Category: Addiction

It’d be obvious to anyone with any experience in addiction, but addicts aren’t a very socially healthy group of people. Some say that addiction is a party of one, where the addiction becomes the center focus of a person’s life, pushing them further away from others and into a state of isolation and social withdrawal.

While this is seen as a symptom of addiction and a part of why it’s such a dangerous phenomenon in societies, others see it as part of the disease’s core. Addicts, many argue, fall into this spiral of using and abusing substances for gratification and stress relief precisely because of this sense of overwhelming loneliness and lack of emotional connection, rather than becoming socially withdrawn after the fact.

Of course, there is a lot of truth to both perspectives. Addiction comes with its own set of risk factors – biological ones, such as genetic predisposition, and social ones. Yet there are many outliers that live perfectly normal lives with no history of addiction in the family, and yet they still fall victim to the cycle of addiction.

In these cases, the reason isn’t as simple as addictiveness, or pure chance. Yes, drugs like heroin, alcohol and nicotine can cause dependence, but less than a tenth of the people who use illicit drugs become addicted. That’s where loneliness plays a role.

Addiction as a Lack of Connection

When we think about addiction from an outsider’s perspective, we’re quick to see it as a disease, or an unfortunate case of affinity, or perhaps as a moral failure. But to those who struggle with addiction, addiction is an outlet. It’s a manifestation, an expression, a means to an end.

Those who struggle with addiction don’t really struggle with the act of being addicted – they struggle with staying sober, because part of them needs the pleasure and the stupor of a drinking session or the contents of a needle in order to function at all, not so much physically, but on an emotional level.

For people who deal with addiction, the addiction itself is often a consequence of pressure, of stress, of major discontent and trauma. Some experienced childhood horrors and do their best to mask their memories and thoughts with certain habits – but it’s not just the clearly troubled and misfortunate who are at a substantial risk for addiction. There’s a reason addiction and fame go hand in hand so often: that’s because success is scary.

Take your typical rock star, childhood actor-turned-rehab regular, or any other common cliché of the famous turned addicted. It’s not that their lives suck – but that they struggle greatly and often silently underneath it all in order to maintain it. The straight-A student with the dashing smile and social entourage might’ve fallen into a life of drugs not out of a personal moral failure, problems at home or a bad breakup, but simply because they were actually alone in their struggles, with no one to turn to out of fear of looking entitled, whiny or weak.

Addiction occurs because a substance is addressing a need – even if just initially. To eliminate that need – to remove the legs upon which an addiction can stand – you have to understand why someone might have gotten addicted in the first place.

A simple little experiment with a rat park showed that among our little rodent friends, heroin addiction goes away when opportunities exist for mating, bonding and general social rat behavior. While we’re not as simple-minded as rats, the gist of a successful recovery isn’t just long-term sobriety and abstinence from drugs, but replacing the itch scratched by an addiction, with healthy behavior and rich social encounters. In essence, the cure to addiction lies in love and friendship.

Battling Addiction With Love & Friendship

Even among those who recover from addiction alone, support is vital. You could have a solid reason for staying sober – such as wanting to be an accountable member of the family – but without the needed support from others to help you through the emotional journey of recovery, realizing that reason can prove impossible.

If addiction is caused by loneliness, and the overwhelming feeling of being crushed by the stress and pressure of dealing with many serious issues alone, then curing that loneliness is important. Sober living homes, group therapy, and the understanding and support of your friends and family can go a long way to helping you achieve the trust and security you need to successfully kick the habit and learn to live again – from going back to school or finding work, to getting back into relationships, establishing yourself in new hobbies and social circles, making new friends and being happy with yourself.

It’s a long road, but it’s a more comprehensive, successful and helpful one than putting addicts in a position of helplessness, hopelessness, and stigma.

Every Case Is Unique

Of course, while addiction feeds on shame and loneliness, that doesn’t mean that just reintroducing people into the lives of someone struggling with their recovery will make things go better. Firstly, in any case of recovery, there has to come a point where the patient wants to recover. It’s not necessary to hit rock bottom for that point to come – that’s a dangerous and painful mindset. It can be as simple as waking up one day and not wanting feel hung over or worthless anymore.

