Addiction Archives - Page 5 of 8

How Does Someone Become Addicted?

Posted on January 31, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Addiction is multifaceted in both its appearance and ill effects. Some people become addicted quickly, while others go through months of drug use and quit at the drop of a hat. Some people exhibit terrifying and destructive behavior, while others can successfully go through great lengths to hide their addiction, suffering underneath the surface.

There is a misconception that only certain “types of people” become addicted. It is true that addiction is more likely in times of distress, or as a result of escalating self-medication – but it is also true that anyone can fall prey to addiction. Society’s poorest addicts are every bit as human and personable as upper and middle-class families struggling with alcoholism, across all ages.

Drugs affect the human brain in the same way every time, but what that effect has on individual people is an entirely different matter. Understanding how addiction works, how individuals deal with it, and how drugs affect the human body can go a long way towards learning the how’s and why’s of addicted behavior, and making progress in your own recovery.

Drugs And The Human Body

Have you ever had a craving for a certain food? A certain activity? Or even a certain person? A lot of our needs and wants are driven by a predisposed code most humans have – we’re pleasure seekers in one form or another, and the things that give us pleasure (sex, chocolate, fatty food) have become human favorites due to thousands of years spent selectively surviving the Earth’s harsh environments.

We’re more complex than just our base instincts – but they’re there nonetheless, and to satisfy them can feel really good. This is all due to a part of the brain known as the pleasure center. When we do certain things or ingest certain substances, our pleasure center releases dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter. Drugs overstimulate the pleasure center by manipulating our neurons and changing the way dopamine is released, either by releasing more of it than usual or by preventing our cells from properly disposing of it, thus keeping it in our synapses for longer.

As this happens, our body and brain begin to form an addiction to whatever is releasing this unnatural amount of euphoria. Too much of a good thing is no good –and in the case of substance abuse, addictive substances cause a physical reaction as a result of consistent and continuous usage.

Once addiction kicks in and the cravings start, your mind begins to interpret them as needs, more than just wants. Addictive behavior – even the destructive and risky kind – stems from a combination of a corrupted pleasure center, and a decline in cognition and reasoning. Essentially, it becomes harder to keep a cool head and be reasonable about your behavior, and continuous use often leads to impulsive behavior, and worsening decision making as you become addicted.

Tolerance is another aspect of addiction that makes quitting all the more difficult. As addiction continues, the body begins to form a resistance to the effectiveness of a drug, reducing its effects. For example, it may take more alcohol to get drunk, or it may take more cocaine to achieve the same high. This is the body’s cells defending itself from a barrage of unnatural brain functions – but the result simply spurs an addict on to use more drugs in order to achieve the same effect. While the body can protect itself against a high, it cannot protect itself against the lethal side effects of an overdose.

When trying to quit after tolerance kicks in, it is not unusual for a person to go into withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms can range from discomfort and irritability to violent sickness, and even death if approached too drastically, depending on the drug. These occur because the body has gotten used to the drug intake, and depends on it for certain brain functions. Cutting off your own supply requires readjustment, the kind that is best done under medical supervision.

When Does Someone Become Addicted?

Addiction begins in the brain, but it is difficult to feasibly track someone’s addiction through constant brain scans – so the most reliable source for when someone can become addicted is the person themselves. For someone to be an addict, they have to admit to themselves that they are one, or exhibit enough symptoms so that denying it would be completely illogical.

A total inability to stop oneself from using – that is what makes someone become addicted. If a person can’t stop themselves despite promises or plans to do so, and despite negative consequences that would typically discourage behavior, then they’re addicted. If a person loses their job, destroys a relationship, or even commits a crime to satisfy their addiction, then it is clear that they have a serious problem.

Addiction And Mental Health

Addiction and mental health are intertwined for several reasons, the most glaring one being the fact that addiction is a disease of the brain above all else. While different kinds of addiction can lead to organ failure and cancer, the brain is what is first affected and causes the addiction to begin with. The combination of addiction and the destructive behavior it can help cause often triggers mental health issues that may have been under control in the past, or were lingering underneath a stable surface.

On the other hand, existing mental health conditions can be made worse when you become addicted, while often playing a part in causing addiction (trauma, anxiety and depression are all wrought with stigma, and are conditions that are prone to self-medication gone awry).

The link between addiction and mental health issues must never be forgotten, especially because both are affected by a public perception of healthy vs. unhealthy.

Addiction, just like other conditions, does not reduce a person to the stereotype of their affliction, and it is important to treat every individual as an individual, and not “another junkie” or “another kook”. These generalizations often drive people to hide their problems, deny dangerous symptoms or lie in order to avoid unjust criticism and emotional harm.

Putting Addiction Behind You

It happens over time, and it takes time to heal and recover from. When you become addicted it can cause serious damage over the course of just a few months, but regardless of how long the disease has been ongoing, it can be put behind you with the right treatment and support.

Drug addiction treatment has gotten better than ever, with programs designed to accommodate any individual’s unique therapeutic needs and considerations. Treatment facilities have long recognized that there is no proper one-size-fits-all solution for addiction, and the result is a comprehensive, custom process.

As such, there’s also no telling how long it’ll take you to get over this period in your life – but as long as you think you can, you will.

How Do Drugs Affect You Mentally?

Posted on January 25, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Hallucinogens, painkillers, depressants, stimulants. Illegal and legal drugs alike come in all shapes and sizes, in liquid, gas and solid forms, and can be found in a cabinet at a doctor’s office, the commercial refrigerators of a 7-Eleven, or in the jacket pocket of a shady businessman. In every person’s life, drugs affect you or play a part in some chapter, existing between the lines.

Drugs have an impact not only on individuals and society, but on the economy, amounting to billions of dollars lost in productivity, absenteeism, and death. Drugs affect men, women, and children from all walks of life. And there is no clear answer on how to deal with the problem.

However, on an individual level, there’s a lot that can be done about how drugs affect you. Treatments and therapies exist to help people turn their lives around and start fighting addiction. The physical and mental effects of drug use can be mitigated, and even partially reversed. Over years, diligence and support can turn a tragedy into a story of personal triumph – and all it takes to begin with is the will to take a brave first step into a different kind of living.

