What’s in a word?
The word ‘addiction’ is used pretty often these days. We talk about having an addictive personality, or that we’re addicted to a new TV show. We talk about sugar being addictive, or our phones, or our favourite breakfast cereal. But what does addiction actually mean and how do you know if you’re an addict and may need help?
The meaning of addiction
Addiction refers to the use of a drug, substance or behaviour that continues regardless of the consequences experienced from using it. The consequences may be in any area of your life: emotional, family, health, education, legal, financial, work, romance. The unique quality of addiction is that addiction defies rational thinking and empowered choice-making. Rather than stopping using a drug, substance or behaviour as their life gets worse, the addict lets go of everything else in their life order to protect their access to their drug or behaviour of choice.
What does addiction look like?
An example goes like this: an addict may use heroin and get caught by their partner. Their partner hates them using heroin. They get scared for the safety and health of their addicted loved one and finds them hopeless to be around when they’re high. The addict can see their partner’s point. The addict also doesn’t like who they, themselves become and who they hang out with when they use heroin; and they feel enormous regret and remorse for their actions.
But somehow they find themself doing the same thing again, knowing how much the last time hurt their relationship and despite loving their partner and wanting to stay with them.
If this repeats over time despite the best of intentions to stay away from heroin, it starts to look like an addiction problem.
From that example you can see how it’s possible to separate out the action of using heroin from the consequences of using heroin. If that person doesn’t want to experience the consequences, they must avoid the behaviour. But they find themselves unable to do that.
Now for most people, using heroin is a fairly obvious sign that something problematic is going on. So let’s look at a different example: alcohol.
What addiction is, and what it is not
Most people have drunk alcohol at some point in their adult lives. And most have enjoyed it. Some may have chosen to get drunk, some may have gotten much drunker than they intended and some may have had a few sips and no more. None of this implies addiction.Some people drink during the week, others only at weekends. Some drink hard spirits, others only beer or wine. None of this implies addiction either. Alcohol addiction, alcoholism or alcohol abuse disorder are recognised not by how much, how often, what, where, why or with whom someone drinks alcohol, but by the pattern of continuing to drink alcohol regardless of the consequences.
Some people are able to drink alcohol without it impacting on their lives. Some may start to experience impacts, such as hangovers, a developing beer belly, or high blood pressure, so they cut back their drinking or cut it out altogether. But others, the addicts, will make room in their lives for alcohol at the expense of anything else.
Addiction is not a choice
It’s important to recognise that addicts don’t mean to hurt themselves or others. No one dreams of growing up to be an addict, it’s not something rational people want or aspire to be.
Addiction develops as a result of the brain being more alert to threat than helpful. This emerges in early childhood as the child struggles with difficult relationship dynamics. The nervous system becomes dysregulated and hard to manage, and a drug, a drink, food, gambling, sex or other substance or behaviour become tools with which the addict regulates their feelings and emotions. An addict sits with an overwhelming sensation of fear a lot of the time and this builds throughout each day until it feels intolerable. Taking a drink or drug is akin to letting the air out of an overinflated tyre.
Recovery is a choice
Most importantly, addiction can be resolved. But recovery from addiction is not a self-help journey, and many addicts die trying to fix it themselves. The way out of the problem is to seek out the right kind of help, such as specialist therapists or rehabs. These help people start their journey to well-being; and then the sky’s the limit.