Why Does Addiction Win More Often Than Not?

Today I am going to write about something I know all too well unfortunately, but really have been avoiding writing about in hopes that the first time I wrote about it, I would be writing about how to help people through it opposed to my own problems with it. Addiction is the demon I will talk about today.

People have argued for years whether addiction is a disease or if it is just a choice and people simply are making excuses for why they can’t get their substance abuse under control. Well, the American Society of Addiction Medicine explains the definition in short as: Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviours. 

If you are interested in reading the longer version and which parts of the brain addiction effects, read more here: https://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/public-policy-statements/1definition_of_addiction_long_4-11.pdf?sfvrsn=a8f64512_4 

When someone develops an addiction, the brain craves the reward of the substance. This is due to the intense stimulation of the brain’s reward system. In response, many users continue use of the substance; this can lead to a host of euphoric feelings and strange behavioural traits. 

The brain regulates temperature, emotion, decision-making, breathing, and coordination. This major organ of the body also impacts physical sensations in the body, cravings, compulsions, and habits. Under the influence of a powerful and harmful chemical, individuals abusing substances can alter the function of their brain. 

Drugs interact with the limbic system in the brain to release strong feel-good emotions, affecting the individual’s body and mind. Individuals continue taking drugs to support the intense feel-good emotions the brain releases; this creates a cycle of drug use and intense highs. Eventually, they take the drug just to feel normal. 

Scientists have concluded that the risk of addiction is a complex combination of both genes and environmental influences.  If you have parents that are addicted to some sort of substance before you were born, plus you grow up watching them use this substance all the time, it is more likely you will also abuse substances.  

There isn’t just one addiction or alcoholism gene. Scientists have identified multiple genes associated with addiction, in general, as well as genes associated with addiction to specific substances. 

I really didn’t want to make this post all about the facts of addiction though, so, if you want all of that information click on the link I have above. 

And here is a video of Joe Rogan discussing addiction which is pretty interesting:

Is it all about just not ever trying any substance, making it impossible for us to become addicted because we never know what we’re missing? Maybe, but what seventeen year old gets offered their first hit of a joint or their first beer and thinks “hm, I might become addicted to this so, I will just stay away.” No teenager ever?  

My story of addiction starts when I was fairly young. I was 14 when I smoked for the first time, I liked it, bought myself a bong and eventually started smoking every day. Within a few months I switched over to what we call “poppers” in our town which is a bowl packed with tobacco first, weed on top, you light the weed, inhale slowly until it’s all lit and then you pop it all through in one hit. The first popper I took, I felt like I was spinning and for just a brief moment lifted up off the ground and I felt euphoric. I loved it. So, I started buying packs of cigarettes along with the weed I smoked every day. I’m twenty six now and I still do this. 

I have made progress though I can say (a little at least.) Well, you know how our parents always told us that weed was a gateway drug? I fought them on this time and time again. I told them I liked having a “chilled out kind of high”, not “out of my mind, can’t control myself high.” I didn’t even like alcohol at that point in my life, it just tasted nasty to me and I could never drink enough, quick enough to actually feel a buzz so I stuck to my weed. Convinced that my parents were so wrong.  

After about a year and a half,  I started drinking a little bit at social gatherings, not a lot, but more open to the idea of feeling something else because weed high was getting boring. Alcohol didn’t do it for me though.  

My mom had a bunch of pills laying around due to her back injuries and other things. It’s funny knowing how oblivious I was when I look back knowing what I know now. My mom was and is an addict, plain and simple. She didn’t need 80mg oxy’s for her back.. she wanted them. There wasn’t a medication that was “created just for her body type and would kill anyone else if they drank it” it was methadone. Under lock and key not because she wanted to but because the doctors made it mandatory to do so if you wanted to bring the methadone home. 

The methadone phase only last a few months, she was back on the pills shortly after.. and whatever else she was taking to make her act the way she did although she always thought she was doing a good job at acting “normal.” So, I started stealing her pills to see what it felt like and I fell in love. Oxy’s made me feel like I was floating on a cloud and all the worries in my head, gone. Also any pain from the smoke was gone, I could take 20 tokes in a row and not feel a thing. It was like air going down.  

Then one wasn’t enough, then 2 wasn’t, then 3, then 9. I was 15 when I started doing this and did not make any money at the time. My parents gave us weekly allowance ($25?) And I had money saved from birthdays and Christmases. That was gone in no time so I needed a job. I started working at Canadian tire and spent all my money on drugs. Oxy’s got boring after a while as well and when my friend introduced my sister, my other girls and I to MDMA, I was all for it. We tried it out at the park together for the first time and stayed up all night laughing, crying, pondering, talking, feeling on top of the world. I never felt better in my whole life.

I told my boyfriend at the time about the drug and since he sold weed he decided to start selling M too. He got the purest form of it, just the crystal rocks and he would crush them up to order and put them in capsules. Well, the easy access I had to this drug, made it so much harder for me to not do it. I was depressed at that point of my life and MDMA made me feel like I could wholeheartedly live a life of happiness and actually do something with my life. I presumed if I didn’t over-due it and just took enough to raise my dopamine levels, then I’d be okay.  

