Understanding Addiction
Articles on Addiction & Addiction Treatment
Addiction Recovery
Deep inside the addicted person, the Self is craving emotional connection with others. Addicts are afraid of ending up alone. In their desperation, they may show a childlike quality: they attempt to connect with others by clinging to family or friends and often become very upset if it appears that people are withdrawing from them. When a loved one leaves the house, for example, the addict has to know where that person is going. The addict will probably ask, “When will you be back?” and, “Do you really have to go?” The addicted person’s Self clings to family and friends in this emotionally dependent style. Addicts often behave as if they are telling people to stay away, but when people do withdraw, addicts become quite upset. Loved ones hear the following from the addict: You can’t leave me, you’re all I have! Please, please, I’m sorry, I promise I’ll do better. Oh, just one more chance, I promise I’ll straighten up. Okay then, leave! No one cares about me anyway. Addicts may panic when family or friends show any anger or pain, even when it isn’t related to them. “Is this the episode that will make them leave me?” the Self thinks. The Addict wants to be alone, but the Self is terribly afraid of being alone. Often at this stage, the only people in the addict’s life are family members. This is all right with the Addict, for being with others has always been a burden. The addiction illness may progress to a point where an addicted person develops physical signs of breaking down. Addiction is very stress producing, and after years of such emotional and psychological stress, physical problems develop. In all forms of addiction, the person’s emotional and psychological systems run on overload most of the time. Physical stress also affects the heart and every other organ in the body. Different addictions will, over time, affect addicts’ bodies in different ways: alcohol damages the liver, induced vomiting damages the throat of the bulimic, and sexually transmitted diseases occur from sexual promiscuity. Addicts often don’t take care of their bodies and see them as objects to be used and abused. It’s impossible to calculate the total physical damage addiction does to addicts, families, and friends. In this stage too a person may start to seriously consider suicide. There are two reasons for this: The internal pain is so great that the person wants it to stop, and the addictive promise of relief isn’t working anymore. Addicts want the pain to stop, but they don’t believe they can stop it. An addicted person doesn’t believe in his or her Self anymore, and suicide starts to make sense, especially when using addictive logic. Addicts become so ashamed of and hate the addictive side of themselves so much that they want to end the addictive relationship at all costs—to the point of performing a homicidal act against the Addict. No one hates the Addict more than the person suffering from the addiction. Yet addicts cannot break the addictive process alone. Rather, they will remain stuck in their addiction until there is some form of intervention - an attempt from outside to break the addictive relationship. Those who try to break the addiction process find that addiction is all they know, and they return to the addictive lifestyle. To recover, addicts must learn a new lifestyle, slowly exchanging the addictive ways of life for a new lifestyle including relationships with other people. These relationships add to personal satisfaction and allow growth. The Addict’s world is based on an inward flow. To recover, the person must learn how to reach outward and sustain this outward flow, which he or she cannot do alone. People with addictions are handicapped because they don’t know how to reach outside of themselves, and will stay in an addictive relationship until there is some form of intervention. There are many different forms of intervention. Some are successful, some are not. Like most relationships, addiction can be resumed even if stopped for long periods. People often end a relationship with a person only to establish an identical type of relationship with someone else, and the same can be true in relationships with objects or events. Yet, recovering addicts should keep in mind that addiction is not just a way of interacting with one’s Self and the world. To recover, the person must not only break off the emotional dependency within, but also turn to the Self and the others. In doing so, a person can discover a new way of life, which can be wonderful and exciting, though vulnerable to struggles and fear. This is a preview click here for full article on addiction
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