What Is Addiction

What is Addiction?

Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use despite harmful consequences to the individual who is addicted and to those around them.

There now that we know how the experts define addiction, lets undertake to find out what the people afflicted with this malady have to say.

According to some with whom I have dealt over the past 14 years + the descriptions run the gamut from escape, to self realization/actualization. Aside from the obvious side effects which are inherent with addiction, and the propensity of the addict to engage in activities which are bound to effect a loss of freedom, what really happens to keep the addict addicted to his/her substance of choice?

On many occasions, I have had the opportunity to sit and just talk with a multitude of addicts and really tried to listen to what they had to say in describing themselves and their habits. Accordingly these people's addiction were classified differently, some were sex addicts, some were addicted to substance, some were addicted to gambling, etc, etc, etc.

The list of addictions would take up about a ream of paper, the point of interest to at least me anyway was that every time I had the opportunity to speak to a person that was addicted, aside from the terminology used, and the explicative being deleted, the substance of the conversation was always the same.

The basic make up of an addict is:

1. The person is male/female or whatever.

2. The person is white, black, brown, yellow, red, blue, pink or whatever.

3. The person is between the ages of 1 month to 100 years.

4. The economic status is poor low, poor middle, poor upper, middle low, middle middle, middle upper, rich low, rich middle, rich upper.

5. The person's educational level is drop out, high school graduate, associate/bachelor/ masters degree, post graduate, doctoral degree.

6. The person's religious ideology is Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Islam, etc, etc, etc.

In basic language, there is no predisposing sexual, racial, age specific, economic oriented, educational level determining factor that leads someone to becoming an addict. The addiction started when the person was first offered a substance, or situation that lent itself to transporting that person to a place of self identified safety or power. Within this sphere of safety or power, the person was beyond the harmful reach of today. This feeling has been described as Nirvana, Shangri-La, return to the womb, getting into, dropping out, getting wasted, getting high, etc, etc, etc. Once this alteration in reality is experienced, the desire to return to that same feeling is overwhelming to say the least. This is the "Virgin High", reached only once and never again. The pursuit of this "Virgin High" starts the pathological behaviors that we recognize as part of the "Addictive Behavior"