Psychology of Substances: You had been waiting for this moment. You and a buddy talked it over. Life had been hard lately, and a trip to your dealer’s house wasn’t that far. All it took was sending a text asking what’s in stock and if they are available. The trip itself was quick, and now you are back home ready and want relief from reality. No more thoughts of work or the stress of relationships, and the itch you know as a craving will finally be scratched. You seek happiness, but this is not that.
This behavior is chaotic repetition. It is abuse, dependency, and addiction. It is a disease, and you cannot help it. It progresses without you realizing it until you commit some regrettable consequence, whether to your body, mind, or someone else.
You think substances make you happy, but really, what drugs actually make you happy? With an understanding of their long-term consequences, there just simply is not one. You become reduced to a bug trapped in a spider’s web at no fault of your own. It is the feeling of being forever stuck in a cycle of discontentment.
Today, we tackle the idea of substance use disorder (SUD) as a progressive disease and not as a moral failing.
Why Is Addiction a Disease?
Addiction is a disease because of the damage it does to your body and your mind. The type of damage caused to you depends on what you are addicted to. If you struggle with long-term drug addiction, ailments such as cardiovascular disease, various cancers, or liver disease have the potential to harm you. Although addiction can do severe damage to your body, how addiction afflicts your mental health perpetuates its cycle. This cycle of addictive tendencies may run the gamut from long-term exposure to full-on substance abuse.
How Do You Look at Addiction?
How people look at addiction is complicated. Consider several perspectives when looking to understand it. Of course, you either suffer from addiction or do not, but everyone has different experiences with it even then.
If you are a person that suffers from addiction, you may or may not have yet accepted that. Accepting that you have an addiction tends to go hand-in-hand with understanding it as a disease. Up and until that point, it is easy to believe it is your own moral failing. This idea of it being your own moral failing is in part due to deterioration caused to your mental health by substance abuse. With alcohol, this would be anxiety, depression, or even inability to concentrate. Long-term alcohol addiction causes a fog over the mind.
What about those who do not suffer from addiction? As per a study published by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “people are significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward those suffering from drug addiction than those with mental illness.”
This study stems from the socio-economic-political question about whether the larger population supports “insurance, housing, and employment policies [and programs] that benefit those dependent on drugs.” Colleen L. Barry, Ph.D., MPP, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says that the reason for this is “the American public is more likely to think of addiction as a moral failing than a medical condition.”
How Do Drugs Mess With Your Emotions?
The emotional effects of drug addiction are less understood than its physical effects. Addiction seeds its way into how you deal with your emotions regardless of the emotion you experience. When in the throes of addiction, any feeling you experience, whether positive, negative, or neutral, feels like it needs to be managed with a substance. Addiction might cause a lack of patience and tolerance for experiencing your emotions.
That lack of patience or intolerance to your emotions makes you feel uncomfortable. Without confronting that discomfort, you set yourself on a path to continue managing your emotions with substance use. On the other hand, if you choose to acknowledge that discomfort, you have the ability to sit with it, be mindful of it, and let it subside without substance use.
This is primarily known as sitting with your discomfort. It is when you simply allow yourself to be comfortable with it. It can almost be described as a type of mindful meditation, knowing you do not need to go against your emotions; instead, you take time to let them pass.
Emotional challenges while under the influence of substances become more difficult to confront. They arise in times of stress and even when you are happy. In times of stress, you want to push everything aside, forgetting about your responsibilities while getting lost in the drug you are using. When you are happy, you want to celebrate, and the only way your brain knows how is through substance use. It absolutely becomes a conundrum.
For those looking to quit using, you face withdrawal and cravings. These tug on you until you mentally feel distressed. The lack of substance in your body creates a false need for it. Taking that substance quelches that discomfort. It makes you feel normal again.
This inability to feel normal when emotions come to pass is of no fault of your own. As described in a study titled: The Dark Side of Emotion: The Addiction Perspective, “drugs of abuse elicit powerful emotions” that increase craving for continued use and “maintenance of [addiction].”
Substance Abuse Is Not Your Moral Failing: Drugs and Discontent
We want to hammer this home: Substance abuse is not a moral failing despite what some of society thinks.
