Understanding addiction is difficult and complicated. It appears to be an issue of morals, character, will power and personal strength. Often the people close to an addict or alcoholic feel betrayed, confused and used. Those suffering from the addiction lie, steal, cheat, abuse, misuse and generally treat people badly. We, the people around them, think they are choosing to drink or use drugs. We think they want to behave like this. We think this is how they choose to live their lives and they can stop or change at any time.
This list of questions and statements may seem familiar to you.
- Why does she keep drinking or using drugs?
- Why can’t she have just one beer?
- Why does she always have to overdo it?
- She could stop if she really wanted to.
- She’s just blowing off steam.
- She’ll stop when she is ready.
- It’s just a phase.
- When will she take responsibility for her own life?
- She just needs to get her life together.
- She just needs to focus.
- She just needs some direction.
- She needs a job or some structure.
- She has so much potential!
How many times have you said one or more of these statements? How many times have you asked any of these questions? It is natural as a parent to want your daughter to be the best she can be, to live up to her potential, to want golden opportunities for her. It is not “normal” to be making these excuses or asking these questions. Maybe in the beginning she could have controlled her drinking and drug use. It is quite possible she could have had one drink, one toke or one joint. As her disease has progressed, she now can’t. It has become impossible to stop. She needs her addiction to survive.
Addiction is a disease. It is like diabetes. I know this is very difficult to comprehend given your daughter’s behaviour and the paradox of choice. Think about it logically instead of emotionally. Do you think you daughter wants to feel like the lowest form of humanity? Do you think your daughter really wants to have her family and friends distrust her? Do you think she wants people to hide their valuables from her, be unwelcome in family members’ homes, disappoint the people closest to her, lose jobs, be unable to get and keep a job, beg for money, lie about why she needs it and be looked at as a general all around loser? I don’t think that is her desire. I don’t think she woke up one morning and decided to be a drug addict or alcoholic. This isn’t what she wants for her life. She just doesn’t know how to stop.
Addiction is very complicated and complex. It is a progressive disease that first offers a sense of freedom, belonging and comfort. As the disease takes over, it strips away all those wonderful feelings leaving the addict searching for and chasing that first initial feeling of freedom, belonging and comfort. Generally, addicts do not initially see themselves as having a problem. Others close to them start noticing changes and point things out before the addict is even aware. The addict goes through a stage of rationalizing her behaviour and making excuses. She continues to see herself as a “social” drinker or recreational user and believes she can either take it or leave it.
Many parents think their child has become a monster. That is not the case. Your child is suffering from addiction and the addiction is the monster. It has robbed your child of her soul. I imagine she has become someone you don’t know anymore. It appears she is making all these decisions to use and abuse substances with no regard for anyone else in her life. This is not the case. She is functioning from a place of pure survival. Your child is not capable of making healthy choices anymore. Her addiction rules her. She feels she might die if she doesn’t use.
I know it all seems unbelievable and strange. How could this happen to your little one? I know you are asking what you did wrong and what you could have done to prevent it. The answer is absolutely nothing.
So what is addiction? Addiction or substance abuse exists on a continuum. Some people are able to drink and/or use drugs recreationally with no significant negative effects. They can get up in the morning and participate in their day. Others may experience unwanted negative side effects, but are able to reduce or stop their addiction with minimal difficulty. They see themselves sliding and can see where they are going to end up, and they don’t like it. And then there are those who, despite negative fallout from using (relationships, work, legal, financial, health), have great difficulty curtailing use of substances without help. These are the people who need help to stop. Often they will decide they are going to stop and then they can’t. They have no intention of using or drinking or they just intend to “have one.” The next thing they know they are drunk or high and have no idea what just happened.
There Is No Specific Criteria
Addiction doesn’t have any boundaries. It has no preference in its sufferers. Age, race, economic status, education, values, or morals, are not factors. Addiction chooses who it does, just because it can. This latter group experience what is known as “dependency”. There is physical dependency or ‘body-need’, and psychological dependency or ‘mind-need’. The likelihood that an individual is vulnerable to physical dependency involves variables: heredity (genetic predisposition), type of drug, potency of a drug, age of exposure (including in utero) and length of exposure. Circumstances impact the development of substance abuse: social learning (family/friends who abuse substances), opportunity, access and availability of substance(s). These only influence the onset of psychological dependence. The same factors are involved in alcoholism.
Some believe the common factor is traumatic experiences and a need to numb out or not feel. There is no rhyme or reason why two people can be involved in the same traumatic experience and one becomes chemically addicted and the other finds healthy ways to heal the pain. Why does one person feel the need to escape the feelings and the experience by being numb and the other is able to feel the feelings and work through the experience? There is no answer to this.
Dependency is the process in which the brain sends signals that it needs a certain chemical. This is wholly different from wanting a chemical. Asking someone who is truly dependent to go without that drink or drug is like asking them to stop breathing. It is that powerful drive that motivates individuals to steal from their loved ones, abandon their children, or put themselves in dangerous or illegal situations to fund their addiction. They don’t do it because they want to; they do it because they have to. It is a matter of survival. When loved ones ask “Why can’t he just stop?”, they are misunderstanding the nature of dependency. A person in chemical dependency has a very narrow field of choice. Motivation for change and the availability of resources and support both need to be high for an individual to break out of this cycle.
To see a visual explanation of addiction, click on the link below and watch the YouTube video. It’s the best one I have ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVSfVhvZmM0
You can learn how to help them break out of this cycle by helping yourself. In the next post you will read about the “Family Disease” and why you, as a parent of an addict, need help to be able to support your child and steer him or her towards recovery.
