Addiction is not worse than your misunderstanding ! Healthymedilife

Addiction is misunderstood by most people because of the way the media has presented and publicized it. The misperception of addiction is extreme because people lack knowledge of what it is. This misunderstanding is wide spread for the reason of the unclear nature associated with addiction—addiction comes in different shades and effects. It is not limited to a certain race, age, generation or nationality. Most attitudes or behavior that developed into addiction usually begins as a simple leisure or pleasure, which then develops into habit or practice that becomes difficult to break away from. Addiction provides a procedure or method of escape for the addicts. When a person is hooked by addiction, especially chemicals, drugs, pornography and other common addition, there is the tendency for it to take control of the person’s total life—This is common to every kind of addiction. Addiction has a lot to do with feelings and thoughts and it will remove the person from the feelings of reality and drive them into wrong perception of thoughts

I really hate to see people struggle with addiction. People are so black and white about it, though. An addict is an addict, whether he’s doing dope or not doing dope. A drunk is a drunk. A junkie is a junkie. Yet, there is a feeling that exists by most of society which shames the junkie, or drunk, into believing that their only possible way out of their problems is by the total abstinence of all substances.

Non-addicts look down on people in recovery whether they admit to it or not. Non-addicts separate themselves from the addict and feel sad for the trouble the addict finds his life in. Yet, most of these non-addicts still get to feed their reward centers every day with “approved amounts” of feel good substances. I’d like to see what would happen if non-addicts were forced to completely abstain from coffee, candy, ice cream, red meat, masturbation, adrenaline rushes, junk food, shopping therapy. Non-addicts are addicts who haven’t managed to screw up their lives.

You see, the non-addict has these problems in their lives like the addict has, but the non-addict can work hard all day toward accomplishing some things that will benefit his life, then go home, open the fridge, pull out a cold frosty one and sit back and feel the pleasure that a nice cold beer can provide. Chances are very good that the non-addict will down that beer pretty fast, and grab another and get it half-way down before he falls asleep in the recliner with one sock still on. The non-addict will tell you that without their morning espresso, they are irritable, cranky, get a headache. For some it might be a Diet Coke, or a Diet Dew.

Still, they’re getting something from it. If an addict will always be an addict then why do they expect an addict to be able to completely abstain from everything? That’s almost impossible. It’s doable for some people. It’s also a recipe for misery. The rest of your days, because you had a Cocaine, or Heroin problem, you are forced to give up cannabis, beer, wine? I went to hundreds of meetings dealing with substance abuse, and yet there were always 10–12 people out at the break smoking cigarettes. Why is that allowed? They say it’s one thing at a time. Great. Then, if you have a opioid problem say with Heroin, they let those guys do methadone because there’s an easier detox. Sounds like some kind of a negotiation taking place. Same with cigarettes.

If an addict is an addict, he will find another thing to be an addict with. If it’s food, obesity is in their future. If it’s working out, or fitness junkie, there must be controls in place. With anything, an addict will go extreme. So the coping, life learning/dealing-with mechanisms are all so ‘simple’ sounding. “Just find the root cause of why you need to impair yourself”. That’s like saying, “Find the cause of why you need to drive your car to work every morning”. The trouble comes when the tickets pile up from going too fast and not stopping at red lights. The answer for a speedy driver isn’t to never drive a car again. He needs to leave earlier, take another route, realize that the tickets he gets are more money than he will make at his job that day, so it defeats the purpose.

If you know you want to get a needle in your arm because it feels good and then you won’t have to trip or stress about stuff, I ask, are you sure that’s why you’re doing it? Are you really doing it as a way to cope? That’s not coping. Aren’t you really doing it, or let me rephrase that, Didn’t you really do it because despite some trouble you were in, and despite life’s hard stuff everyone deals with, the reason you want to stick that needle in your arm is because it is a huge rush, it feels really good, and it fills a void in your life where there used to be someone you needed to answer to? Isn’t the doing something bad element a part of it? Isn’t the ‘fuck society’ voice yelling in your head to just do this nasty drug? Is there a thrill about being under the influence that goes deeper, into deviance?

Abstaining for the rest of your life will not fix that craving. Those are mom and dad issues that require some psychological direction. You need to be happy. Life is full of enough struggle to also stay miserable and deny yourself what little pleasure there is to be had. Just function.

Why not just take care of that relationship instead of your heroin relationship? That other relationship is cheaper, it’s a source of power and it gives pleasure, and it isn’t illegal. It provides you with everything you will ever need. Also, there’s a good chance that the person who can fill that void will also have no problem with you having a cold one, or even two. You could probably even smoke a doob. Do you know it’s legal in some states?