But to really fight drugs on an even playing field, you have to understand what they do and how drugs affect you. It’s no secret that drugs affect the mind, but understanding how can give you the comfort and power you need to do something about it, and motivate you to keep moving forward even when times are tough.

Substance Use And The Brain

In essence, all drugs have a distinct negative impact on the brain, and achieve this in much the same way. While drugs can be ingested, inhaled, injected, and otherwise consumed, they all eventually make their way into the bloodstream through one method or another. It’s there that drugs cross the blood-brain barrier – an incredibly selective membrane that usually protects the fluid in the brain and CNS from most things in the bloodstream – and begin to affect the brain.

When drugs affect you they must cross the blood-brain barrier to actually do anything. And that is what makes them dangerous. Drugs mimic the body’s own pre-existing neurotransmitters, and attach themselves to neurons, sending certain signals throughout the brain. For example: cocaine is an incredibly popular drug because it causes an elevated state of happiness, excitement, and motivation.

It does this by binding to transporters in the neurons that are responsible for transmitting dopamine from one cell to the next. Dopamine accumulates in your synapses, prolonging its effects in the pleasure center of the brain.

This interaction with the brain is not what makes cocaine physically dangerous – however, it is what makes cocaine so addictive. This same principle goes for all other cases where drugs affect you, but in different ways. Alcohol and benzodiazepines, for example, are depressants. They are opposite to a stimulant like cocaine, but still addictive.

Alcohol works on three levels, or three separate neurotransmitters, throughout different parts of the brain. It increases the effects of GABA (causing slurred speech and lack of coordination), inhibits glutamate (causing a slowdown in movement and thinking), and increases dopamine release (causing pleasure). By spreading throughout the brain, alcohol will affect your balance, your breathing, your senses, and even your sexual performance.

Yet only one of these effects contributes to the addictive properties of the drug: its effects on the pleasure center of the brain.

Stimulants can excite your body and heighten your senses, depressants can slow you down and make you sluggish, and painkillers like morphine can greatly reduce or eliminate pain signals – but all of these drugs affect your pleasure center in the same way, increasing the release or retention of dopamine in your cells, and causing feelings of pleasure, joy, and euphoria.

These positive emotions mask the darker side effects of each and every drug – namely, their deleterious effects on both mental and physical health, and the nature of addiction as self-destructive behavior.

Stimulants can stop your heart and damage your brain when the drugs affect you. Alcohol greatly damages the liver and kidneys, and leads to cancer. Opioids like morphine and heroin cause respiratory depression, and death through oxygen deprivation. And because of the interaction between these drugs and the pleasure center of the brain, all drug use eventually leads to addiction, unless it stops beforehand.

How Drugs Affect You & Your Thinking

Drug use not only causes feelings of joy, but can damage your mental health and put you on the path of an addictive loop. For example: excessive use of drugs affect you and will corrupt the pleasure center and make most other activities meaningless or unenjoyable. Old habits fall away, and even the most basic wants can slip away in favor of drugs. The biggest difficulty for many who choose to give up addiction is finding something else to make them happy, because continuous drug use makes the brain forget what normal pleasures feel like.

Most drugs affect you and your thinking in other ways, namely dampening your cognitive abilities and cutting into your memory. Frequent black-outs from excessive drug use will also affect your ability to recall even the most basic and recent memories, and prolonged usage leads to both long-term brain damage and higher chances of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and personality disorders like paranoia. If a person has a genetic predisposition towards certain mental health issues, addiction may drive these disorders into the forefront.

Addiction Needs To Be Fought

Addiction exercises a powerful hold over a person’s mind, because of how drugs affect you and the strain on the brain. The pleasure center is highly involved with concepts like will, motivation, and reason – we work hard to satisfy our emotional and physical needs, and addiction overwrites many of those needs with a new protocol.

Driving that out, denying it and building a whole new life around sobriety does not happen overnight, or even just in a matter of a few weeks. It takes months and years, and the journey is harder for some than it is for others. However, while addiction never fully goes away – and resisting any urge to use again is something former addicts have to live with – it does get easier with time. And in time, even the worst days of the addiction can become just another detail in a long life lived well.

Why Are More People Than Ever Getting Addicted To Prescription Drugs?

Posted on January 16, 2018 by JohnAdmin

America’s war on opioids has a long history, tracing back to the beginnings of addiction as a medical definition, and our first instance of fighting a “war on drugs”. To understand where things might have gone wrong, and what factors play into why people getting addicted to prescription drugs grew so prevalent, it’s important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

The Roots Of America’s Opioid Problem

Cutting back to a day and age when chronic pain became the main focus for pharmaceutical companies and modern Western medicine, drug companies began developing new pain medication that was less addictive and less powerful than morphine, but could help patients deal with their pain and reduce their complaints.

Research has since shown that opioids are either slightly or not effective at all for combating pain in the long-term, but at the time, it seemed like the best thing to promote. Production of prescription opioids and subsequent prescription of opioids shot through the roof, creating two issues. On one hand, it led to a large number of chronic pain patients getting addicted to prescription drugs. This is by far a minority, but the over prescription also led to an influx of unused prescription painkillers in households everywhere. Some people sold their medication – other pills landed in the hands of friends and family, creating new addicts here and there.

We are still facing the issues brought about by those addicted to prescription drugs today – and as both prescription drugs and heroin continue to be a problem, the overdose statistics rise.

How Strict Regulations Led To Heroin

Prescription drug use has actually dropped in recent years, contrary to popular belief – while it is true that a lack of understanding and easy profits has led to an excessive sale and use of prescription medication in the past few decades, the government has done a lot to curb this. But on the other hand, all this did was create a large population of those addicted to prescription drugs, and then tear away their only somewhat reputable source of opioids.

While pharmaceutical companies ultimately care mostly about their bottom line, they produced a clean product. After regulations were implemented without a proper protocol in place to help all the addicts seek treatment and get better, they turned to more dangerous alternatives – including heroin, wherever it could be found, in whatever form.

Today, the explosion in heroin usage has led to the creation of an influx of heroin from abroad and an increase in local production, leading to a new generation of heroin users who never had to transition into the drug from being addicted to prescription drugs.

Stronger Threats From Abroad

With a growth in demand, the vacuum left by tighter prescription drug regulations and a lack of local heroin production to keep up has led to the rising popularity of certain synthetic opioids – including massively dangerous drugs such as fentanyl and carfentanil.

