Understanding Addiction and Recovery

What is Addiction?

Addiction is a bio-psycho-social-physical disease affecting people who regulary use mood-altering drugs (MADs). An MAD is a substance that one uses to change their moods, usually without any clinical prescription. Overusing MADs leads to dependence, in turn, leading to addiction.

Let’s define what bio-psycho-social-physical means:

• Bio means that addiction affects biological processes in the body, mostly in the brain by altering brain chemistry.
• Psycho means that addiction affects one’s psychological state. MAD use exercebates issues such as anxiety and stress.
• Socio entails addiction’s capacity to interfere with a person’s social life. One can either start isolating themselves to use MADs or engage more with people in unhealthy ways.
• Physical refers to how addiction affects an individual’s physique. They may lose weight, for instance, or start experiencing issues such as water retention which leads to a puffy face.

Addiction is progressive, meaning it takes time, mostly years to develop. These are the stages of addiction:

1. Pre-Contact: In this stage, a person has not started using MADs.
2. Contact: Here, a person can use MADs unknowingly. For example, one can consume a drink spiked with alcohol or eat a cake baked using liquor.
3. Experimentation: Most people in this stage do so out of curiosity.
4. Social Use: Friends and peers may influence a person to use MADs. During this stage, a person can use MADs comfortably without any adverse effects.
5. Heavy Use: During this stage, an individual may be using MADs regularly and in heavy doses and may still not experience any negative effects.
6. Problematic: It is at this stage that problems begin to emerge. For instance, one may get an alarming medical report from the doctor or warnings from an employer.
7. Rock-Bottom: During this stage, the individual can’t survive without their drug of choice. They live to use and use to live. They have at this point lost their job, family, or other important aspect.
8. Addiction: The individual is so used to using their drug of choice that when they stop using or don’t get a stable supply, they start experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

What is Recovery?

Recovery is the process by which an addict tries to get their life back in order. It is a period marked by significant challenges, since there’s always the possibility of relapse.

You first start by abstaining from using MADs, then seek help from professionals who will help you during this period of transformation. Withdrawal symptoms are common for most addicts who try to stop using MADs.

The key is to be strong as you navigate this phase. In some cases, such as extreme alcohol withdrawal, you need to seek medical assistance right away.

Most professional addiction therapists will recommend the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or Narcotics Anonymous (NA) programs. The two programs are the same, offering the 12-step program of recovery. AA is strictly for alcoholics while NA is meant for other addicts other than alcoholics.

Interestingly, the 12-step program can help anyone recover from any form of addiction. Therefore, it is also applicable to people addicted to other things such as gambling, sex, and shopping, among others.

Reach Out

If you or anyone you know suffer from any form of addiction and want to get into recovery, you can reach out to us by filling the form in this website’s Contact Page. We wish you all the best!