Addiction is bad, and there’s no way to talk around that. It’s a debilitating psychological and physical condition that takes many forms, and leaves lasting effects – sometimes for decades. Depending on the drug, an addiction can completely change your life, or even kill you. And far too often, it will. That said, some of the worst addictions will affect you far more than other.
However, the worst addictions are arguably more difficult than others. Some are harder to kick, more dangerous to the body, and more widespread. While all addictions are hard, and a person’s individual journey with any one drug is completely different from that of another, here are some of the worst addictions to get hooked on.
Anti-Anxiety Meds
Anxiety is one of the most pervasive mental health problems in the country. And just about anything can trigger it, or make it worse. Anxiety exists in the form of phobias, PTSD, social anxiety and more – and its effects on life range from causing flash sweats and hyperventilation at the thought of going to a public event, to mental breakdowns.
To combat anxiety, psychotherapists have spent decades refining therapeutic techniques like CBT and DBT – but ultimately, patients early on may need to be prescribed medication to stave off their condition. This is where anti-anxiety meds like Xanax and valium come into play.
These drugs affect the same parts of the brain as alcohol, and create the same calming, tipsy feeling. As sedatives, they act in the exact opposite to stimulants like cocaine or methamphetamine – but they’re just as dangerous when abused and cna be counted among some of the worst addictions.
Much like someone in chronic pain struggling to get off opiates, if you’re struggling with anxiety like 40 million other people in the US, and find yourself hooked on your meds, then the prospect of stopping becomes even harder.
Heroin/Opiates
Heroin is one of the worst addictions to have, because:
- It’s far too common for people on pain medication to fall into a cycle of opiate addiction
- Heroin is a rising problem in the States, fueling the ongoing overdose epidemic
- Opiate addiction can lead to accidental overdose through extremely potent drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil, which are sometimes used to cut heroin and are indistinguishable.
While there are more immediately dangerous drugs, they’re not as widespread. Of course, at the end of the day, the worst addictions to have is any at all. Whatever you end up struggling with the most, whatever vice it is that has you in its grips, that addiction will haunt you for decades and keep you on-guard well throughout your sober life.
But given the effect it has on the country, and the widespread damage it has caused over centuries, there are few drugs with the combined potency, availability and danger as heroin and assorted opiate derivatives.
Nicotine
Ultimately, smoking is known by some addicts to be the hardest habit to kick, making it rank among some of the worst addictions. This is typically based on ratings given by people with several drug addictions, when asked to describe and rate which addiction is toughest to get rid of. However, on the dependence rating scale, the nicotine in cigarettes sits just under heroin and crack cocaine, which is more potent than snorted powdered cocaine.
There are a few key differences that shed some light onto why smoking is one of the hardest habits to kick – and why people manage to kick it so often anyways.
- Cigarettes are everywhere.
- Cigarette smoking starts early.
- Cigarettes take decades to kill.
- Cigarettes are easy to use.
- There is far less stigma attached to nicotine addiction (than other addictions).
Up until quite recently, cigarette smoking has been very popular, and even touted as healthy. Cigarette smoking also often began at an early age, and lung cancer takes years to develop, giving smokers ample time to work on quitting. Their ease of access and ease of use also meant there was no paraphernalia needed when smoking – unlike in the past, when smoking tobacco involved pulling out the pipe and preparing a pinch of herb.
This is what makes nicotine so insidious and one of the worst addictions. Due to being so common and so hard to quit, it can often lead to a life-long addiction and death.
While many state that nicotine is an incredibly hard drug to kick to the curb, many still quit anyway. According to the CDC, there are more former smokers than current smokers in the US today. A common way to quit has been by going cold turkey – others rely on a more gradual progress.
Worst Addictions From Other Drugs
We’ve all heard of monster drugs like krokodil and flakka, street concoctions abroad and sometimes found domestically, and each capable of ruining your life over the course of a few hits. These are synthetic drugs known for causing organ failure and tissue death, and permanent psychological damage.
Krokodil is the subject of many online horror stories, but it isn’t very widespread or dangerous to non-users – the wounds it causes aren’t contagious. Made of a mixture of industrial cleaning agents, lighter fluid and painkillers to create desomorphine, it’s extremely addictive and extremely cheap. Its major side-effect? It rots your flesh to the bone.
Synthetic cathinones (bath salts) and synthetic marijuana (spice) have also been in the news for the severity of their side effects – in addition to being addictive, they can cause strong hallucinations and end in a deadly overdose.
The reason these addictions might not necessarily rank among the worst addictions, is because of both their rarity, and their potency. Methamphetamines, opiates, and Xanax each can lead to months of declining health and an increasing risk of overdose.
New drugs are regularly being discovered – many of them far worse than most of what we’ve seen in the past. From drugs like carfentanil that possess the lethality of nerve gas, to homemade concoctions like krokodil and “DIY” synthetic drugs like spice, the world is full of dangerous substances. Struggling with an addiction is a challenge however and sometimes a Men’s Sober living program in Houston might be the solution to keeping yourself clean for good.