Synthetic drug production is nothing new, especially today. Homegrown designer drugs are hitting the market faster than the law can keep up with them, and the threat is one that is still in the process of being tackled by policymakers.

Meanwhile, those formerly addicted to prescription drugs who turned to heroin, and people who started out as heroin addicts are increasingly going to run into the risk of a fatal overdose from a bad batch, or an excess of fentanyl. Many suppliers cut their heroin with fillers to reduce the cost, then mix in fentanyl to increase potency, often proving fatal to customers.

How Opioids Kill

Opioids trigger an analgesic effect, while releasing neurotransmitters that cause an enormous swell of pleasure and happiness. However, this also makes them incredibly addictive. The major side effect to this is that, if taken excessively, opioids will slow a person’s breathing to the point that they completely cease to breathe, and choke.

Aside from the fatal nature of an overdose, constant misuse of opioids can drastically alter the body and leave lasting effects, including liver damage, brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen, and in the case of a survived overdose, partial or full paralysis. When left without oxygen for an extended period of time, the body begins to shut down certain functions in order to preserve vital organs – including cutting off major muscles and nerves.

Most prescription pills abused today are opioids, but thousands of Americans are also struggling with stimulants such as amphetamine (Adderall) and anti-anxiety drugs (Valium, Xanax, etc.).

Tackling The Problem At Home: Addicted To Prescription Drugs

It has rather succinctly been explained that the key behind America’s issue with being addicted to prescription drugs – and drugs in general – is that “it’s much easier to get high than it is to get help”. That’s not an attack on the moral character of anyone who has ever used drugs, but a condemnation of the state of our current healthcare, and inability for most Americans to seek help when it’s needed, both out of stigma and out of a lack of finances.

On one hand, getting treated for addiction isn’t cheap, especially when the first option that comes to mind for some is either rehab or attending a twelve-step program. On the other hand, many who can seek treatment do not, either because they do not recognize their problem, or because they’re convinced that they can solve the issue before it becomes apparent, thus saving them the trouble and stigma that comes with admitting to being addicted to prescription drugs.

When someone is addicted, everything they do is second-guessed. For a misguided few, they go from being a human being, to a caricature. Many others simply struggle to reconcile the person they once knew with the disease. All of this is due to a flawed understanding of addiction – and that flawed understanding contributed to the rise of prescription drug addiction in America, alongside a failing healthcare system, and the consequences of a post-recession economy at a time rife with optimization, digitalization, and the economic crisis.

That does not mean all hope is somehow lost. There are things we can all do, as long as we stand united in doing the best we can for our loved ones. By protecting our friends and family, we can all make a difference throughout the nation – and it starts with proper education.

Read up on addiction, and all the latest material on the subject. Reach out to the people you know who are struggling with addiction, and speak to them from a place of compassion, rather than judgment.

Find out what behavior you might have been engaging in that could be enabling someone. See what you can do locally to raise awareness on the issue of opioid abuse, and encourage families to put aside their beliefs or misconceptions, and embrace their sons and daughters and help them fight addiction. It’s a long road for every single person struggling with addiction, but through treatment, support and time, everyone can heal.

Why It’s So Easy To Transition From “Recreational Use” To Addiction

Posted on December 26, 2017December 26, 2017 by JohnAdmin

It’s hard to draw the line between drug use, and drug addiction. There is no such thing as a one-hit addiction – addiction happens over repeated usage. And while using a drug can prime your brain for more of its usage, the cycle of addiction does not begin until a behavior has already been established, which takes time. However, that time may be over faster than you might think, and so called “recreational use” can quickly turn into addiction. It’s important to make a distinction between the two, and understand that no one is immune from addiction just because they feel like they’re in control over their usage. A drug is a drug, and it’s always dangerous.

The Difference Between Recreational Use And Addiction

Addiction and recreational use are differentiated by the ability to stop at any time. Someone who is addicted can’t stop without a great amount of effort and, often, some help. Someone who attempting to practice recreational use, on the other hand, could be asked to stop and probably would be able to without much of an issue.

There would be signs of withdrawal, but they would be minor, and the difficulty of stopping wouldn’t be that of addiction, which involves intense cravings and irritability.

Drug addiction and recreational use can also be differentiated by the effect they have on a person’s lifestyle and personality. For example: someone who uses a drug recreationally at first may not have a problem with incorporating it into their life. However, addiction often implies that the damage being caused by a person’s drug use is becoming increasingly unavoidable, and more troubling. Someone struggling with addiction might burn through their relationships, lose their job and even end up in the emergency room more than once because of their habit.

Someone practicing recreational use might have the ability to see when their usage is beginning to be a problem, and curb it to avoid getting caught, or to lessen the effect it has on their life, though that is never guaranteed to be the case.

The Key to Preventing Addiction

Substance addiction can only be prevented in one way: by not using drugs. Recreational use is only one step on the path to addiction, and the only way to keep that from happening is to stop using altogether. And if you find that you can’t, then you may already be on the path to a long and tough addiction.

We have all heard about how alcohol can be used “in moderation”. While alcohol is a drug, it is different from other more dangerous and potent substances, such as prescription medication, illicit substances like heroin, or even potentially deadly drugs like fentanyl.

Alcohol can be addictive, and thousands of Americans struggle with alcoholism every day. To them, the only answer towards long-term sobriety is to never have a drop, ever again. But for the millions of other Americans who do drink responsibly, the idea that addiction can only be prevented through abstinence seems contradictory.

Coffee is a drug. Caffeine is psychoactive, and going from heavy caffeine use to a caffeine intake of zero can lead to intense drowsiness, headaches and other withdrawal issues for several days. However, you can “recreationally” drink coffee.

The key is understanding the difference in addictiveness across the spectrum of psychoactive substances, so you know what to stay away from at all costs, and what to be aware of. Caffeine isn’t inherently dangerous in coffee and tea, but drinking copious amounts of coffee with milk and sugar can lead to unnecessary calories in your day, and interfere with your sleeping cycle. Processed caffeine sources, like energy drinks, can even affect your heart and worsen existing cardiac conditions – and in very rare cases, contribute to your death.

A drug like fentanyl requires little more than a few specks inhaled through the air to cause serious damage, and send you to the medical room. Crack cocaine and methamphetamine are incredibly addictive, and can cause brain damage. Also prescription drugs like anti-depressants can kill you. There is no such thing as “recreational use” when it comes to these kinds of substances.

Why Teens Use Drugs More Often

There is a reasonable explanation as to why teenagers are more susceptible to recreational use of drugs than adults, and why they tend to struggle with addiction for years. On one hand, teenagers are going through tough times. They’re learning to deal with their emotions, their bodies, their peers. It’s frustrating, and difficult.

While children generally seek approval, and nurturing from their parents, teenagers often revolt from their parents influence to gain independence. Sometimes, their behavior can be downright nonsensical, outside of the point of view of “rebellion”.

Beyond that, teenagers struggle to understand long-term risk. They are more likely to engage in risky behavior to impress their peers, often ignoring the potential dangers involved in that behavior. Sometimes, impressing your friends might mean taking something. Many teenagers aren’t secure enough to pass up on a challenge that might solidify their standing among peers.

Of course, teenagers are not the only people using drugs, or getting addicted. But they are more susceptible to it, for these factors and others.

Why Addiction Is So Hard To Break

The defining difference between addiction and recreational use is the inability to stop. But why is addiction so hard to break? That’s a question many people have, and it does not have an easy answer.

There are several reasons, some tied to a person’s brain, others tied to their emotions and psychological state. Sometimes, people have a tough time breaking from an addiction because of the protection afforded by being high. In other cases, their brain has rewired itself to crave the substance, and they must deal with thinking about it day and night.

Breaking an addiction always takes a lot of time. And it’s always up to you to ultimately dedicate yourself to your own recovery long enough to avoid a relapse. But it’s much easier to fight this fight with others helping you along the way, keeping you motivated during the worst of times, and encouraging you to keep improving and working on yourself during the best of times. Recovery can last a life time – but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend it well, enjoying yourself and making beautiful memories along the way.

How to Talk About Addiction To Your Loved Ones

Posted on December 19, 2017 by JohnAdmin

It’s incredibly difficult to talk about addiction. Not only is it an issue that permeates you to the point where your own will becomes difficult to follow, but it can also be a tremendous source of strife in families, tearing them apart.

Finding a way through an addiction with your relationships intact takes a massive amount of dedication, understanding, love, and work – on everyone’s part. Regardless of whether you’re struggling with addiction and need the help, or if your loved one is struggling and needs your help, you’re going to have to learn to talk about addiction with one another and fight this fight together, keeping in mind that it will be very difficult at times.

If You’re Struggling With Addiction

It takes a lot of strength to realize that you have a problem. Overcoming denial is often the first step to truly making a difference in your situation, although where to go from here largely depends on your means, and the problem at hand. Sometimes, addiction warrants medical attention, medication, and strict therapy. At other times, it might just be enough to check into a treatment center for a regular outpatient program.

For when things are very serious, consider sober living in your talk about addiction. These are programs that exist as communities, designed to hold together and teach one another to live in sobriety, in their own way. Sober living communities don’t hold one single way of life to be true – they accept that everyone must walk their own path of recovery, utilize different treatments, tackle different problems, and work within different limitations.

No one can dictate your life to you. It’s on you to decide where to go – but you can seek help, guidance, and knowledge, and there are no better places for these things than in a sober living community.

If You Think They Have A Problem

If your loved one is the person who seems to be struggling with an addiction, then it’s important to distinguish between them accepting this struggle, or them denying it. Both have very different paths, and require a very different approach to talk about addiction.

An intervention to talk about addiction may be in order if your loved one is in denial. Get the family together, contact a professional, and create an opportunity for the intervention to take place. Be prepared, and be pragmatic. This isn’t a bait for a fight, but a plea to open their eyes to the reality – that they’re hurting those they love, and that they need help.

Offering Help & Talk About Addiction

If you know your loved one has a problem and they know it too, then something as simple as standing by them, and giving them your unconditional love and support can mean a great deal. You don’t have to pledge to anything specific, or even take charge in “fixing” them. Recovery is very much an individual path, but it relies massively on the help of others. But you can’t be the captain to their journey. Be there for support and to talk about addiction, not more.

How To Support Your Loved One

The first thing you should do is inform yourself. There are things you should and shouldn’t say, and things you should know. Some things are blatantly obvious: you shouldn’t shame an addict when you talk about addiction, because they often carry more than enough self-guilt and shame, and adding onto it will do nothing but make things worse. You also shouldn’t blatantly insult them – it won’t “anger” them into betterment, but will just destroy your relationship. Here are a few other examples:

“It’s not a problem.”

It is a problem. Addiction is a huge problem, and there should never be any qualms about it. This is a fight, one that you are fighting together as a family. Don’t accept the misery as part of your lives – work together to create a better life, and even when things are looking down and the thought of giving up is tempting, you must be the rock that helps your loved one work their way through it all, and get better despite it all.

Don’t undermine them by minimizing the issue when you talk about addiction.

“You’re not trying hard enough.”

You cannot truly tell how hard someone is trying, unless you are in their shoes. This goes for addiction, as well as any other mental health issue. Undermining their efforts by telling them they’re not “enough” in any shape or form when you talk about addiction simply pushes them away from you, and deeper down a hole of self-doubt.

If you don’t like that fact, then you need to consider whether this is about you or them. Your opinions of how things should be to them are irrelevant, when they’re the ones struggling with the condition.

Instead of telling your loved one that they aren’t doing enough to get better, support them in what they’ve already taken on. If you have successfully gotten help and entered treatment, it’s just a matter of getting through each day, a day at a time. There is no magic switch, no confetti and fireworks when the addiction is beaten. It’s a long road, and you must create your own happy little celebrations.

“Aren’t we important to you?”

There is no greater accusation that this. Someone who has gone out of their way to get help most definitely cares about you – otherwise, they would see no reason to summon every ounce of their willpower and strength to take a step against what has become their very instinct, need and want. Addiction is powerful, especially if it’s something as addictive as heroin or alcohol. Breaking from these substances isn’t just done on a whim – it takes incredible determination, and many years.

If your loved one is still fighting, even after a relapse or two, then that is a testament to their love for you – and their willingness to go through the pain again and again just to get to those blissful, sober days spent loving one another and being happy.