From that same Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study about the public’s perception of people with addiction versus mental disorders, they surveyed 709 participants. How participants answered gave some clarity as to why the public generally thinks of drug addiction as a moral failing.
- Only 22% said they would be willing to work closely on a job with a person with drug addiction versus 62% with someone with mental illness.
- 64% said employers should be able to deny employment to people with drug addiction versus 25% saying the same about those with mental illness.
- 43% were opposed to giving individuals with drug addiction health insurance benefits equivalent to the larger public versus 21% saying the same about those with mental illness.
- 30% believed recovery from either mental illness or drug addiction is impossible.
Addiction is popularly shown in the media as “street drug users in bad economic conditions” instead of suburban dwellers with opioid addiction or that of a functioning person who experiences alcohol dependency.
When discussing addiction with someone who does not experience it themself, it can oftentimes feel like you are talking to a brick wall. That is part of why Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) were created. Each non-organization acts as a safe space and community for like-minded people seeking help. That is also why allied organizations, such as AlAnon and NarAnon, exist because your support system cannot always understand what you are experiencing. These allied organizations provide your family and friends with representation and a community of their own.
Thinking of your addiction as a moral failing only provides you with discontent. It paints an ugly, false picture that there is no end to it, that there is no redemption. How substance abuse perpetuates and recycles itself in your life only keeps that frame of mind the same. Thinking about addiction as a disease provides you with an answer, with an end, and with the idea that help is on its way.
Are You Self-Medicating With Drugs?
Self-medicating with drugs is not the answer for treating your mental disorder. In fact, by using drugs to self-medicate, you will experience co-occurring conditions: a mental health disorder and a substance use disorder (SUD). As an effect of self-medicating your mental illness with drugs, treatment options narrow, and receiving full recovery becomes more difficult.
What does it mean to self-medicate? Self-medicating is when you are suffering from a mental health disorder, such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, or another medical health condition, such as injury, cancer, or chronic pain, and attempt to manage it with the misuse of drugs.
Why Do People Self-Medicate?
Why do people choose to self-medicate with drugs? You might choose or have chosen to self-medicate your mental health disorder or other health condition with drugs because of the temporary moment of relief it provides you. The feeling of being high or drunk, however, is fleeting. Continued use of a substance provides you with the same comfort, but over time, your tolerance builds. This leads to long-term drug misuse and the further health consequences that come with it.
Another reason you might choose to self-medicate is because of a lack of access to other treatment options. With how the American health system has evolved, seeking professional medical help feels like it is out of reach. Costs are astronomical, and an extended stay at a rehabilitation facility is not a real possibility for many individuals. As a result, out-patient treatment replaces in-patient treatment in many cases. It provides many of the same services as in-patient treatment, such as regular substance checks and counseling, but it leaves you lacking when trying to figure out how to manage your life without drugs or alcohol.
The Harms of Self-Medicating
How is self-medicating harmful? The harm with self-medicating with drugs is the risk of developing a substance use disorder in addition to addiction changing how your brain functions. Self-medicating can go unnoticed when partaking in recreational drug use due to how our society normalizes it. Recreational use can quickly develop into excessive use. Excessively using drugs to self-medicate for a mental disorder has the chance of worsening your symptoms. For example, taking ecstasy (MDMA) while suffering from depression or anxiety worsens your symptoms after the drug’s effect is gone.
Substance addiction is a disease that impacts your quality of life. As serious as it is, there is still hope. You have the power to take back control over your life. Stop addiction early in its tracks by seeking help with us, Real Recovery Sober Living, the largest provider of sober living beds in Florida. Please work with us to achieve long-term sobriety. Substance addiction is not a moral failing. From start to finish, we treat it like the disease that it is.
The focus of our group is to create a safe and stable community and environment for your recovery. From personal experience, we know that in order to achieve sobriety, both community and environment during treatment must reflect positive and constructive goals that build upon your life. Addiction and relapse do not have to be lifelong sentences. Acquire resources and strategies for long-term success. Don’t hesitate. Call (727) 290-9156 for more information about treatment options for your addiction.
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