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Drug Addiction
Nobody ever woke up one day and said, "I think I want to be a drug addict." You certainly didn't, right?
But it happened. That's what makes addiction is such an insidious-and deadly-disease. The path from "social" or occasional drug use to addiction is different for each person, but the end point as almost always the same.
What drives most people to experiment with drugs is a desire to achieve pleasurable sensations or avoid unpleasurable sensations.
This is common sense. Drugs (even prescription medications) provide a way to cope with long hours, tight deadlines, or a crippling workload-with a short burst of pleasurable sensations. Or, those same drugs help us escape or avoid the pressure we're feeling: from angry clients, uncooperative staff members, or a cancelled flight that screws up a big out-of-town presentation-so we "numb out."
But, sooner or later, we find more and more excuses to allow ourselves the chance to feel great-or feel nothing-in spite of what's going on around us. We come to depend on what the drugs can do for us: how they make us feel. So what if we miss an important meeting? Forget a client's order? Skip work altogether? With a little chemical boost, those things don't matter so much.
According to experts in this field, the term "addiction" is defined as "prolonged or continued use of a substance, despite adverse effects on one's self or others."
What began as a tool to help us through really difficult circumstances slowly becomes a dangerous thing we can't live without. This is the crux of addiction: What used to be the solution ultimately becomes the problem. We may not remember exactly when that switch happened, but it did happen.
Life without our drug of choice becomes unbearable. We rely on that drug to get us through the day; we depend on it. Addiction has an extraordinarily powerful grip. We may have tried to do without the drugs (perhaps even succeeded for a short time), but we always came back. We'll never be "in control" of our behavior around drugs again. If we're to ever truly break free, we need help.
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