Beyond that, however, the path to recovery is all up to the patient. Some prefer therapy, others want to go through rehab and outpatient treatment, some swear on sober living communities and others yet advocate 12-step programs like AA or NA. While there are similarities between all successful and viable methods of recovery, you have to find one to adopt and make your own.

There are many perspectives on addiction. Some argue that it is a brain disease. Some argue that it is a choice. Some argue that it is a learning disorder, where a series of short-term choices lock a person into a lagging developmental phase.

Others argue that it is a social disorder, where someone deprived of real connection and the feelings of belonging to a healthy, happy family or group of friends slowly succumb to the numbing pleasures of addiction.

The fact that addiction carries with it so many differing and multi-faceted definitions even among trained psychologists goes to show that it’s a complicated problem we have yet to fully understand and study. But we do know that it’s highly treatable – with the right help.

It’s no secret that the U.S. is the world’s largest consumer of opioids, and in recent decades the rate of opioid overdoses in this country has skyrocketed. Ohio in particular is a state of infamy in this case, with billions of prescribed pills on an annual basis, in a country where the use of opioid-based prescription medication is higher than in any other developed country in the world.

Yet there is one state with a dark history of drug abuse that has mostly managed to slip through the public eye – the state of Texas. Recorded data shows that Texas has some of the lowest overdose rates in the country – yet a report by Houston Chronicle alleged that these rates are undercounted, and that there is a serious case of underreporting of drug-related deaths in the Lone Star State.

This greatly affects drug treatment availability. The availability of drug treatment in the state is mirrored by its overdose statistics, for the most part, the more treatment is needed, and the more can be invested in it. Yet Texas’ underreporting has created an awkward situation for citizens in Texas looking for treatment, in that they may not find adequate coverage.

Texas isn’t the only state hit hard by drug overdoses, and while the infamous opiate heroin is definitely to blame for a large chunk of the country (and the state’s) deaths, prescription medication continues to take the largest death toll, with the CDC stating that the overdoses have quadrupled in recent decades.

The complication here is that there is no easy solution due to the sheer effectiveness of prescription opioids as painkillers for chronic pain, and as effective anesthetics. Their use in medicine is widespread, and no concrete alternatives have been discovered – at least, not with the same potency as opiate-based medicine.

How Opiates Work

Opiates are drugs created as derivatives of opium, an extract of the poppy plant with massive potential for drug abuse due to how the body translates it into morphine, a natural anesthetic. The danger in opiates is that they’re extremely addictive – some data estimates that 2.4 million Americans are using opiate medication non-medically.

Opiates develop a physical dependency, driving up tolerance while increasing the nuisance of withdrawal. Eventually, an overdose occurs – usually, the user passes out and is unable to breathe. Due to the sheer addictiveness of opiates, opiate drugs like heroin are considered highly dangerous. However, prescription drugs like oxytocin continue to circulate the pharmaceutical market because of what opiates do for chronic pain patients and others suffering massive acute pain.

Chronic pain is a fairly widespread condition in the United States. It’s described as pain that lasts longer than 12 weeks or three months, usually from an old injury or some form of nerve damage. Chronic pain is reoccurring, and defined by each patient and their own understanding of pain and discomfort. Typically, pain medication is prescribed as a form of effective pain management, but many treatment providers are working towards eliminating the use of opiates as a form of pain management in light of their potential misuse.

There are no known alternatives to opiates that share their effectiveness, but there are holistic approaches such as utilizing herbal ointments, eating an anti-inflammatory diet, and engaging in regular exercise to stimulate the tendons and reduce swelling, as well as strengthen the body in general. Other alternatives include acupuncture, swimming, and mind-body techniques including mindfulness and yoga.

Helping Those in Need

While the data suggests that addiction treatment services and availability in Texas is limited, the fact remains that few people actively seek treatment for their addiction to begin with. It’s important to point out the treatability of addiction, even opiate addiction, and the massively improved quality of life achieved through recovery.

In cases of self-medication, where the addiction grew out of the necessity of prescription medication, alternatives must be sought while recovery is ongoing, and total sobriety – including abstaining from other forms of medication – is typically necessary.

