Understanding Addiction

Despite the prevalence of news reports on celebrities in and out of rehab there still remains a great misunderstanding about addiction. Many people look down on drug addicts or alcoholics and think that could never be me. When you look closely at most family systems though there are often addictions that go unrecognized. With the fast paced, high stress lifestyle so many families lead it is no wonder that people turn to a quick fix to relieve some of their anxiety and provide some escape from their lives.

While quick to judge a drug addict many more people are also prone to addiction or abusive behaviors that don't even realize it. There are men and women who are "shopaholics" and use shopping to escape from their everyday lives sometimes to the point of incurring great debt and having to hide their behavior from their loved ones. While something like shopping addiction can be financially devastating but not a life risking behavior such as using heroin, it's presence is often minimized. The truth is many families have members that overeat, are bulimic or anorexic, or are workaholics. All of the above demonstrate an inability to copy with everyday life stressors in a healthy way.

On more than one occasion I have spoken with a family member that would meet the criteria for morbid obesity and I find them saying to me I just don't understand why they can't just stop. Drug addiction is still placed in such a different category than overeating, gambling, or sex addiction. If it was so easy for the drug addict to just stop their addiction than we would also have a country with everyone at exactly their ideal weight as they would just put down their fork much the way they expect addicts to just put down their drink or drug and just walk away. Anyone who has ever been on a diet knows that it is not as simple as just changing your habits one day. Food, gambling, sex, or overworking can trigger the same reward center in your brain that gets triggered from doing drugs. Anyone ever trying to stop any type of addiction will find their coping skills other than using their chosen area of addiction are almost non-existent.

One of the reasons for addicts to spend so much time in rehab and then sober living is for them to be able to develop new habits and thought patterns. For the obese person when they have had a stressful day they can tell you their first thought is getting home and digging into that ice cream. For the addict it feels to them like only use of their drug of choice will relieve their discomfort and pain. It takes a great deal of time, practice, and support for addicts to learn to do deep breathing, walk away from the triggering situation, call a friend or a sponsor, exercise, or any other number of new skills they can use instead of continuing their past destructive behavior.

The key to understanding drug addiction today is for people to begin to understand how similar they may be to the drug addict and not how different they are.