The Many Faces of Addiction!

I first must find out how to start my bridge of understanding of how we find ourselves helpless and totally out of control. The first premise that must be understood is that all addictions are based on one primary condition; that is when we cannot deal with our day to day lives we either consciously or unconsciously look for a way out. One who has suffered some kind of abuse or abuses as children is compelled to look for an escape route out of the pain of their reality or the environment that affects their daily lives.

We, who suffer as children under conditions that keep us hating and fearing reality or in the moment time zones, are always looking for some way out of what we cannot understand or emotionally deal with anymore. If you know this to be the root cause or basis of the opening of doorways to any kind of vehicle to move you away from where you are now, then you will be on the first step to understanding what drives people to drugs, drink, sex, tattooing, body piercing, gangs, pornography, and countless other roads that lead to the false illusion of escape.

As I explain what I believe to be the causes of addiction, I also think it important to describe the symptoms of each vehicle of transportation from reality. My brother died of an overdose of drugs and alcohol on the Fourth of July, 1986. My uncles on my father’s side died of alcoholism and related illnesses.  My oldest daughter just got off of probation from trying Meth. This in no way makes me an expert. I proclaim no such title. However, I do understand the events in their lives that showed their need to leave reality behind.

My uncles were trying to deal with living through the depression of 1929. Many who survived this time of suffering came out with addiction problems. I will leave that for another time as food addictions, hoarding addictions, and other related problems arose from that tragic event. More to the here and now, I will put my thoughts to trying to understand the mindset of those seeking relief from their sufferings, imaginary or real.

We must come to an agreement of those reading this article, and that is I give my understanding not book psychology, or psychiatry, or professional permission to think as I do. I just have been blessed to understand things and life so much clearer after raising eight children, living through two abusive marriages, and those who were brought into my life as I was growing up. The mind can be the most powerful drug of all. The mind can make you invincible; or afraid of your shadow. It can make you believe you see little green men or that you can fly, and more. The mind really does not need a drug to have this power over us.

This being said, I will try to show you how we are followers of the environment around us for the most part. We really are not unique in how we chose our escapes. Our world when born is one of mimicry and practiced acceptance of this process, which reinforces the conditions and responses given to them.  In other words, we just copy or incorporate what works at the time. It is not any great mystery as to how we become addicted, what the mystery is as to how to become independent from the addictions.

I have to pick an addiction to show the behavior or mind condition that starts the endless lies of the illusion of freedom from reality. I will pick drinking for this first analogy of how to understand an alcoholic’s reinvention of their world through drink. The drinking of alcohol will be a varying of ages. I will start with the teenager first, they are easier to see the signs and needs. The teen is now in group or collective environments that depend on peer pressure and performance. They must meet requirements to fit into the social circle they want to belong. The teen does what they say is cool. If drinking is cool, this will be the first step into changing their reality only if getting drunk occurs.

The drinking to drunkenness is when the troubled teens find some kind of relief they had been searching for daily. Not all who drink and get drunk turn into alcoholics. It is the one that is searching for an escape route that now has discovered a way to leave reality behind. Reality is the unrecognized enemy they don’t know how to fight. The peace they are looking for floods them. The false courage this state of mind gives, floods them. The group of others’ support gives a false sense of friendship and camaraderie. The bartender understands you now, they feel your pain.

The drinking bars are dark, with false comforts in music, pool tables, or women. They have rules for fitting in just as the social groups at school do. Teens have a myriad of reasons to be easy targets of this escape route from reality, such as; raging hormones, confusion of purpose, sex offered or withheld,  home environment instability, no parental involvement, and first and foremost early abuses, either physical, verbal, or both. These are the most prominent of conditions leading to future addiction (s).

The mind of a teen looking for escape from the reality is one that must be understood in order to reach it. The parents that do not accept any blame for the conditions that helped lead their child to addiction are not going to be the ones to reach them and bring them back. Something all addicts also share is the belief that no one really understands them or their pains. If you believe no one can help you then you are someone that has to be challenged for your own sake by someone who has recovered from some sort of addiction.

Yes, I am saying that the only cure for any addiction is to bring reality back into their lives with solutions that help them overcome what drove them to drink. First, you must find out what they fear, what they believe is wrong with themselves that cannot be fixed. An effort to understand their phobias and show the reality and those solutions for everything can be found and utilized.

My brother, sniffed glue, smoked pot, drank, and shot drugs, to escape the fears real or perceived by him. He died because no one really ever took the time to find out what he really believed. All questions or remarks can be sent to Grace Seeker, ponderland@charter.net please put in your womenspeakonline in the subject line.

Barbara L. Gonzalez ponderland@charter.net
www.alcoholics-anonymous.org
www.learnabout-alcoholism.com
www.thesoberchoice.com