To make this bearable, some residential treatment centers specialize in providing rehab plus pain management to help patients continue to find new ways to deal with their pain while staying drug-free.

However, residential treatment is just the beginning. The real challenge is coping with pain out in the real world while continuing drug recovery. Many people struggle with staying sober out of rehab without the temptation provided by chronic pain, so proper pain management is the absolutely most crucial element to maintaining long-term sobriety and avoiding a relapse caused by a lack of control.

There are severe cases of chronic pain where pain medication is unavoidable. In these cases, however, it is still ill-advised to utilize opiates – other pain management medication, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and corticosteroids can be used instead of opiates, although they won’t be quite as effective.

A Treatment Solution

There are dozens of ways to deal with drug recovery, even with the added complexity of a pain management schedule. However, the details of such programs depend on the nature of a patient’s chronic pain, the severity of the pain, and level of physical dependence and addiction they developed to their previous medication.

Yet for the state of Texas, the treatment solution towards a better future for those struggling to beat their drug addiction only requires one straightforward path, and not dozens – better education, and a public discussion towards the importance of proper drug treatment in the Lone Star State.

Making the Most of Recovery

Once out of rehab, many patients are thrust back into the world after struggling with pain medication, addiction and chronic pain – the jarring difference between professional care at a treatment center and the real world can send a lot of people spiraling down a seriously problematic path of relapses and depression.

Sober living homes can accommodate recovering patients in Texas looking for a place to re-establish themselves among other recovering patients, to focus on both the recovery process and learning to cope with both the addiction and the pain in a state of sobriety.

In the interest of being subjective, it’s important to see addiction from a more medical, scientifically-accurate point of view. An addiction occurs on two levels – usually when we describe an addiction, it’s a behavioral issue that has to do with compulsive consumption or a substance despite clear harm. For example, an alcoholic might be endangering the lives of their loved ones and causing problems at work, but that might not stop them from drinking. There’s a mental wall created where the addiction isn’t to blame, and addicts may try to shift the blame for problems on other things.

There’s a reason addiction correlates more highly with emotional and mental vulnerability, especially in cases of mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and ADD. It’s natural to want to feel better, especially with a condition that implies sadness. And addictions are often – not always – developed to cope with those negative feelings.

Addiction isn’t just purely something of the mind. Another “kind” of addiction is physical dependence, which is an entirely chemical process that doesn’t have much to do with behavior, or emotional vulnerability.

Drug Use Isn’t Addiction

Since we mentioned being medical, it’s also important to note that drug use isn’t addiction. It’s too easy to vilify substances and become single-minded in a crusade against drugs, but that isn’t a great solution to the society-wide issue of addiction. You don’t solve addiction just by attacking poppy farmers, opium producers and drug dealers. It’s a deeper issue.

As an example: there are many reasons not to do cocaine. One is the possible damage it causes to the nasal cavity. Another is the risk of overdose, especially in a social setting where peer pressure is high, or where it’s easy to lose track of time and consumption. There’s also the very glaring issue that cocaine is highly illegal, and possessing it is a criminal offense.

However, not all instances of cocaine use predict addiction. For example, heroin, an extremely potent form of opium usually injected, has a first-time addiction rate of about 23%. Going back a few decades, cocaine use in the 1970s was culturally glamorous. The drug and related paraphernalia had its own commercials, and one popular publication even asserted that cocaine was not an addictive substance. Today, cocaine remains a valid medical tool, used topically in limited forms. As such, it’s classified as Schedule II – a U.S. Controlled Substances Act classification which makes it medically-relevant, even if restricted.

It’s better to understand addiction without the implication of illegality or criminality – just from a purely chemical standpoint. Consider this: caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, opium and amphetamine are all addictive substances, with varying levels of legality and associated morality. It’s possible to get addicted to certain behavior, as well – and people can develop a nasty sugar addiction to feed their emotional needs just as much as others abuse nicotine to destress. The sugar-drug analogy even has some merit, as we’re evolved to look for relatively sugar in the food around us to consume as many calories as possible (in preparation for possible periods of involuntary fasting, for example).

