The “Traditional” Explanation of Drug Addiction No Longer Works
This is probably the most debated subject in the field of drug addiction and alcoholism. It is extremely controversial, and people rarely see eye to eye on it. On one side there are those that believe that Drug Addiction and Mental Health represent two sides of the same coin. On the other, “mental health” is rarely the underlying issue for behavioral problems. By handling the underlying issues of an apparent “mental health” problem or drug addiction, either situation can usually be resolved without the need for additional drugs or a permanently affixed label of “CRAZY”.
The Traditional Thinking About Addiction
Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, mental health. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Some experts say that an addiction is simply the manifestation of a mental illness, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Others say that people are born with addiction if that’s even possible. Others believe that addiction is a complete accident, something that just happens to people when they are peer pressured into using drugs, into using them more than once and then into becoming addicted to them.
All of these viewpoints might have gotten close, but they are actually all wrong.
Addiction does not come about because one is “born” with it. This only occurs in the cases where a mother is abusing drugs and alcohol while pregnant or breastfeeding. This is an entirely different issue of its own. A child is born with a clean slate. What we write on that slate as the child grows is another matter entirely.
And addiction is not the result of a mental illness. There are enough “mental illnesses” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to label every American man, woman, and child with a mental illness, but not all of us abuse drugs and alcohol. In fact, only about fourteen percent of American teens and adults take part in drug use or alcohol misuse.
And addiction is not an accident. People do not just “become addicts” at random. The only scenario where this happens is when a patient is put on highly addictive pharmaceuticals for an injury or some other difficulty and then develops a physical dependency to those pharmaceuticals. And even in those cases, there are usually more factors involved.
How Addiction Comes About
An addiction to drugs and alcohol is always a manifestation of something else wrong, some other crisis or difficulty, some heartbreak or personal problem, a loss, an upset within the family, a personal concern with oneself, one’s career, one’s life, etc. Drug use and alcohol misuse manifest when a person is struggling with other, underlying issues. People do not begin abusing drugs or alcohol for lack of a better thing to do. It is always a coping mechanism, always something they are doing to cover up or to better cope with some other trouble in their lives.
When people abuse drugs and alcohol, it’s in an attempt to solve a problem. This is why most approaches to helping addicts do not work because they never seek to get down to the root of the addiction, which is the underlying struggle or difficulty that caused the person to seek out substances in the first place.
When a person is crippled by a drug habit or alcohol dependence, the best chances for them to experience freedom are by going through a drug and alcohol treatment center that helps them remedy their underlying struggle and crisis. It has to be a rehabilitation program that teaches life skills and that prepares the recovering addict for life outside of rehab. It needs to be a program that can guide recovering addicts not only out of the trap that is addiction itself but out of the traps that got them into a drug habit in the first place. With tools like these, any addict, no matter who they are and no matter what they are addicted to, can go free from a substance abuse habit.
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