Mad or Bad; The Causes of Addiction

What are the causes of addiction? For those who have to watch the addict destroy their own lives it can be hard to decide if they are willfully stupid, selfish, or in the midst of some form of madness. For those of us who needed to actually live with the addiction it can be just as confusing. It may not be possible to find what exactly the causes of addiction are, but there are good theories that seem to point the way. Some people just dismiss this search for a cause as being a waste of time; they see the only important thing as being what happens next in recovery. For people like me it is important because if we can find what triggered the addiction in the first place then we can work to remove this trigger or stop the same conditions arising again.

The disease model of addiction views it as being just that; here the addict is seen as being the victim of a disease process and not really responsible for ending up in the mess they are in. The exact causes of addiction unknown, but the effects are there for all to see. This is the view most commonly held by the 12 step movement. It is not believed possible to ever fully escape the addiction, but the disease can be kept in remission so long as the person practices the 12 steps.

Another important reason for addiction is the pre-existence of some mental health condition which the addict attempts to escape through self-medication. The person may or may not be aware of their mental health problem, but only know that when they drink or take drugs their life feels more manageable. This type of dual diagnosis does make a lot of sense for the reason many fall into addiction; especially when it turns out the over half of those with mental health problems also end up as addicts. Dual diagnosis is without one of the causes of addiction, but only for some people.

The theory that best fits in with how I view the causes of addiction was provided to me by a monk at Wat Thamkrabok in Thailand; where I went to recover from my alcohol addiction. He explained to me that addiction occurs because people lose their way in life and things become unbearable; they fight against life and this increases the pain. In order to cope with this mental pain the person turns to drink or drugs for escape. This does work for a while, but will ultimately leads to the misery of addiction. I like this explanation because it works for me and lets me know that so long as I stop fighting life, my addiction problems are over.