However, not all smokers, not all coffee drinkers, and certainly not all cereal fans are addicts. Some drugs are far more potent in creating addicts than others. Crystal meth and heroin come to mind as extremely dangerous drugs, but cigarettes, benzodiazepines and prescription drugs are also alarmingly addictive. Alcohol is more addictive than cocaine, and coffee makes the list somewhere low.

Addiction Is Addiction

Our definition of criminality and addictive substances is based partially on culture, partially on politics, and partially on facts. As an example, cocaine is far more addictive than a substance like marijuana, and has extremely limited use as an anesthetic.

Yet despite the medical and pharmaceutical potential for cannabis, especially valid in the light of studies that show marijuana’s use in seizure and epileptic treatment, it continues to be a Schedule I drug and accounts for over 620,000 arrests per year, with no known overdoses and limited documentation on related traffic accidents. Alcohol, on the other hand, is more addictive than cannabis, accounts for roughly 88,000 deaths per year, yet we’re much laxer about its use. We’ve tried banning it before, with historical failures.

The idea is not to advocate any addictive substance. Neither do we propose any legal solution, or advocate for the banning of all addictive substances/the legalizing of all addictive substances. Instead, it’s to be subjective. Addiction is an individual matter, and the substance is only partially to blame – other more worrying factors include mental disorders like anxiety and depression, socioeconomic conditions, and uncontrollable factors such as being at the wrong party at the right time. When we talk about addiction, it’s important to understand how complicated getting addicted really is.

The Clear Distinction Between Emotional & Physical

Going back to the split between addiction as a behavioral affliction and a coping mechanism, and physical dependency, someone struggling with an addictive substance can develop one or the other, or both. And both require different yet combined treatment models to overcome.

Physical dependency happens with the body builds a tolerance to a specific addictive substance, and to overcome that tolerance and feel the full effects of the reward – the high – you take higher doses. Eventually, the body relies on the drug to feel good at all. Without it, you undergo withdrawal. Depending on the drug, withdrawal can range from discomfort and nausea to death. In this case, addictiveness isn’t a reliable factor for danger – opium withdrawals are tame compared to the dangers of an alcohol withdrawal, for example.

The medical treatment for a dependency is a detoxification – and rehab. Highly experienced drug users know how to “come down” from their addiction to avoid the worst of a withdrawal and at the same time avoid building too much of a tolerance, balancing their drug use responsibly to survive their addiction. In other cases, the curse of tolerance leads to the inevitability of a fatal overdose, or enough of an overdose to warrant hospitalization and forced detox.

It’s a deadly cycle, and not many have the resources or knowledge to survive it for very long. One way or another, an addiction will get to you in the end. Unless, of course, you end it first.

Addiction is defined as an obsessive bond between a person and a substance or behavior. When you’re addicted to something, you’re bound to it – psychologically, and in some cases physically, to the point that it interferes with your work and other living responsibilities.

Escaping severe addiction isn’t just hard – it’s like going against your nature. Imagine being in a desert, wandering about aimlessly for days at a time, the hot sands beneath your feet making their mark on your soles through red blisters. Every step is a stumble, every breath a pain, your throat dry and covered in mucus. A stranger appears and offers salvation in a bottle: pure, cold water.

Do You Refuse?

Once a drug addiction truly sets in, it’s not just a matter of liking the world better with a little bit of a high – getting high is almost necessary to continue leading a tolerable existence. Drug use can hijack the brain, and in severe cases will create a physical dependence that manifests itself as a painful need for drugs, the lack of which is punished through harsh withdrawal symptoms.

Cutting yourself off from that level of dependence requires an iron will, and probably an iron door. It’s not easy – and to some it most definitely feels impossible.

But not all addictions make it that far. You see, addiction is a spectrum – just like most other mental illnesses, every case of addiction falls within a very specific spectrum of severity. Depending on where you are on the spectrum, it’s easier (or harder) to undo the damage you’ve done to your brain, and rewire yourself to ignore the lure of whatever you were taking.

What Determines Dependence?

The broad definitions of addiction are mild, moderate and severe addiction, with increasing levels of physical dependence and signs of abuse. The more severe an addiction, the more severe both the mental and physical consequences of the addiction – including an ever-growing need to depend on the drug not just for physical reasons, but for happiness (or more aptly, to stave off the terror of sobriety).

