The Nature of Addiction

It was Friday in the morning of October 16, 2009 when the seminar had started at the hospital where I am under training. The invited guest speaker was Mr. Jerry Joseph Valderama, Director of the New Day Recovery Center in Davao City, the place where I live. This article is made to share what I have learned about the nature of addiction.

What is addiction?

According to recent researches and studies addiction is a disease that has an overpowering, excessive, and repetitive need that exists over a substance, act, feeling, milieu, or personal relationships. It is not limited to alcohol or drugs, but can involve various things as an object of desire such as cellphones, computer games, internet, relationships, pornography, and sex among others.

There are six indicators of addiction.

1. An object of desire - this could be anything that the addict desires. It sparks obsessive ideas and drives compulsive behaviour.

2. Preoccupation - the addict's mind is frequently engrossed with the object of desire.

3. Driven behaviour - the compulsion to reduce any cravings and satisfy the obsession drives the addict's behaviour. The addict will do extreme measures that creates unwanted behaviours such as stealing in order to satisfy his cravings.

4. Loss of control - the failure to stop or cut back; central defining feature of addiction. An example given was that of a cyber addict who happens to be addicted with online computer games. At that time he was the No.2 gamer of a certain online game community throughout the country. However, his mother noticed that he was not sleeping at night and had lost weight because of poor eating habits developed due to constant playing. One day the mother decided to cut the internet connection with the best intentions for her child. She went out to their internet service provider and terminated their internet connection while the child was at school. When the child got back and discovered that he was unable to play anymore, he went into rage and attacked his mom with a knife, prompting the mother to seek admission into a rehabilitation center.

5. Dependence - physical or psychological state of totally being engrossed to the object of desire and perceiving it as a need for survival.

6. Negative and harmful consequences - despite grave threats to health and life, the addict continues his addiction as if it is necessary for his/her survival.

What are the key features of addiction?

1. Addiction is primarily a disease of the brain.

2. Addiction is a progressive disease.

3. Addiction is a chronic disease that demands a lifetime recovery process.

4. Addiction is a fatal disease that can have one of these three ends: Jail, Institution, or Death.

5. Recovery is possible.

Predisposing Factors

1. Genetics - some people are born more vulnerable than others to become addicts once exposed or triggered.. As they say, "the antidote for addiction is serenity".

2. Psychological - how people deal with stress or finding the way out of stress; are they using alcohol to relieve stress?

3. Sociology - "peer pressure"; common between 18-25 years of age.

Stages of Addiction

1. Experimental stage - the person gets curious and starts experimenting.

2. Occasional stage - started to become acquainted with the substance or object of desire but does not necessarily craves for it.

3. Abuse - starts to have cravings and increases in tolerance in time.

4. Dependence stage - the addict's brain had been modified to include the object of desire as part of the addict's survival needs, no matter how dangerous are the effects.

Addiction is also considered a family disease (co-dependence), a brain disease, a spiritual disease (loss of values and crack-down of spiritual integrity), and an emotional disease (people who doesn't know how to deal with emotions). Social stigma only worsens the problem.

Recovery

Recovery is rebuilding a new way of life from destructive addiction. We must first understand some basic concepts I have learned in my personal experience a a nurse and as a missionary:

1. Hurt people hurt people - rejection is one of the most common problems experienced inside the family, in the circle of friends, or in the community itself. People usually end up becoming addicts to ease the pain of rejection.

2. Addicts do not care what you know, unless they know that you care.

Recovery treatments usually involve two measures to achieve:

1. Abstinence - necessary to achieve personality change and behaviour modifications.

2. Personality Change - necessary to support abstinence.

These two key features are closely related to one another that treatments are developed with these keys in mind in order to have a high success rate.

Three keys to recovery:

1. Develop a support system - support systems are very important as these will give the addict a structure to hold on during difficult times to prevent relapse.

2. Using the 12 steps principle - principles taught in the center developed from the Alcoholic Anonymous. The goal is to make the addict accept that he is powerless to overcome the problem without help.

3. Understanding the meaning of unconditional abstinence - "recovery is an inside job".

In the end, addiction, like many other human behaviour, is complex and multifactorial in nature. We need God's hand to do a miracle to heal an addicted man. Various treatments are being developed and improved, but I say the best way to make any recovery program a success is to offer it to God as a tool that He can use to win the lost back to Him, to consolidate those who are struggling using us in the medical field, to disciple them how God wants to live life as it must be, and to send them back to the community as agents of change.

Many people get lost and out of control of their lives because they choose to remain the driver of the "bus" called life even though they don't know how to drive it well, if you want to change for the best, change the driver of the bus... all of us need Jesus Christ.

NOTE: The author of this article is a young missionary in the Philippines, Cambodia, and soon to be in Vietnam. He is a registered nurse and a medical transcriptionist in the Philippines, and he happen to have a passion in writing about life and living, aiming to touch lives and make disciples for God. There are three ways you can give support to self-supporting missionaries like him, kindly follow on the link to find out more by clicking it: missionarysupport.blogspot.com