Dealing With Addiction
I have personal experience of addiction and its effects, and felt it would be useful to share them with the community. If people are made aware of the creeping, insidious nature of all forms of addiction, then steps can be taken early, preventing the illness that is addiction from becoming chronic. I will be looking at three areas; recognising addiction, (particularly in its early stages), managing an addiction, and finally, overcoming an addiction.
A popular misconception, even amongst addicts, is that an addiction has to be chronic before it is seen as an addiction. This is not true, there is always a discernible route to addiction, and the sufferer will often have been addicted for a lot longer than he or she thinks. I once heard an addict say when looking back over his life, ‘I could see the wreckage, but I could not see the elephant.’ What he meant was the elephant of addiction had been rampaging through his life for a lot longer than he first thought. The man who goes to the pub after work every night, despite knowing it upsets his partner, is showing addictive behaviour; putting your habit before loved ones is a sure sign of a nascent addiction.
Having established that addictions have generally been in place for longer than the sufferer thinks, we begin to understand how much time and effort it will take to beat an addiction. As a rule of thumb, I would suggest that the length of an addiction is the same as the time it takes to beat an addiction. This means that once an addiction is recognised, there has to be a period of addiction management before the addiction is challenged. This period allows the sufferer to see how far into their lives the tendrils of their illness have reached, and to make sensible plans to fight their addiction. Managing an addiction means bringing it into the open, a crucial step in defeating an addiction.
Overcoming even a minor addiction is a lengthy process, and should be undertaken with a high level of commitment from the addict and those supporting them. Nowadays addiction is recognised as an illness, and there are support groups for almost every type of addiction. However, the fight against addiction has to start with the addict. This can be the hardest part of the process, as the addiction will have embedded itself into the fabric of the addict’s life, making itself almost invisible to the sufferer. A recovering alcoholic once told me of an argument he had had with his partner in the street, and how the can of strong lager he had drunk just before had calmed him. At the time he took this to be alcohol having a positive effect. It was only when he realised that were alcohol not in his life, he would not be arguing with his partner in the first place, that he began to address his addiction.
It is never too early or too late to address destructive behaviour and the fact that you are reading this suggests you are probably concerned about aspects of your current lifestyle. It has never been easier, with the advent of the Internet, to reach out and find help with your addiction. There is no need to feel isolated, share your problems and you are on the road to beating them.
Nick Houghton http://www.dearfriend.co.uk is the place where you can ask a question and the world can answer. Sometimes friends or family give bad advice, they are too close to the situation or you think your question within your close group is best left unasked.
Here you can ask anything you like, keep it real and you will get feedback on anything you ask from either a person who has just visited or from one of our best friends who is a regular advice giver. So feel welcome and hopefully find the answer to all your problems. For further information on dealing with addiction go to http://www.dearfriend.co.uk
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