkillers. It’s not a given, but it’s common enough to make self-medication a troubling cause for long-term drug addiction.
Treating an addiction is then about more than just learning to live without a certain substance – it’s about completely altering the way you think, treating a person’s perspective on life and themselves, tackling the way they confront personal issues and helping them establish a more concrete, positive concept of the self. Someone struggling with addiction doesn’t just need a detox and month-long rehab, but full-blown therapy to help them understand their condition and take control of their life again.
You Don’t Need to Be Alone
Your recovery from addiction is a personal matter, and it’s a journey only you will be able to undertake. However, while it’s your responsibility to get better, and up to you to make the choices you need to make to fortify yourself against the dangers of an addiction in the future, it’s never ever wrong to ask for help.
It’s possible to tackle recovery alone, but so few manage to because it’s also very challenging. You need encouragement, and sometimes you need reassurance, either through the inspirational stories of others in recovery, or through the motivation that a dedicated support group can offer you.
You don’t just have to distance yourself from the people and places of your past when confronting addiction – you’ll have to find new people, new places, and come to terms with the old through reconciliation and earnest forgiveness. And yes, it’ll all be frustrating, with its share of setbacks and missteps. But the key to long-term sobriety isn’t just being sober – it’s continuously being sober, no matter what.