The Most Important Bit

Addiction treatment and recovery takes as long as it takes. There are no set timelines. No strict deadline for total sobriety. No statistics through which you could establish a rough outline for when you’ll have your “normal” loved one back. Life will never be the same, and it can take years for the addiction to finally take a backseat once and for all.

But that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. Now can be the moment for you to reinvigorate and reinvent your relationship, and take the time to better yourselves. Why should only one of you go into recovery and treatment? Become better people together, by undertaking a journey of your own, and embracing this change as a positive one. No matter how terrible things get, there is one thing we never lose – our ability to choose how to feel about our circumstances, and our ability to draw strength from one another to survive any ordeal.

What Makes Addiction Difficult to Address?

Posted on December 13, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Drug addiction has always been an issue – since we’ve discovered the wondrous effects of psychedelics, alcohol and natural stimulants, civilizations have at one point or another profited off drugs or struggled with their effects of intoxication and addiction. From opium to cocaine to mushrooms, history is littered with instances where people, great and small alike, have dabbled with and succumbed to the effects of extreme drug use. So why is addiction difficult to address? And why – to this day – do we struggle so immensely with addressing it on both an individual level and as a society at large?

There is no easy answer to solving the drug problem. We can’t just decriminalize or legalize it all, or clamp down even further and introduce even more pain and suffering into the system. We can’t force treatment upon everyone with the slightest symptom. There are many things we can’t do, and plenty of things we shouldn’t do. That only leaves what we should do: help each other, at the very least, on an individual level. And better understand what makes addiction difficult to deal with.

What Makes Addiction Difficult

What makes addiction difficult because it is rooted to our very concept of desire. When you want a drug so bad it’s like struggling to find water after days out in the Sahara, then you know that it’s more than just a little thing, or a passing phase.

A substance wormed its way into your brain, stole the thing that drives you to do anything, and subverted it to drive you to snort, drink, shoot or smoke something that has nothing to do with your emotional or physical wellbeing. Humans are complex, and the human brain is a very special piece of biology; but our behavior can often be predicted. When it comes right down to it, there’s a lot of hardwiring inside us that drives us to do certain things.

For example: the obesity epidemic isn’t just a matter of sedentary lifestyles, it’s the fact that companies have become better and better at creating high-calorie, low-volume foods that appeal to our intrinsic love for fat, sugar and salt. It gets hard to stay away from that once you’re hooked on it, and the effect is rapid weight gain.

Addiction is worse than that. Drugs like cocaine, alcohol, and even prescription painkillers enter the brain and interact with certain receptors in our cells, taking over the effects of other natural compounds and inducing unnatural states of happiness, mellowness, and euphoria. This doesn’t sound bad at all – except for the fact that it makes addiction difficult because:

Most drugs are poison, either in the long-term, or due to a risk of overdose.
Because of their effects on the brain, drugs force the brain to resist their effects, which leads to taking more drugs and rapidly increasing their dangerous side-effects.
When the access to a drug runs out, you crave it more and more, until it’s all you can think about, greatly impeding you from doing anything else with your life.

Drugs don’t help you function, or improve your life, or help you deal with problems. They cause more problems, destroy your body and hijack your desires. Naturally, that makes them extremely difficult to address on an individual level. Sadly, it doesn’t stop there.

The Struggle to Stay Clean

Addiction isn’t a purely physical struggle. While much of it is rooted in neurochemistry, there’s more to the human being than just chemicals. Stimuli and how our brain receives and responds to such signals is one thing, but our experiences, thoughts, hopes and dreams contextualize these instincts and give them shape, form, action. Our behavior isn’t a perfectly logical flowchart, but an erratic roadmap through a topographically impossible piece of geography – and the emotional aspect of addiction plays on that map.

When addiction becomes acknowledged, grief and guilt are major and common emotions. When you recognize that you’re out of control and are verging on self-destruction, it’s hard not to be filled with remorse, self-loathing and anger. But these aren’t constructive feelings, nor will they help – instead, they further break a person down, destroying their self-esteem and reducing the chance of a major turn-around.

What people really need when they realize they have a problem is hope. They need hope that they can get better, and the opportunity to do so and break through what makes addiction difficult to sobriety.

But what makes addiction difficult makes this tough. When you do break through the initial withdrawal period and make it to early recovery, you’re hit with waves of reality. Not only are the cravings difficult to deal with, but depending on how long you’re been addicted, sobriety can be a real struggle.

Over the course of an addiction, people tend to use their habit to make themselves feel better, even when the addiction is the source of the pain (a job lost, a relationship broken, etc.). With that coping mechanism gone, dealing with life in a whole new way requires new ways to manage stress, be constructive, and even be positive. Many people struggle with this, and some relapse.

Relapses Can Be Discouraging

Relapses are not total failures. A total failure would be giving up on the idea of recovery completely, and simply waiting for this ride to run its course. But even after a relapse, you have every chance to get back into your treatment plan and try again.

No one wants to stay addicted. Saying “it’s okay” to a relapse won’t make someone feel that it’s great and fine to stick to their habit. It simply tells them that this isn’t the end, and they shouldn’t give up. Of course, without someone helping them realize this, many people struggle to stay optimistic after a relapse.

Loneliness & Addiction

Perhaps the biggest factor in the continuation of an addiction is the lack of connection to other people. A rudimentary experiment not too long ago showed that, despite its clearly addictive properties to rats, many rats would voluntarily quit using cocaine if provided with actual social and physical stimulation instead of a confined and solitary existence.

In other words, you’re more likely to struggle with addiction if you don’t have a life to live. And if you’re fresh off drugs and living sober, then learning to love life is critical to staying healthy.

These are just a few of the reasons why addiction is hard to address as an individual. Poverty, a lack of support, a harsh and broken prison system, the difficulties in finding quality treatment and the stigma attached to addiction treatment all help contribute to the issue both on an individual level and a societal one.

We may never completely eradicate addiction – and we won’t be able to drastically tackle it unless we fix many other issues in society first. It’s a long road ahead, but the least we can do is help each other out as individuals, and support one another in sobriety.

How Does Recreational Use Turn Into Addiction?

Posted on October 31, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Drugs are highly addictive. There is no sense in arguing against that. The science supports it, and there are countless cases and anecdotes of how continuous drug use led to the destruction (and, too often, end) of someone’s life, even in cases of recreational use.

