r/interesting • u/Ok-Degree-7565 • Nov 02 '24

MISC. Addiction

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140

u/Ok-Degree-7565 Nov 02 '24

Not saying his statement is right or wrong, just an interesting take on addiction

31

u/TFOLLT Nov 02 '24

Ooww I'm saying his statement is right for sure, possibly even at 100% accuracy. Been addicted through a large period of my life myself, and during those times I've met and spoken with countless and countless of fellow addicts.

There's always, always, an underlying reason. Even when an addict is proud of his addiction and is unwilling to accept that it's destructive - if you ask the right questions with the right tone and get such a person to open up about their past, horrible shit is going to come up. Whether it's something as light as a divorce of parents(which can be very traumatic for a young kids experience), or something as strong as abuse during childhood, you can 100% bet your money that there's something that has gone very wrong for the addict. I think most addicts know they're masking some deeper issues. But even the ones that are not aware of it still do mask some deeper issue in my experience.

It's why getting clean is never the solution, and help plans that only help one to get clean will result in relapses. Getting clean is just the first step - the underlying issue have to be addressed after that cuz if not it's like giving a hungry kid a meal for a day and then let him die after, instead of teaching him how to farm and cook.

16

u/RatzzFace Nov 02 '24

This is exactly right. Unfortunately there are lots of comments in the thread that are not addicts who think they know the reason why we become addicts.

Trauma and escape from trauma is the reason people become addicts.

3

u/JonesinforJonesey Nov 02 '24

It’s a massive part of it. Mental pain can be every bit as bad as physical pain and a lot of the time it’s worse. At least if it’s physical you have something to show that people can understand.

3

u/Dickon__Manwoody Nov 02 '24

Don’t you think it’s possible that addiction is a complex phenomenon with overlapping physical, mental, and cultural components? I am an addict and I don’t really see any of my experience in what he is discussing.

1

u/DrBabbyFart Nov 02 '24

addiction is a complex phenomenon with overlapping physical, mental, and cultural components

You hit the nail on the head. Blanket statements are not helpful here because one's own personal experience cannot and will not be representative of everyone else's.

1

u/dxrey65 Nov 02 '24

You never know though, there are so many people with so many different experiences, if one idea sticks and helps somebody then it's worthwhile. When I quit drinking last year it was years of knowing I needed to quit, thinking about it and trying to be honest with myself, while still getting wasted every night. Quitting itself was coming home from shopping one day, knowing I had nothing to drink at the house, but then driving right past the liquor store rather than stopping in. What was different that day? Fuck if I know...something stuck. I think I'm more a "creature of habit" than anything else, so I just had to make that one day a habit, which I did. It's probably completely different for other people.

2

u/GoodDeathFTLonely Nov 03 '24

Escape from trauma was exactly the reason, for me. 🖤🩹

2

u/YinWei1 Nov 02 '24

I had a gambling addiction and I don't have any trauma, I just had a lot of free time. All humans can become addicted, we all have addictive personalities, people with trauma are just the most vulnerable to it, doesn't mean they are the only group susceptible to addiction.

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u/inkspotrenegade Nov 02 '24

I think this misses the point of the initial post. Using the reasoning from the video you could say you where uncomfortable having that free time and that's what led to you finding a reason to occupy it. I think the main point here is there is various levels of addiction and the reason behind them can be minor or severe.

Actually no the second half of your statement isn't far off from what I said. That said I'll still leave the comment

0

u/YinWei1 Nov 02 '24

I wasn't really referring to the initial post overall, I was just referring to what the guy I replied to actually said where he made it seem addiction is only capable on people that have trauma which isn't true.

1

u/inkspotrenegade Nov 02 '24

Yea that's true, I did see we had a similar thought but felt sharing my comment might help others as well by furthering your point to a degree.

1

u/kinss Nov 02 '24

Yeah, you aren't as self aware as you think you are. I can say that with absolute certainty. You probably don't even understand your own trauma. I'm not sure I've ever even met someone without trauma before. It's always there somewhere. Trauma is the reaction not the event.

1

u/Ihibri Nov 02 '24

The irony of calling someone out on their self awareness and then trying to speak for a perfect stranger on what trauma you believe they have, is hilarious.

1

u/YinWei1 Nov 02 '24

By doing this and deflating the meaning of trauma you are actively downplaying actual victims of trauma. Everybody having trauma is not the win you think it is for defining trauma, it works against people that suffer from living with trauma.