If you can find a happy road in this life where you get the love and companionship a man needs, shelter to keep out of the rain, and a warm, loving support network who is rooting for you, then why would that be something you think is expendable? Why not allow yourself to be happy? I’m far from perfect, really far away from anything close to perfect. No one to tell me no. I could fu*k my life off, and I did, a lot. For far too long, I did the wrong things, over and over again.

I set controls. I still allow some fun, but it’s regulated fun. It’s called functioning. I’m a functioning addict, who still has fun, experiences joy, deals with life’s problems (most anyway), and realizes my priority to not be homeless, or in jail is a guideline to making the right decisions.

Here’s an example:

You break your ankle playing beach volleyball over the weekend, you go to the hospital to have it fixed and when you’re discharged the doctor prescribes you week’s worth of opiate painkillers -

80% of the patients take them as directed and they work very efficiently at pain relief while giving them a pleasant feeling as a side effect. They know to use these pill sparingly as they can affect their ability to drive and perform basic tasks at work. Also as an added bonus many make sure to hold on to the remaining pills of the prescription that they were able to set aside once the pain subsided enough to become tolerable. They stored these drugs in their medicine cabinet in case of another emergency that might require their use. Many times this never comes and the bottle sits in their cabinet years after their expiration date.

10% of people that are prescribed these pills get an awful feeling a nausea while their skin constantly itches accompanied by other unpleasant side effects. With these people the pain may go away but the side effects of opiates are often nasty enough to where they cannot wait to stop their usage.

10% (All too well known to the public) Immediately after the first dose a state of complete euphoria sets in. They feel confident, motivated, happy as well as pain free. Once the effect wears off they use another dose (as their doctor told them to use as needed) to maintain their state of euphoria. The prescription is consumed more rapidly by the day as their tolerance builds. The prescribing physician notices this rapid use an refuses to prescribe more as a pattern of addiction is readily identified and more importantly to cover his behind from the FDA/DEA. Do not forget many of these people are intelligent, high achieving individuals and when told by their physician that they might be addicted many of them quickly dismiss this due to the dreadful stigma behind addicts, they can only envision the junkie on the street corner begging for loose change to feed his/her addiction. Some of them do seek help via rehab and are able to understand that their brain is programmed in such a manner that they are unable to use these types of medication - EVER. Most of this demographic quickly seeks out more pills from different doctors complaining of their injury that happened weeks ago and many times they are given a handful of additional pills which are consumed in a very short period, however they can only fool so many doctors for so long. By now their addiction has grown to a physical dependence, when in withdraws they get “dope-sick” which can be completely debilitating to the point of being fatal depending on how severe it is. Once this line is crossed they become desperate, begging friends for any left over meds they might have left or stealing from their bathroom cabinets. More often than not if they are affluent enough they are able to find other addicts in their community that they are able to buy from where the cost can easily be over $100/pill whereas insurance would pick up most of the tab on their scripts. Unfortunately these people justify their addictions by claiming their injuries are too debilitating to function without the drugs, they act as an echo chamber to one another. Once this habit becomes too expensive one of their friends tells them an easy way to save money. For only $20 they can purchase heroin which is far more potent and can easily be snorted. Again as tolerance builds and their heroin use skyrockets, someone points out that they are in fact “wasting” their drugs by snorting them. They are quickly shown how to cook it with a needle and spoon often called a “rig”, rarely does the addict ever shoot themselves up the first time but this a skill learned all too quickly after the first shot. Once the ultimate high is felt, their entire life is set aside until bank accounts are drained and credit cards are maxed out. They resort to hustling, theft and violence towards others to feed their habit which more often than not will land them in jail if they don’t overdose and die beforehand.

Once arrested and booked, typically multiple felony charges are brought against them. They have to rely on an overworked public defender that just want to make a deal with the court system. They cannot afford a good attorney at this point as they have no funds and all their bridges have been burned. After being detoxed an sent to rehab as part of their sentencing they are released into a world with an uphill battle at hand. For most this is too daunting, they use as soon as they are released, sometimes going back to their old dose which they used to require to get their fix, this many times is fatal as their tolerance has dropped after not using for several months. If they try to live in normal society their odds of finding a job a slim to none as they now have criminal records making them untouchable to most employers. After getting enough doors slammed in their face most of them go back visit their old addict friends and even though they try their best not to use but it is far too temping in most cases. They fall right back into their old lifestyle and are in and out of the local jail until many eventually wind up in prison or dead.

All because they were unfortunate to break an ankle while playing beach volleyball on the 4th of July…

They did not choose to be addicts. I do not believe anyone would choose this lifestyle.

I have already written about Heroin addict's life read now :

 Heroin-addicts-life-is-not-pretty

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