However, there is a line between being addicted to drugs, and using drugs. Recreational use can turn into an addiction, but one is not the other. Knowing the difference, and understanding how some people get hooked after the first few tries while others can continue using a drug for months before eventually quitting without major consequences requires understanding just how addiction occurs, and why it’s never an easy thing to determine.

The Difference Between Recreational Use And Addiction

Some drugs are far more addictive than others. Coffee is one of the world’s most-consumed beverages, but caffeine overdose through coffee is nearly unheard of. Neither does coffee possess serious withdrawal symptoms and legitimate coffee addictions, while possible, are not very common. On the other hand, addictions to stimulants like cocaine are very much a real problem in America, and the US opioid crisis alone has claimed thousands of lives annually over the past few years.

That does not mean that everyone with an Adderall prescription, a bottle of OxyContin, or even a cocaine habit is an addict. The differences between recreational use, medical use, and addiction are vast.

Medical use obviously implies the need for a drug to combat a disease or disorder. Doctors are careful to prescribe drugs in such a way that they achieve the necessary effect to combat certain symptoms without ever reaching a lethal dose. A mark of addiction is increasing a drug’s dosage to dangerous levels to combat rising levels of drug tolerance.

Recreational use implies using the drug recreationally, without medical need – but without the symptoms of addiction. Someone who uses cocaine recreationally may not crave it nearly as much as someone struggling with an actual addiction. Additionally, they are still able to cut themselves off from the drug without emotional or physical pain.

Addiction implies an inability to stop. Someone facing addiction may not know until they try to cut themselves off and then find themselves in a loop of relapses and withdrawals. Unlike other types of usage, people with an addiction have a different brain response to the drugs they’re addicted to.

Someone who has a drug for recreational use will feel its effects, and may even develop a tolerance, but they can regulate their drug use or even stop if it becomes unfeasible. With addiction, all logic or reason goes out the window in the face of the insatiable craving to use.

The thing about addictive drugs, however, is that continuous use will either lead to addiction or abstinence regardless of if it starts as recreational use or not. And that is a big danger.

Are Recreational Drugs Safe?

Some drugs are inherently dangerous and pose major health risks. Illicit drugs from unregulated, unknown sources are often cut with many unidentified substances, to lower the cost of production. As a result, these drugs can be incredibly dangerous even for recreational use. Heroin with added fentanyl can easily cause an overdose, while additives used to cut cocaine can often cause major health problems and even death. It’s not uncommon to find cocaine mixed with laundry detergent, laxatives, anesthetics, corn starch, vitamin powder or baby formula.

Even the purest of illicit drugs can never be considered “safe”. Recreational use of any druh shouldn’t be encouraged, and any drug should be treated with extreme caution. While addiction does not occur instantaneously, every road to addiction begins with one hit.

Knowing When You’re Addicted

The transition from recreational use to addiction is one that most people miss. It is the kind of thing you typically don’t really notice it until it’s too late.

Addiction can be defined in several ways. While it always refers to an inability to stop, the reason is typically different from case to case. In most cases, physical dependency plays a significant role in the addiction of a person: this is when their drug use has developed into a physical habit for their body, to the point where their cravings and withdrawal symptoms make it incredibly difficult to stop.

Emotional dependency is another factor that affects just how addicted a person is. This is when a drug becomes a crutch for someone to deal with stress and other emotional issues in their life. Some people use drugs to medicate themselves and eliminate the pain of a traumatic experience – that can develop into an unwillingness or inability to let go of drugs, to avoid going through a world of psychological pain.

When these transitions happen, the relationship between the body and the drug transforms. While tolerance is inevitable over time, physical dependence develops in some people much faster than it does in others. When it does, the body has trouble performing basic neurochemical functions without the presence of a certain drug in its system. This is where the most severe withdrawal symptoms come from.

Combatting addiction at this level can’t be done without a significant amount of medical and emotional help. Struggling against your own mind and body is extremely difficult – but it isn’t impossible. Through rehab, Houston sober living and support groups, every addiction patient can make their way back towards a normal life.

Is It Possible To Tackle Multiple Addictions At Once?

Posted on September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Addiction is a tough nut to crack – there are an estimated 25 million people in the US struggling with addiction in some shape or form, and while our ability to treat multiple addictions has massively improved, we are still far away from making it a painless process to follow and stick to. It gets especially tough when you run into cases of people who have multiple addictions, creating a need for better recovery practices.

There is more to beating addiction than going to rehab and saying sorry to a few people – it’s a personal and reflective journey through the things you’ve done in life, and it’s an opportunity to change yourself. However, that change takes time, dedication, and will often be beset with issues and speed bumps.

It stands to reason that when someone must fight multiple addictions at once, then their struggle will be exponentially harder as they go through quitting and recovering from the effects of each substance. But the reality is a little bit different.

The Reality Of The “Drug Of Choice”

It is not uncommon to be addicted to two or more things. Some people struggle with alcohol and other drugs. Some people couple an eating disorder with their substance abuse. Some people struggle with sexual addiction, as well as compulsive gambling. Some people self-medicate and are addicted to video gaming. However, it often isn’t until people begin trying to treat one thing that they discover the potency and reality of their other “thing(s)”.

The way multiple addictions can creep up into your life is not necessarily as a set of substances, but as a set of symptoms exhibited through one or more substances. Your drug or drugs of choice do not necessarily reflect why you became susceptible to multiple addictions in the first place, and getting hooked on one kind of drug does not make you immune or disinterested in other narcotics or influential substances.

The substance you are addicted to greatly affects the physical treatment plan necessary to help detox you, ensure a safe withdrawal period, and help undo the damage possibly dealt by your multiple addictions – but at the end of the day, addressing the mental consequences (and potential causes) of an addiction will always require a similar path, one determined not by what you take but by why you take it.

Co-Morbidity Is A Single Challenge

Co-morbidity is the existence of more than one mental illness in a patient. In addiction, a co-morbidity is often the combination of addiction with anxiety, or depression, or trauma. Typically, co-morbidity implies a relationship between the addiction and the mental health diagnosis – and in all cases where such a relationship exists, the treatment that is prescribed needs to address both issues rather than simply focusing on one.