But once again, 4 points wasn’t enough, until 6 wasn’t enough, until 10 wasn’t enough. I needed more each time and I needed to keep taking it to keep the buzz going and to keep my body from aching. I remember waking up in the morning and feeling like there was someone aggressively sanding down my bones with sandpaper and then drilling little holes into them. My back was the worst. MDMA takes the spinal fluid out of your back and man did I feel like an old lady at only 15-17 years old.  

I stopped getting that high from the MDMA and was just taking it to get rid of the pain. All while I was doing the MDMA I was drinking, smoking poppers like crazy, and still taking a few oxy’s a day to make the buzz a little better. 

Here’s a poem I wrote when I was 17 and battling addiction:  

I really can say I’m proud of myself for never resorting to snorting the pills and MDMA like my friend group around me started doing. Can’t really call them “friends” we were a group of stoners who liked to sit around and get as high as we could in some garage or basement, not saying a word to each other usually just enjoying the peace.  

When I didn’t have access to drugs because a dealer didn’t show up, I couldn’t get a hold of one, my boyfriend and I were fighting about something or the other as usual, or my mom hid her drugs, I was a mess to say the least. I punched things, I snapped on everyone around me, I’ve spazzed out on the floor like a fish, wriggling my whole body around hitting myself, hitting my body off the floor, my head off doors, my fists through walls. I would say the meanest things to the people close to me just to get under their skin, so they were as upset as I was maybe? I don’t know why I did what I did exactly because I became a monster to the point my family was scared of me and for me. 

Then I was left to soak in my own self-pity and hatred towards myself for the things I do to the people I love. I convinced myself I needed drugs in order to be happy. In order to get rid of this anger I held. Little did I know, most of  the anger was because of the drugs in the first place.  

Whenever I didn’t have drugs, I would search the internet for pills that could get you high in the medicine cabinet. Cold medicine and gravel have active ingredients that could really mess with your brain. I read forums about it, mostly bad highs people explained but I assumed I’d be the exception so I started taking cold medicine, active ingredients were dextromethorphan, guaifenesin, and phenylephrine, and man did they get me feeling nice once I took enough of them. I could genuinely see, though, how abuse of these pills could turn someone psychotic.. I don’t know how to explain the high but it was an almost uncomfortable kind of high. Everything was brighter, louder, more annoying. But my brain was still altered and I wasn’t sober at least, so I took them whenever I had nothing else. Or sometimes just mixed them with whatever else I had to make it go a longer way. 

I experimented with different medicine cabinet pills for a while until one day I took way too much and mixed way too many different pills that I thought I lost my mind for good. I did lose my mind for about 3-4 days. I didn’t know who was around me, what I was doing, I heard voices, hallucinated things. I was at home with just my little sister for 2 days until my parents got back but have vivid memories of doing so much more that night than just lying on the couch with her watching orange is the new black, apparently.  

I am not going to get into that whole thing because that’s another story altogether. If you’re interested in reading about the worst drug experience I ever had in my life though, here’s the post on that story:  https://mymindoesntstops.org/get-out-before-its-too-late/

After this experience, my parents got really worried about me and put me in a Narcotics Anonymous program. As well as mindfulness training and individual as well as group therapy. I also went to our family doctor to talk about the depression and anxiety I was feeling on the daily and she had me on waiting list to talk to a psychiatrist but in the mean time she tested different anti-depressants on me such as Fluoxetine, (Prozac) Paroxetine, (Paxil, Paxil CR) and Sertraline (Zoloft). I felt zoned out half the time, I could sit and stare at the wall for hours. Also I continued to take other pills at the time so I’ll really am unsure if the anti-depressants made any difference. I think Paxil was the third one I tried and after a year or so of taking this, I just stopped taking it one day, which is not what you are supposed to do.  

My emotions spiralled. I’ll never fully know if it was the drugs, the abusive relationship I was in or the lack of prescribed drugs I should’ve been taking that we’re supposed to help me. All I know is, for a few years I was an emotional wreck. Eventually at 18 I got a full time job in a kitchen and I slowly starting weaning myself off of the pills because I genuinely did want a better life for myself.  But then when life seemed dull, and the thoughts continued to bounce around my head a mile a minute, I started drinking to slow it all down. 

I started buying bottles of tequila and a few tall boys every day, drinking straight from the bottle, to the point where I could no longer function. I would either black out and forget half my night or I would lay down and sleep and wake up in my own vomit. Soon after the heavy drinking started, I met someone and fell in love way quicker than I should have. I wasn’t ready to love someone when I didn’t even love myself. He tried to help me in many ways, tried to get me away from the alcohol and I can say he really did help in ways. I didn’t want him to be ashamed of me so I drank less. I drank behind his back for the most part, but he always knew. Eventually I stopped buying bottles and stuck to just beer. 6 tall boys weren’t enough after a few days I started buying more, and more. I started getting 15 a day, usually with only a couple left for the next day. Yeah, maybe I wasn’t drinking hard liquor anymore, but I was still drinking alcohol and smoking constantly. I pushed the person I loved away. I was alone for a bit, telling myself I’d do better and stop drinking so much. 