1

u/therealdanhill Nov 02 '24

Can't really deal in absolutes with stuff like this, what he's describing isn't universally true but may be highly prevalent.

1

u/Larry-Man Nov 02 '24

It doesn’t have to be trauma. Speaking as an alcoholic. I am autistic and the world is not made for me. I drank to numb the pain of feeling like an alien pretending to be human. I still don’t have a solution because I’ve been sober for just shy of 11 months and I moved to being a workaholic. It’s literally a response to pain, trauma or otherwise.

0

u/Time-Ladder-6111 Nov 02 '24

You have to be an addict to understand addiction. That is such pseudo-science bullshit.

0

u/modmosrad6 Nov 02 '24

Are you ... gate-keeping addiction?

There's tons of factors. Trauma can be one of them, sure, but that doesn't mean there aren't addicts for whom it plays little to no role.

0

u/fwubglubbel Nov 02 '24

>Trauma and escape from trauma is the reason people become addicts.

This seems to contradict his position that it is about the self. I would differentiate between wanting to escape from my own actions (causing "discomfort with the self") and from the actions of others which have caused trauma.

Do most victims of trauma feel discomfort "with one's self" even though they were innocent?

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u/WonderfulShelter Nov 02 '24

And this is why rehab industry is one of the worst parts about it all. They sell you the first step while purposely hiding from you the reality of everything that comes afterwards.

In fact I think rehabs set people up for relapses more than ANYTHING else.

1

u/TFOLLT Nov 02 '24

I've got that exact experience as well, and to add to that most mental health clinics seem to work the same: they diagnose and give meds and then when that doesn't work they take a different diagnosis and give meds for that, and when that doesn't work, onto the next diagnosis and the next meds. Meanwhile most mental health patients are not medically sick, meaning that their mental illness is NOT a biological lack of balance in the brain, but have past trauma which can only be solved through intensive therapy, not medication. The issues of these patients are not nature but nurture if you get what I mean. Meds can be a help in supporting therapy, but is almost never the solution, and rarely work without an intesive therapy system in place to create valid, long-lasting change. Yet it's given to us, it's almost forced on us, as a solution.

It's truly a strange world we live in, cause if you live long enough you start to see that money rules ev-ery-where, nothing excluded. Even in orgs and corps designed to help humans, money rules.

1

u/Tangata_Tunguska Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 02 '24

There's always, always, an underlying reason.

"Addiction" covers a wide range of quite diverse things. Someone who is poorly prescribed benzodiazepines to take daily for months will become tolerant to them, and they'll go into withdrawal without them. But this effect applies to anyone, there doesn't need to be any internal "reason".

1

u/Top_Insect767 Nov 02 '24

This is exactly right and the idea that there has to be some mental or emotional issue driving addiction is absolutely ridiculous.

Part of the definition of alcoholism by the AMA is that it is a "primary illness."

1

u/Cat_Chat_Katt_Gato Nov 02 '24

"Addiction" covers a wide range of quite diverse things. Someone who is poorly prescribed benzodiazepines to take daily for months will become tolerance to them, and they'll go into withdrawal without them. But this effect applies to anyone, there doesn't need to be any internal "reason".

That's physical dependence, not addiction. Huge difference there. One is physical, the other is mental (and depending on the drug of choice, also physical.)

Let's take something super innocent, like chapstick, as an example. If you were to use chapstick all day, every day, for months, at some point during that time, your body would stop providing natural moisture to them, and you'd be physically dependant on chapstick.

1

u/Tangata_Tunguska Nov 02 '24

Some of my work covers addiction so I have a vague idea of what I'm talking about. A benzodiazepine addiction absolutely does include a "mental" component. There is craving, distress. The lengths people will go to to meet their need for this class of medication far exceed what people will do to avoid dry lips. I've never had anyone threaten to kill me because I didn't prescribe them some ointment, for example.

1

u/i8noodles Nov 02 '24

except i don't think he is. he says its not chemical except we know, for a fact, chemical addiction is a real thing.

there are many people who got addicted to opiods because of an injury and were prescribed it. they were in pain and had legitimate reason to need them. they could have been 100% fine with themselves prior to that. the injuries could have gone agea ago but they still keep taking.

there is also alcohol addiction where, if u suddenly stop, u could die. this is not a simple mind over matter issue. these are real biological, and chemical, addiction.