In the case of multiple addictions, it is much the same. The risk of developing multiple addictions is not just a theory, and treating someone struggling with more than one form of addiction still requires a comprehensive, all-encompassing treatment that molds to their circumstances and issues, and addresses all vices and negative coping behavior as part of a single list of symptoms related to environmental factors and psychological/emotional concerns.

It’s not to say that multiple addiction can be solved with a cookie-cutter approach. Rather, troubles with someone’s mental health and physical health must be seen as joint issues related to one another rather than entirely separate. In this case, several addictions must be treated as one person’s struggle towards sobriety.

Multiple Addictions And The Mind

No, this does not mean that there is such a thing as an “addictive personality”. A person’s personality does not tie into their likelihood of getting addicted, unless they have a diagnosed mental illness or other environmental factors such as loneliness, trauma, family issues and peer pressure. However, what it does mean is that people with a predisposition towards multiple addictions (not any specific kind, such as with a genetic predisposition) will likely develop an addiction from any highly addictive substance – and often enough, people use more than one kind of drug. It’s not uncommon to abuse both alcohol and stimulants, for example, or marijuana and pain medication.

The substances you struggle with and the reasons you became addicted to them directly affect the kind of treatment you will have to seek to get better and stay sober. The danger becomes keeping you from developing an overt emotional attachment to something potentially very dangerous and damaging.

For example: going from a heroin dependency to becoming a fitness fanatic is a positive change. There are many ways to indulge yourself in long hours spent at the gym if you eat right, and recover properly. Meanwhile, an addiction to food can become problematic. Stress eating to deal with the newfound problems of your sobriety will lead to added pounds, a miserable mood, and many unfortunate symptoms of rapid weight gain, as well as the dangers of obesity down the road.

Replacing you love for alcohol with a love for coffee can be dangerous, but typically is not. Black coffee, or coffee with minimal additives is rarely dangerous even in atypically large dosages – however, chugging several extremely caffeinated drinks with highly concentrated amounts of caffeine within quick succession can very rapidly and adversely affect the heart and even cause arrhythmia.

The list goes on and on – there are many things you can indulge in to satisfy your cravings for pleasure, but nothing can replace an addiction and still be considered healthy. In moderation, there are countless substances and behaviors that can make life interesting, fulfilling and enriched. But when abused, anything can hurt you. And drugs, given their addictiveness, are easily abused.

The key here is not to think of a thing capable of replacing your multiple addictions – it’s to replace addiction with life. Instead of struggling to regain control over yourself in the face of a substance, it’s about living life and enjoying it in its entirety again. It’s about using recovery as an opportunity to express gratitude and realize self-love. To put it differently, addiction must be tackled as a situation that requires replacement, rather than a vice requiring another source of gratification. A men’s sober living in Houston is a good option to consider for that reason.

Addressing Trauma And Addiction Together

Posted on August 29, 2017August 29, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Trauma and Addiction are unfortunately common and linked at the hip. We live in a violent world, one where a majority of the population has at one point or another experienced personal grief and loss at the hands of domestic violence, child abuse, war, rape, accidents or natural disasters. Most people experience these things and go on with their lives, that memory living on with them forever. They are traumatized, but the trauma fades within months.

Some people, however, get stuck on the moment. They subsequently suffer a developmental lag wherein their brain and mind have trouble moving on from the experience, because of the sheer amount of pain associated with it.

A trauma is when the emotional and/or physical pain of an experience is so great that your brain has trouble processing it, and is stuck on the moment, incapable of completely digesting it. Instead of “skipping” over it so to speak, it embeds itself so deeply within you that it becomes a far more significant contributing factor to your instincts and thought processes than any other memory.

One way to look at it is as a sort of permanent activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Trauma victims have a heightened sense of danger and, at times, experience paranoia. Their mind refers back to the pain of that memory, and it causes them to perceive threats where there are none. Sometimes, trauma goes away on its own. Usually, it has to be treated. The treatment isn’t simple, and requires regular counseling. However, things get even more complicated when addiction enters the picture. And sadly, it enters the picture quite often.

The Long-Term Relationship Between Pain, Trauma And Addiction

Pain in general has a long history with addiction. Chronic pain, isolation, anxiety, depression, trauma and addiction are all linked.

It’s a simple relationship – we experience pain, we want the pain to end. Drugs provide short-term relief, and are most dangerous in moments of emotional vulnerability, when we’d like anything that could dull the moment. Opioids are designed analgesics, and easily relieve most forms of pain, both physical and emotional. Alcohol helps drown out the pain, and the emptiness, and the sadness. Amphetamines drive us up the wall, making us feel invulnerable, taking away the fear and inhibition. In one way or another, drugs provide immediate and powerful stress-relief.

But it comes at a high price. And only lasts a short amount of time. Some people learn to manage their dependence – countless people suffer from chronic pain and take only the bare minimum of their medication. Others abuse it. For those struggling with both trauma and addiction, the power of self-medication is all too real.

How PTSD Trauma And Addiction Can Be Treated

PTSD, or post-traumatic stress, develops when a victim of a traumatic incident leads to continuous feelings and symptoms of trauma long after the events of the incident themselves. Victims of child abuse commonly suffer PTSD, and it’s most common in terrible cases of captivity. For victims of sexual violence, for example, the rate of PTSD is between 30 and 50 percent. Among soldiers, the rate is about 11 percent as of Afghanistan, and 20 percent for the Iraqi war.

The difficulty with diagnosing and treating PTSD is that cases differ wildly. Some people experience minor symptoms of trauma, while others suffer from regular full-blown flashbacks.

However, PTSD trauma and addiction can be treated together. In particular by advocating safety. Safety in the form of social boundaries, anger management, exposure therapy, easing into triggers, and having regular one-on-one or group encounters with drug addiction counselors.

Cannot Treat One Without Treating The Other

Drug addiction and mental health issues are commonly correlated because one has an intrinsic relationship with the other. Regardless of how that relationship began or in which direction it goes, treating one requires the other to be treated. It’s not quite as simple as identifying a root cause in medicine and eliminating it to be rid of the symptoms. While addiction can be a symptom, it doesn’t go away quite like a rash does. Instead, you have to seek out a treatment option that aims squarely at every problem you have, rather than addressing them individually.

