What Is Addiction?
Addiction is a chronic, but treatable, disorder. People who are addicted find themselves unable to control their need for alcohol or other drugs, even when they are aware of the negative health, social or legal consequences. This lack of control is the result of changes in the brain that are induced by alcohol or other stimulants. These changes, in turn, cause changes in the person’s behaviour.
Drugs, including alcohol, affect the parts of the brain that control pleasure, motivation, emotion, and memory, these changes can lead to the diseases of alcohol addiction and drug addiction. Using these drugs repeatedly over a period of time changes brain structure and function in fundamental and long-lasting ways and these changes can persist long after a person stops using the substances concerned. However, with treatment and prolonged abstinence, some of the brain changes caused by specific drugs may be reversible, which is one reason why effective addiction treatment is essential.
Symptoms of addiction include:
- Tolerance – a resistance to the effects of alcohol or other drugs that is developed over a period of time. Development of tolerance means that a user will inevitably find themselves having to drink more or take a higher dose of a drug to achieve the same feeling.
- Withdrawal – a painful or unpleasant physical response when the substance is withheld. An addict’s body will ‘crave’ the substance to which they have become addicted.
- Denial – many people with this illness will deny that they are addicted. Addicts often emphasise that they enjoy drinking or taking other drugs to deflect attention from their primary addiction.
Addiction inevitably grows more serious over time. Substance use disorders follow a recognised path. This progression can be measured by the amount, frequency and context of a person’s substance use. As a person’s illness deepens, they need more of the alcohol or other drugs. In addition, they may use more often and in situations they never imagined when they first began to drink or take drugs. The addiction becomes progressively harder to treat and the related health problems become increasingly severe. As the illness deepens it becomes even more vital that the addict seeks specialist help from one of the numerous drug rehab and alcohol rehab clinics.
Effective treatment at an addiction clinic will be tailored to the individual’s needs, but will commonly include drug detox and alcohol detox programmes as a first step in conjunction with all of the necessary counselling and medical support necessary to ensure that the person is given the best possible chance of recovery.
Recovering addicts can experience a lack of control and return to their substance use at some point in their recovery process. This faltering is very common among people with the most chronic disorders and is called relapse. To non-addicts people, relapse is one of the most difficult to understand aspects of addiction and the recovery process. However, it is just another part of a complex and destructive illness that affects so many people.