Physical dependence is achieved through drugs that can cause great amounts of physical harm if quit cold turkey, called withdrawal symptoms. Taking drugs for a long time increases your tolerance to them, requiring increasingly higher doses, driving you to the brink of overdose and threatening you with painful withdrawal if you try to stop.

The Most Dangerous Drugs

In terms of sheer addictiveness, heroin is up there at number one, followed by crack and nicotine. Then comes methadone, meth, and alcohol.

As for what these substances do the body, heroin is an opiate that acts like the body’s own natural morphine, released as an analgesic (painkiller) during a particularly painful experiences. The thing is, heroin is much more powerful than what your body gives you to fight off the pain, and it also gives you a quick, extremely intense (and captivating) high.

Once in the body, heroin is converted into morphine, like any opioid (including prescription painkillers, which cause far more overdoses in America). Take too much of it, or take it for too long, and your heart fails either because of an arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) or because your body forgets to breathe.

Nicotine toxicity isn’t very hard to achieve with the pure chemical itself (rubbing pure nicotine on your skin will cause nausea and a host of other negative effects), but smoking primarily kills through lung cancer due to the effects of inhaling burnt tobacco and tar.

Alcoholism is often followed by cirrhosis of the liver, although binge drinking – particularly among younger adults, and especially in circles where alcohol use isn’t adequately discussed – can cause alcohol poisoning.

Methamphetamine mimics amphetamine, a natural high-producing neurotransmitter, can also cause heart failure in an overdose – although if it doesn’t kill you that way, it probably will through a host of organ failures. Amphetamines are used by the body in extreme fight-or-flight situations to amplify your senses and reduce your body’s natural “limiters” (pain), allowing you to push yourself beyond the brink of your normal strength. That is why “meth heads” are often quite violent while high.

Caffeine can kill you as well if you’re sensitive to it, but you’d need quite a lot of coffee. On a technical level, that makes it a dangerous and addictive drug. However, it’s statistically far easier to kill yourself with cigarettes, alcohol, prescription medication or any number of illicit drugs than it is with a latte.

When Does Drug Use Become Addiction?

It’s not something most people think about, but drug use doesn’t equate to addiction. Here’s a statistic you probably did not expect: about a third of all adults will try an illegal drug, and a much smaller fraction will get addicted.

The thing about drugs is that their definition is a little relative, and some might even say it’s arbitrary. Nicotine is a dangerously addictive substance, far more addictive statistically than alcohol, cocaine, methadone and methamphetamine – yet there’s much less of a movement to fight against nicotine addiction and treat it in the same manner as alcoholism. Alcohol is available to everyone over the age of 21, yet it’s even more addicting than powdered cocaine. Coffee is also a psychostimulant, even more legal and unregulated than alcohol or nicotine – and cases of caffeine addiction have been recorded. Of course, it’s not as deadly.

We’re not trying to argue that coffee should be outlawed or that heroin should be sold at Starbucks. But it helps to understand the fact that drug use does not always lead to addiction – drugs have differing levels of addiction, and there is no such thing as a substance that gets you hooked on the first hit 100 percent of the time. Drug use becomes addiction quite simply when the recreational use of drugs becomes a mental obsession, in which the user goes through great lengths to get their next fix, including criminal behavior.

Understand Rather Than Vilify

The problem with anti-drug messaging is that it’s hard to take it seriously when it utilizes lies and fear-mongering to scare teens out of trying drugs. Oftentimes, teens will find out that drugs aren’t quite as dangerous as the authorities make them out be, relativizing it to smoking and alcohol use.

Of course, with a lack of judgment and the wrong crowd, a little experimentation can escalate into something more sinister and permanent. Better understanding the truth about drugs and their usage, though, can help you instill a better understanding in your friends and your kids, and give them a more reasonable, truthful view of the drug issue.

Not everyone who uses drugs gets addicted – for heroin, the statistic on addiction-at-first-use is about 23 percent. For those 23 percent, however, getting out is extremely hard – and that’s the difference between, say, alcohol and coffee. When’s the last time you heard of someone starting a bar fight before blacking out while high on caffeine? Drugs, particularly opiates and amphetamines, are never ever to be underestimated. But misunderstanding them can lead to just as much trouble.