The Progressive Stages Of Substance Abuse

Recovery Without Limits

Is A Life Without Limitation

Slowly your world will become dim and dull, and eventually, it becomes dark.

Gradually, one-by-one, elements of your life will be pushed aside until they're gone. The only thing that will be left is the addiction. You become "it," and "it" becomes you.

And that's just the way it is. Not sometimes, not usually. Always.

"I remember someone asking where "the old me" was - the one that was bright, creative and always had a good joke to tell. And when they said that, I thought to myself, "Is that what I was like?"

Kim M. - 4 years clean & sober

Most people in recovery will tell you that if someone else had done to them what they had done to themselves, they would kill that person in a heartbeat.

* * * * * * *

It's an intense and exaggerated process that gets you in to addiction. And it takes an intense and exaggerated process to get you out.

* * * * * * *

Addiction doesn't work on a partial, or "part-time" basis - it's a full-time job that becomes a total lifestyle. So it stands to reason that recovery from addiction also doesn't work on a partial or part-time basis. It too must be practiced full time and become a total lifestyle.

* * * * * * *

"In the early stages, addiction is one of the few things that will make you feel good, you'll idolize it while it's killing you. It actually depends on that for it to keep taking you apart bit by bit.

But in the latter stages, when it has full control of you, it doesn't particularly care how you feel.

That's because it's going to kill you anyway."

Cheryl V. 6 yrs. sober

* * * * * * * * * **

(Page 1 of 2)

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one."

C.S. Lewis

Before Anything Else, Understand This

This tutorial discusses the progressive stages of substance abuse that can ultimately lead to addiction. However, we want to be perfectly clear about something at the outset.

Each year, millions of kids experiment with drugs and alcohol, and the vast majority never become addicted to them. Despite what the fear-mongers say, if every kid who experimented with drugs and alcohol became addicted, we'd have so many addicts in our society you couldn't walk to the corner store without tripping over ten or fifteen of them.

We're not condoning experimentation, we're not promoting it, and we're not saying it's a good thing. But it is what it is - it happens, it's always happened, it's going to continue to happen, and that's just reality. Most kids are " hardwired" to be curious, and when you're young, you're not only curious, in many ways, you feel "bullet-proof." When you're young, forty foot trees aren't meant to be admired or just there to provide shade, they're meant to be investigated and climbed.

So this tutorial isn't about the majority of people who use drugs or alcohol, it's about the percentage who are "at risk" for addiction, which we contend is a combination of three factors. These factors are best summed up in this analogy:

Your genes load the addiction "gun." But whether or not the addiction "trigger" is ever pulled is determined by your environment while growing up and how you respond to that environment.

Nature Or Nurture - How About Both?

It certainly seems when you talk to hundreds, or thousands of people who have fallen victim to addiction, the old stigmas that we traditionally attached to it are ridiculous. It's not merely about weak character and poor choices. Nor is it a "moral" question. In our opinion, unless someone has the genetic predisposition for addiction, and the enabling or "promotional" environmental factors present while growing up, rarely can addiction get a foothold. So in terms of the "nature or nurture" question, it can play out like this:

You have no genetic predisposition for addiction, you grow up in a relatively healthy nurturing environment with good role models and early on, you learn adequate problem-solving skills. You're relatively comfortable both with yourself and your perception of the world. We see this type of individual as having very little, if any chance of developing addictive behavior. In fact, it's probably fair to say they would have to put forth great effort for addiction to ever become a problem. No one is completely "bullet-proof," but this is about as close as you come.

You have a genetic predisposition toward addiction (nature) and your environment and your response to your environment while growing up (nurture) provides fertile ground for the seed of addiction to grow. This type of individual, if left undiagnosed and treated, stands an excellent chance of falling prey to some "vehicle" of addiction, and in our opinion, it's almost a certainty. They can see all the anti-drug messaging in the world, it's not going to impact them. When the right addiction vehicle comes by that they feel comfortable in, they're going to get on it.

