Can Drug Addiction Be Overcome?

It’s 9 p.m. and most people are winding down from the day’s activities, that is, with the exception of you. While everyone else is getting ready for bed you are getting ready to start your day, or night, whichever you prefer to call it. That’s because you are a drug addict, addicted to street drugs. Your preference is crack, but if you run into meth, or speed, or cocaine, or pot, or pills, they will do just fine.

If you are a male, to feed your unmanageable habit sooner or later you will probably resort to stealing and robbery, if you haven’t already done so. If you’re a female, when you run out of cash to buy your own fix soon you will realize that the surefire way to get your fix is to turn to prostitution, or to turn a trick as it is known on the streets. At any cost, whether you are male or female, you are already practicing lying on a professional level. You lie to your family, your friends, the police, and anyone you can convince to let you have some money to supply your habit.

This is an average day in the life of an addict. But there are addicts that live a camouflaged life. They are the ones who are addicted to prescription drugs. Prescribed by a physician for a legitimate sickness, these chameleon addicts now abuse the very thing that was intended to help them, but instead they abuse their own source of help and if left unchecked their abuse will lead to a myriad of problems, including possible death by overdose.

When I was a crack addict I was completely at the mercy of the drug. Oh yes, like all addicts I denied that I was addicted, but it became so evident that even I could no longer deny my addiction. I did everything in my power in pursuit of the next hit and I wouldn’t give up until I either found that hit or until I was completely exhausted trying to find it.

Often we talk about drug addiction from the vantage point of the clean eye, that is, from the viewpoint of someone who has never been addicted. But things look quite different when viewed through the eyes of the addicted.

Drug addicts don’t just wake up one day and say, “I think I want to be a drug addict.” The process happens quite slowly. When an addicted person realizes they are addicted, it is often too late to stop using on their own.

Drug addicts are hurting individuals, and are often good family people who just took a wrong turn in life and attended the wrong party at the wrong time. The average drug addict does not want to be an addict. Addicts feel the emotional pain associated with their addiction, but they have become professionals at covering up their emotions, and they do it so well that the average person is unable to see through the cover up.

Some believe drug addiction is a sickness, while others believe it is a disease. From my own personal experience with drugs I would have to say that it is neither a sickness nor a disease, but it is a weakened condition of the spirit and desires of an individual. In other words, the addicted person was damaged before their encounter with drugs.

Before you start writing a negative reply to my last statement let me explain. But first I would like to ask a question: Why is it that some people are more prone to use drugs than others? You see the root cause of addiction lies within the emotional process of a person rather than in their genealogy and behavior.

Now I am not a scientist, nor am I a doctor, but I am a recovered drug user which qualifies me to advise those who use drugs based purely on my experience.

Whether the drug is a prescription drug or some type of illicit drug, people who become addicted to drugs have an underlying emotional problem to begin with. Drug use is often associated with low self esteem, lack of confidence, or just a lack of love. For me, it was a little bit of each of these scenarios.

I believe we are looking in all the wrong places for a cure to drug addiction. When you tell someone that because they were once an addict they will always be an addict, what you are really telling them is there is no cure for their addiction. Or when you tell someone that their drug use is a sickness or a disease that must be treated with alternative drugs, what you are really telling them is that the only way they can overcome their drug addiction is with another drug.

But can drug addiction be overcome? This is a 64 million dollar question that has as many answers. Personally, I am of the opinion that a person can overcome an addiction to drugs, but the process of drug addiction will never be fully overcome. Why? Because someone profits from drug use and because people have a will and they can make choices.

A pastor at a church I once attended said to me, “A man is a vessel that has to always be completely filled with something. That vessel is either filled with good or bad, but it must be filled to the top with something.”

To stop using drugs you have to replace that drug with something thus making you a slave to your deliverer. If you take another drug to relieve you of your addiction, will you not be bound by the replacement drug? If you go to a rehabilitation clinic, like I did, and you are told that you have to attend NA meetings for the rest of your life, will you not become a slave to NA?