What is addiction?

What is addiction? What makes somebody an addict?

These questions were how we started our workshops. It became clear that addiction is often misunderstood. While it can be problematic to use a substance to cover up feelings, self-medicate, or buffer life; while people can cause themselves and others enormous grief, and may need help stopping- this alone does not make an addict. Being an addict is about being powerless. It is about having a total inability to act in regards to the addiction (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, people). In the words of one of our workshop participants it is "having no voice". When all good reason stands before us we act in our addiction at the cost of everything else in life- relationships, career, our physical life, our souls. We have lost all choice.

It is confusing and terrifying. We often thought-If I was stronger, had better morals, worked harder this would not be happening. We felt an unbelievable sense of failure and that somehow we are the only person in the world this is happening to. ADDICTION IS A DISEASE NOT A MORAL DILEMMA. I don't know anybody who dreams when they are a child that one day they will ruin their life for a substance. No one says when I grow up I will give up all my dreams to get high or drunk, I will starve myself to death, I will take responsibility for a loved ones problems to the point of depression or suicide.

The amazing part is that everyone in the workshop felt the same. We shared the despair, loneliness, and shame. That is where the hope is. The hope is in telling the secret. Pulling ourselves out of the abyss into the arms of others who share the same problem(and there are so many of us). The hope is that we are not alone. But we must share our secret to find that out. Truth weakens addiction. And once we tell the truth we can start to recover. That is where the real work begins......but we will get to that later.



Addiction (noun)-the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.
Powerlessness (adjective)-lacking power to act; helpless: