Substance abuse.

[Drawweight]

Whenever the subject of alcoholism (or other substances) is raised my wife always comes out with ‘ they must have underlying issues that they are using substances to block out.

This seems like a very simplistic and narrow viewpoint (as I point out to her every time)

My thoughts are it is quite possible to become an alcoholic without having a trauma that you are hiding from. It just needs an addictive personality.

Is it me that’s wrong and alcoholics are all hiding behind a glass from something?

This is close to me as my father was a functioning alcoholic and I’ve often wondered what the attraction was.

[elvismiggell]

I guess it depends where the "addictive personality" comes from.

Are people just born with that, or is it shaped or created somehow. Doesn't have to be a full on "trauma", for example the shopaholic stereotype of someone that didn't get much in the way of treats or presents when they were young etc - they may not even realise that's why they're doing it.

[SpeckledJim]

I think it can be both, or either.

On the one hand, there's drinking to forget. Drinking to numb. Drinking to self-harm.

And on the other hand there's drinking because it's bloody good fun.



Both can end up in the same place, but the stimuli could be completely opposite.

[tom77]

I think becoming a fully fledged dependent alcoholic usually has an underlying root cause, whether this is childhood trauma or mental health issues.

Developing a bad habit and drinking too much can be the result of a negative personality trait - addictive personality, if you will.

While there can be some crossover, these two scenarios are entirely different things. Irks me a little when someone who has a negative alcohol habit is described as an 'alcoholic' - believe me, there are not.

I've lost close family members through alcoholism and it is an utterly depressing and desperate situation.

[ntiz]

I think I have seen both sides of this. I have an addictive personality at boarding school I partied a lot which I enjoyed a huge amount then on my gap year that just kicked into hyperdrive with my weekend starting on Wednesday. Ended up with internal bleeding which put a swift stop to it all. Probably a good thing.

For me I did t have any problems I was just enjoying myself so much that I just constantly wanted the next night out.

I had a mate at the time though who turned up back at school his Dad had cut him off and he wasn’t welcome back at home. He had paid for his fees until the end of the year but he was on his own after that. For 3 years he just went off the deep end with booze and drugs. Just crashing on people’s sofas. Fortunately his Dad stepped in and sorted him out. He has been fine very since.

His fall out with his Dad was about the collapse of a sporting dream he had worked towards since he was 6. I think he pretty felt like he had nothing to live for.

[Steven_RW]

I read something along the following lines recently and it makes sense to me.

It is harder to kick a habit or addiction if the reason you started out taking the drug was to hide from something.

If it just happened due to good times, then kicking the habit is easier.

If you started out drowning your sorrows or running from some pain you have inside, then the process of giving up is much harder as there is much more waiting to hit you when you try to stop.

RW

[bazza white]

There are several routes to addiction. It could be mental trauma but can also be to much of a good thing. To much Dopamine you body gets used to it and it balances out so you end up drinking to be normal. The same reason you can become a sex addict or porn addict. Evening wine drinking can be a slippery slope. You think your fine but when you need to stop for a short period a state of depression hits.

Edited by bazza white on Friday 22 January 13:33

[Johnnytheboy]

Having known a lot of people with combinations of the two characteristics below, you need the right combo of the two to be an addict:

• a predilection towards addiction
• a lack of self control

I once had a friend who had an extremely addictive personality but huge self-discipline. The result was she had given up almost everything one might get addicted to, and more, down to things like chocolate.

I also firmly believe that if someone is an alcoholic/smackhead/gambling addict <delete as applicable> it's extremely likely that if you went back in time and concealed the source of their addiction 100% from their lives before they discovered it, they would like as not have found something else.

[gregs656]

Maybe your wife has that impression because of the kind of stories you hear about drug addiction and recovery. It's difficult to make a documentary or have an interview with someone who just decided to stop one day and did.

[Psycho Warren]

The part I do not understand is with heroin addiction - why did they start taking it in the first place?

I think its reasonable to say, anyone under 50 is well aware of the dangers of heroin.

I think its also fair to say its not some gateway drug or common recreational drug.

So why would you deliberately, knowingly choose to try it one day? Bear in mind you know how additive it is and the destructive path that leads on?

Is it pure deliberate self destruction? The belief "you wont get addicted" despite everyone else on the planet taking it getting addicted?

With other drugs there can often be a slippery slope between recreational/occasional use and excessive use leading to problems and addiction, but heroin isnt like that?

Or maybe it is, maybe theres a secret not well known circle of people who regularly use it recreationally without addiction?

My only involvement in the drugs scene has been from an anti-drugs perspective.....

[gregs656]

The ongoing opioid crisis in the US was kicked off by prescription opioids.

[Psycho Warren]

gregs656 said:

The ongoing opioid crisis in the US was kicked off by prescription opioids.

Maybe but still doesn't answer my question really, or are you suggesting as they are already hooked on prescription drugs, they were already too mentally incompetent to make a rational decision hence choosing heroin on the illegal market?

[bloomen]

I'm sure it just 'happens' to otherwise regular people in many cases but every single hopeless alcoholic and druggist I know of had some sort of unaddressed trauma in their past.

I've never quite understood why you would choose to deal with trauma by following a path that creates vastly more of it but any type of addictiveness does not compute for me so I'm not qualified to ponder.

[gregs656]

Psycho Warren said:

Maybe but still doesn't answer my question really, or are you suggesting as they are already hooked on prescription drugs, they were already too mentally incompetent to make a rational decision hence choosing heroin on the illegal market?

There are some really good documentaries on this, but basically the prescription opioid market exploded and people were already buying prescription drugs on the black market. The prescription opioid market was cracked down on hard, which raised the price of Oxycontin (which was already high compared to heroin) and turned even more people to heroin and fentanyl.

Obviously this isn't true for everyone who tries heroin, but it is one path.

Will Self has talked about his heroin addiction quite a bit his comments are always pretty interesting.

[Bone Rat]

Psycho Warren said:

The part I do not understand is with heroin addiction - why did they start taking it in the first place?

I think its reasonable to say, anyone under 50 is well aware of the dangers of heroin.

I think its also fair to say its not some gateway drug or common recreational drug.

I've interviewed users as part of my work over the years and have asked this question, often I've had the reply, "cos it feels f***** great" certainly at the beginning. I don't think many people go into heroin as a first drug, there's a lot misconceptions around addictions i.e. one use and your hooked for life. Like most substances there's a learning to appreciate the feelings and acquire 'the taste' for it, sometimes literally for alcohol. Most will start on some other substance first and work up to it. You also have to work up the various modes of use, oral before injection for instance. Have to remember that not all people who are addicted are gibbering wrecks, some people do lapse into a chaotic drug dominated life but others do keep things together and function apparently well - worth looking up W. Halsted the surgeon, a prodigious use of drugs during a working life.

Another interesting thing about the human condition is that almost throughout history most societies have permitted the use of one set of drugs as sedatives and one set as stimulants. Which ones are used and permitted and which are prohibited vary over time and with the moral stance at that period of time. some will be fine for a period but then out of fashion. Most recently in our history c. 1900 onward, laudanum and cocaine were accepted and sold in Harrods, especially a tonic for the middle classes whilst alcohol looked down on and eventually prohibited. Scroll forwards and alcohol is now an essential lubricant whilst the opiates are verboten. We replace drugs as they go out of fashion but the roles remain the same in society. Opiates for relaxation get replaced by barbiturates, which get replaced by benzos which them selves get replaced by others. It's not as clear cut as it's often depicted

I can recommend 'The cult of Pharmacology' by Grandpre and 'Junk Medicine' by Dalrymple for some interesting reading on the subject of addictions

[ntiz]

Stupid drug question is heroin always injected?

If so I have always wondered how you end up in the situation to want to try that? I have done quite a lot of drugs in my day but always at parties. Taking a pill or snorting something when in a good mood drinking with your mates to sitting there with a needle just seems like a massive jump.

[Drive Blind]

I had an alcoholic friend - same year at school.
He had a very normal upbringing. I'm 99.9% sure they wasn't any early-life abuse trigger event that he was trying to block out.

There was just something in him that he had to do things he shouldn't be doing and to excess.

Smoking at 10. We tried one, he smoked about 5. Next week it was cigars he had. Then a pipe.
Gambling, playing fruit machines. One minute he had £5, next minute nothing, all gambled. Would have been about 11-12.
Then the drink. We had 1 can he had 4. Older, we had a 6 can carry out, he had 8 cans and a bottle of vodka.
Buzzing gas canisters, the list goes on and on. This was all before we were 17.

He died at 43.

[jimPH]

I think most people have some kind of addiction, it various a lot between people. For instance I see a lot of guys drinking in the bar every night, some say they can't sleep without drinking, but all swear they aren't addicted.

A lot of people get addicted to to drugs prescribed by their doctor, benzos are highly addictive as are oxycotin and other opiates such as tramadol, I bet loads of people on here have took some. Poppyseed tea can be brewed from seeds bought at the local store.

Sleep meds such as zop, ambien etc are addictive.

Lyrica (pregablin) is addictive to a lot of people and is quite widely used and readily available.

There are thousands of drugs out there to become addicted too, just don't think they're a peddled by a dodgy looking bloke on a street corner, you could be prescribed by your doctor then left with a habit to deal with.

[4Q]

ntiz said:

Stupid drug question is heroin always injected?

If so I have always wondered how you end up in the situation to want to try that? I have done quite a lot of drugs in my day but always at parties. Taking a pill or snorting something when in a good mood drinking with your mates to sitting there with a needle just seems like a massive jump.

Many people start by smoking it rather than injecting. I’ve known a few people over the years who have had problems with heroin, some got over it and stopped, some didn’t and never will having disappeared down that rabbit hole. All of them without exception either have mental health issues or have something in their past which has caused them trauma and start using heroin as an escape of some sort to self medicate. If any of you have had morphine the effects are very similar, it doesn’t stop the pain you just don’t care about it hurting.

Edited by 4Q on Friday 22 January 21:25

[NMNeil]

I'm not an alcoholic but at my late stage of life I'm resigned to the fact that we are all going to die of something, so I'm going to die of something I like doing, and I like drinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubrvCLL9X2E