The goal here is to find treatment that works “together”, beating both trauma and addiction. And this goes for every single other comorbidity. Even an addiction treatment plan related to chronic pain has to consider both conditions – chronic pain fuels addiction, yet if you only work on providing a medication plan to treat the pain, you may fuel a new addiction. It’s important to provide therapy and non-addictive alternatives to help someone cope with their addiction, and learn how to stay away from potential triggers while reducing their overall pain and living with what remains.

One way of looking at it is to stop seeing certain mental issues as entirely separate from one another, and instead looking at each and every single case as an interconnected web of perfectly matching illnesses and problems, woven into each other and feeding off of each other in a twisted symbiosis. Instead of telling patients to tackle each challenge individually, devise a way to deal with all issues.

From the patient’s point of view, this means understanding that every diagnosed issue you have – from your trauma and addiction to your anxiety and depressive thoughts – is part of a system.

A sober living program can help you cope with that system. Aside from providing an environment where countless individuals with wildly different backgrounds can come together to find out how they each struggled with and overcame addiction; sober living homes often also include mandatory counseling and therapy sessions to help each person get the care and evaluation they need to progress in their own recovery journey.

Sober living homes also emphasize a group environment, one where sharing becomes an integral part of the recovery process. In time, vulnerable individuals can open themselves up to others as their confidence increases, and feel empowered by their ability to help and inspire others with the progress they’ve made not only in recovery, but with other issues as well.

Why You Need To Be “OK” With Accepting Addiction

Posted on August 24, 2017August 24, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Addiction affects over 20 million Americans, none of whom “deserve” to struggle against a brain condition that sends their life into a downward spiral. Yet to effectively treat most of the country’s affected population and properly address the dangers of addiction, we need a mindset shift. Accepting addiction is important, and addiction must become something else than what it is in the eyes of the public – it must become a condition.

It’s okay to be in a wheelchair after an accident. It’s okay to take time off after the loss of a loved one to grieve and go through your thoughts properly. It’s okay to be injured in sports. Addiction is a disease, and an injury, and a temporary medical condition. It is not a damnation, not a curse, not a moral sentencing of any one individual. By treating addicts as deserving of their fate and “unclean” in a moral sense, we dehumanize millions of Americans based on their misfortune and terrible circumstances, rather than accepting addiction, sympathizing with them, and having the basic compassion and common decency to fight for their treatment.

We’re also ignoring the fact that at 20 million, many people personally know an addict. Be it alcoholism, opioid addiction or even chain smoking, most addicts aren’t bad people. There is a correlation between addiction and childhood trauma, and some addicts get high, lose their inhibitions and become violent individuals. Some – but not anywhere near most. Being sober won’t automatically change their disposition and make them pleasant, but the addiction isn’t what turned them violent – their past is.

But when it comes to addiction itself, we need to look at it as a debilitation, a downtime disease often linked to times of severe depression or anxiety, a symptom of a greater psychological issue. We need to be “okay” with accepting addiction and recognize that those struggling with addiction are part of society, people we sometimes know and care for, people who need our help to get themselves the proper treatment they need.

Addiction As A Disease

Addiction is commonly perceived either as a brain disease that changes the fundamental way in which pleasure is perceived, so a patient lacks the ability to feel any meaningful joy while still hooked on the drug, or it’s perceived as a developmental issue, one in which teens turn to drugs as a radical short-term solution for their lack of emotional development, eventually naturally getting off drugs in their later years to focus on life.

There is validity and research to back both theories up, yet they don’t necessarily contradict each other. While addiction may or may not be a chronic brain disease, it does exhibit many of the same symptoms. And while not every teenage addict gets clean all their own, most people struggling with sobriety manage the leap to clean living within a few years. Both sides recognize that addiction is a pervasive issue that requires the support and help of others in the community to solve, and accepting addiction as a struggle people go through makes it easier for those people to kick the habit since they aren’t being stigmatized.

Understanding Addiction As A Symptom

People take drugs not just to feel great or to party and forego all responsibility, but to hide something. To hide pain. Regardless of whether you see addiction as a developmental issue or as brain disease, the earliest factors for getting addiction typically correlate to emotional or long-term physical pain.

Yes, genes play a role in how addictive a substance can be – but the initial “abuse” usually comes from depression, anxiety, peer pressure or social insecurity, a lack of belonging and a lack of connection to people around you. In other words, when something fundamental is “lacking”, many people turn to drugs as a straightforward way to forget and to overwhelm that part of their thought process with as many “positive” emotions as possible, even if they’re coming from a very dangerous source.

Where there’s smoke, worry about fire. While it’s not true for every case, addiction is typically tied to a deeper issue, even if it isn’t a case of anxiety or depression. Feeling left out of society and deeply misunderstood can be enough for teens to make the misguided last steps into a drug addiction, and it can take years to mature into adults, recognize the issue, and end up accepting addiction treatment. The loss of a career due to an accident and the subsequent stress of being immobilized or even in chronic pain is often a cause of opioid addiction, as it not only takes the edge off the physical pain but it helps with combating all the emotional pain as well.

Accepting Addiction – Everyone Needs To Help

We need to recognize our society’s mental health issues more clearly, and make convincing steps towards creating programs and policies that will address them. It’s all fine and dandy if you personally made your way through life and managed to avoid every pitfall, even in times of severe stress and grieving. This isn’t the case for everyone. Instead of elbowing each other on the path to success and letting society decay into a state of continuing emotional havoc for a misguided argument of “personal responsibility”, we need to recognize that everyone’s situation is complex and that ignoring the problem won’t fix it – and it needs to be fixed.

That means we all must pitch in to help improve society, even if that just means changing your mindset. It’s in your best interest to help your neighbor feel better and work better – only if most of the country is healthy can a country properly function. By tearing at others for things largely out of their control such as mental health issues, addiction, or even poverty, far too many people are simply perpetuating the growth of inequality, anxiety, depression and dependence.

Some people can get out of an addiction alone, and get back on track in life. For most people, however, support is necessary. They need treatment plans, solutions, medical advice and continued therapy to help them work through the underlying issues in an addiction and get to what it really is that drives them to their drug or drugs of choice.

If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, then don’t give up. Don’t give up helping them, and don’t give up on yourself. Staying sober is about more than just resisting a drug, it’s about finding a good set of reasons to do so.