You have a genetic predisposition toward addiction (nature) but your environment and your response to your environment while growing up (nurture) do not provide fertile ground for the seed of addiction to grow and in fact, they inhibit it. And if your environment and your responses to your environment inhibit the genetic predisposition long enough, it's likely this will become an ingrained type of behavior. So while you possess the "seed" of addiction, it never becomes viable because your healthy environment and your healthy responses to your environment prevent the addiction from germinating. Now while this type of individual is unlikely to ever have an addiction issue, if their environment changes radically and their responses to the environment change and become unhealthy, then things could change.

The problem right now is that while science is making incredible progress in understanding the "nature - nurture" components of addiction and how they interplay with each other, we still have no "litmus test" and that means that for the time being, we have to rely on observation more than anything else. And it's less about physical observation, and more about observation of emotions, mood, motivations, and behaviors. In short, worry less about "style," and more about "substance." (No pun intended)

In The Beginning....

Perhaps one of the most fitting ways we've heard the progressive nature of addiction was put like this. "In the beginning, it was all enjoyable with no problems. Then it was mostly enjoyment with a few problems. Then it was mostly problems with a little bit of enjoyment. And in the end, it was all problems and no enjoyment." But here's the key - it starts with enjoyment. For example, the future alcoholic can drink for the very first time and get so drunk they're sick for two days afterward. But despite how awful they felt, they will do it again because what they remember is the freedom from their normal "self" before they got sick. The act of feeling something other than how you feel normally holds a great attraction for potential victims of addiction because more often than not, deep down inside, they don't like how they feel normally. In fact, many hate their reality, and their normal perception of themselves.

Talk to anyone in treatment or recovery, and they'll tell you that's exactly what it was like for them. We all enjoyed it in the beginning, that's why we did it! Our "substance, or behavior of choice" was the magic vehicle that took us from a psychological place we weren't comfortable in, to one that we were very comfortable in. But it progresses into something else and the "catch" is that it doesn't happen overnight. In fact for most of us, it moved like the hour hand on a clock. You can't see that it's moving forward, but it does move forward. And once time is up, the only thing left to do is make a crash landing and crash landings are rarely smooth - and in some cases they're fatal.

But while it's tragic that some people destroy themselves and/or die from drug and alcohol abuse, what's also tragic is the enormous number of people they affect while actively addicted. Everyone is affected by someone with a drug or alcohol problem, from their friends, family and employers, to the ordinary citizen who pays for the abuse through their taxes. And the ultimate insult of addiction is that it doesn't even destroy its victims quickly and humanely, but instead chews off little bits at a time until all that's left is a skeleton of what was once a full human being. As they say, "it's not the addiction that kills you, it's the lifestyle."

Remember The Word "Yet"

As someone begins the inevitable downward spiral that addiction takes you on, you'll often hear a variety of statements that indicate denial. They sound something like this: "Well, at least I haven't lost my job." "My wife hasn't left me." "I haven't lost my car because of drunk driving." "I've never stolen money to buy coke." "I've never not shown up for work because I was too high." etc. etc. And as people in recovery, we can absolutely assure you that all these statements can be answered with one word, and the word is "yet." Whatever addiction hasn't already destroyed, it's just a matter of time before it does. Whatever addiction hasn't forced you to do in order to keep it fed, given enough time, it will. Toward the end, many of us in recovery can remember saying to ourselves, "Well at least I'm not dead." This too, could have been answered with - "yet."

So on the next page, let's look at a hypothetical "at risk" person, and see how addiction creeps in. And please note, addiction is complex and so are people who fall prey to addiction. So by necessity, we have to use a great deal of generalization here and events and timelines are compressed. And while this deals with substance abuse, many of the dynamics involved are relevant within behavioral based addictions as well. (gambling, internet porn, etc.)

Top Of Page >>>>>Next Page (2)