Then I met someone else. Someone who loves to drink and has done it for years. As well as smoke poppers. At first I was all excited cause I could drink and smoke with no judgement. Now…. I miss someone pushing me to stop. We buy 24 beers a days and rarely do we have any left behind for the next day.  

I used to be so excited to wake up, make myself some coffee and breakfast, sit down at the kitchen table or patio table, have my notebook and pen or book and start the day fresh. I loved my morning routine. Now, more often than not I wake up and drink a beer. Once I start I can’t stop so the drinking is all day thing. I used to drink coffee, water and juices throughout the day too but now it just seems to be beer and only beer. I keep saying “oh I’ll drink water later, I don’t want to ruin the buzz” but I never want to ruin the buzz so I never drink water.  

Recently I got engaged to the man I love and I’m excited for a new chapter but I am also worried that we are going to keep enabling each other. We have talked about slowing down way too many times and not made any changes. The smoking is killing us slowly, our lungs are so bad, we cough way more than we should for people our age. I recently starting feeling my liver hurting as well, which not something I should feel yet. 

Apparently, by percussion the average female liver should be 7cm, mine is 13cm last time I got an ultrasound in emergency (due to major stomach pains.) Doctors are shocked when I tell them how many beers I drink a day and many times have told me to take it easy.  

My mom’s side of the family are all alcoholics and pill poppers. Her parents died in their fifties and so did most of her cousins. The few she has left are on their way out as well. My mom is lucky to still be working and seemingly “healthy.” Her lungs are shot, though and she tells me her liver hurts all the time and who knows what the rest of the drugs are doing to her. I don’t think she cares anymore, I she think has accepted her fate. She’s going on later fifties now and I’m worried for her all the time.  

Why do we have to grow up? I just want to be a careless kid again where happiness could be found in the setting sun, the smell of breakfast in the morning, a scary movie with your friends or a feel good one with the family. Thanksgiving dinner with the family, sun kissed skin and blisters from all the time spent on the swings and monkey bars. My dad once said “life is short, if you don’t stop to look around every once in a while, you’ll miss it.” Well, dad you were right, life is slipping through my fingertips and I don’t know which places to look to slow it all down.

Like, wasn’t I just nineteen yesterday looking for thrift store furniture for my new basement apartment with outdated wallpaper and paint colours? Trying to compliment the white wallpaper with yellow tulips all over it. I remember my boyfriend and I at the time bought a cheap chandelier to put in the dining room to liven up the place. Wasn’t that like last month? A couple years ago wasn’t I dreading going to high school everyday thinking it would never end? Or heading down to Wasaga with the girls to lose track of time for hours? And a few years before that, wasn’t I rollerblading through the neighbourhood as the other neighbourhood kids chucked pine-cones at me because I sucked at rollerblading? Scraping our knees, playing manhunt, double-dutch and grounders and hopscotch. Wasn’t that like, not that long ago? Can I go back? Can I feel those feel good moments again?

I don’t want to accept this as my fate..I know I am only 26 now but that’s the problem with a lot of us. We keep on convincing ourselves that we are young and have lots of time to make the change. Before we know it “lot’s of time” catches up with us real quick. We deal with more stresses as life goes on and the substances become our scapegoats, our go-to’s, our only form of what we believe to be “happiness.” Our only form of relief in this chaotic world.  

I hate it though, because I am so sick of just drinking and smoking to the point where all I want to do is sleep, or should I say have to do because I cannot drink anymore without falling over and I cannot stay awake without drinking, because where is the fun in that? Writing, and creating art used to be the things that got me high on life, that got me excited about a bright future. Now, I have no motivation and lack creativity. My mind doesn’t seem to think the way it used to. I need alcohol to stay positive but in the long run it only makes me negative. I want more. I want to take the first step but don’t know how. Excuses, excuses, I know, that’s what us addicts do. I have tried more than once to take the first step. I cut back for a day, maybe two, but the next day it all goes back to normal. I’ve kept track of my drinks and tokes and tried to do less each day. I think the longest I have lasted with that was about 6 days until the numbers started rising again. 

I do want more. If there is anyone who has a similar story and some advice to go along with it, or even if you just wanted to talk about how addiction affects us, please reach out through email or leave your story in the comments and I will reach out to you.  

If you are interested in reading about a variety of different subjects such as mental health, inside the minds of disturbed artists, the importance of being an introvert, importance of body language and non-verbal communication, the importance of mental rehearsal and imagery, the power of our minds, mindfulness, metaphysics and the cosmic world and how all the great genius’ of the past have tapped into this power to achieve seeming miracles, addiction, abuse, the effects loneliness and so much more, please check out some of my other posts: