The Pathway To Addiction Recovery

By Neil Paul

Alcohol and drug addiction often results in cumulative trauma that deeply affects all family members. It impacts the stability of the home and the family dynamics. Family members and friends often unknowingly enable the addiction behaviour and become a part of this “disease”.
This book is an attempt to help those struggling with the addiction of a loved one. It is a step by step guide that helps to understand alcohol or drug addiction, its various facets and to enable family members to give their loved ones a gentle push towards sobriety.

The author has helped hundreds of families in his over 20 years of career as an addiction counselor and now wishes to help the millions who haven't yet made it to the counselor's clinic. His knowledge and insights will illuminate the pathway to recovery for all those who have been living in the darkness of their loved one's addiction.

Mr. Neil Paul has been working in the field of mental health, primarily addiction and marital issues for over 20 years now. From his years of studies and experience, he has a deep rooted understanding of addiction and the ability to develop effective tailor made intervention strategies. This is his very first attempt at authoring a book, to present the vast sea of his experiences in a tiny pearl of wisdom!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamond Books
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9788128829604

Book preview

Identifying Addiction

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It’s knowing what’s right.

– Lyndon. B Johnson

One of the most basic and pertinent questions that I find myself addressing as an addiction counselor is to do with the identification of addiction. Family members often wonder whether excessive use of alcohol or drugs is addiction or is it simply a lifestyle choice or a habit. Identifying the problem, I believe, is the first step towards solving one.

Lifestyle choices or even habits for that matter have an element of free will or choice. The person with a habit can choose to stop, and will subsequently stop successfully if they want to. Addiction is when the urge to take a drug is too strong to control. It’s when a drug user can’t stop taking a drug even when he wants to. When people start taking drugs, they don’t plan to get addicted. They like how the drug makes them feel. They believe they can control how much and how often they can take the drug. However, drugs gradually change the brain physiology in a significant way. Drug users start to need the drug just to feel normal. That is addiction, and it can quickly take over a person’s life.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM 5), Substance Use Disorders span a wide variety of problems arising from substance use, and cover 11 different criteria:

Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer than you meant to.

Wanting to cut down or stop using the substance but not managing to.

Spending a lot of time getting, using, or recovering from use of the substance.

Cravings and urges to use the substance.

Not managing to do what you should at work, home or school, because of substance use.

Continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships.

Giving up important social, occupational or recreational activities because of substance use.

Using substances again and again, even when it puts you in danger.

Continuing to use, even when you know you have a physical or psychological problem that could have been caused or made worse by the substance.

Needing more of the substance to get the effect you want (tolerance).

Development of withdrawal symptoms, which can be relieved by taking more of the substance.

Those of you who drink tea or coffee every day, first thing in the morning will be able to identify with what I’m saying. One day you don’t get your morning cup of tea and you start feeling irritable, have difficulty in your bowel movements and develop a headache as the day progresses. This happens because you have missed your daily dose of caffeine. Your body is used to it and so it can’t function properly without it. People who drink or take drugs go through somewhat similar physiological reactions, only they are much more severe and pathological.

Addiction can become more important than the need to eat or sleep. The urge to get and use the drug can fill every moment of a person’s life. The addiction gradually replaces all the things the person used to once enjoy. A person who is addicted might do almost anything- lying, stealing or hurting people- to keep taking the drug. This could even land the person in legal trouble sometimes.

However, not everyone who drinks alcohol or tries drugs becomes addicted. Why is that? What makes one person become addicted when others can use the same drugs without similar consequences? Vulnerability to this disease ranges and affects people differently. I’m sure you know people who enjoy drinking on weekends or who have been having a small peg of whisky every day without ever increasing their daily quota. Thus, clearly, merely using alcohol or drugs doesn’t amount to addiction.

Factors, such as genetics, age of first use, environment and mental health may play a part in someone becoming addicted. Factors that can increase the risk of addiction are:

Family history of substance use and/or mental health

Childhood experiences – abuse, neglect, trauma, grief

Mental health diagnoses: depression, anxiety, borderline personality and eating disorders

Pre-teen or teenage drug, alcohol and/or tobacco use

External factors causing stress, fatigue, other pressures

Resentments that haven’t been resolved

Alcohol and drug addictions tend to develop gradually in very small, incremental steps that are often unnoticed in the beginning. At first, the person is simply experimenting with alcohol or drugs and feeling sensations that are somehow unusual or pleasurable. Then, brain cell damage begins to accrue, and the physiological dependence drives a person back to the use and abuse of the drug. In time, the person is unable to kick the habit without some sort of physical or mental distress.

Some people never do recover, as they simply can’t imagine a life that doesn’t include drugs. Any pleasurable substance could cause this kind of transformation; however, there are some drugs that experts consider particularly dangerous. These are just 8 of the substances experts suggest are closely related to addiction.

1. Caffeine

Caffeine is often the most common addictive substance. It’s the reason for the high we get from having tea, coffee, aerated drinks or chocolates. People who use these products on a regular basis know about the paralyzing difficulties they face when they try to quit or minimize use. However, caffeine users don’t tend to demonstrate all the symptoms of addiction as discussed above. They don’t always gradually increase their use with higher and higher doses and they don’t tend to put the use above everything else in their life. Thus, even though they may be physically dependent on the drug to some extent, they’re not necessarily psychologically dependent on it. This means that it’s really not as addictive as other drugs.

2. Alcohol

Alcohol is one of the most accessible drugs which is commonly used at social gathering, parties, weddings, festivals and even business meetings. Alcohol affects all aspects of the user’s life. The brain cells are changed permanently which no longer permit the user to quit at their will. The withdrawal symptoms can be severe, and the treatment quite challenging, which makes alcohol a very dangerous drug.

3. Nicotine

Nicotine, found in tobacco and cigarettes, is one of the most addictive substances. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), more than 85 percent of people who try to quit using this substance relapse to use, typically within one week. People who abuse nicotine also tend to augment their use on a regular basis, moving from smoking just one cigarette to two and then a pack. Chasing a high like this is a hallmark of addiction.

4. Marijuana

Marijuana is often used and abused by teenagers and party goers for its recreational effects. NIDA suggests that about 9 percent of people who abuse marijuana become dependent on the substance. That risk rises yet higher, however, if people begin using marijuana on a compulsive basis when they’re in their teens.

Marijuana might also be considered addictive due to the withdrawal symptoms people report when they try to quit, which might include irritability, insomnia, anxiety, etc.

5. Crack Cocaine

Cocaine results in a rapid onset of pleasurable sensations and then a sudden decay followed by feelings of despair. It’s so addictive that users tend to develop an addiction during their very first session of use. They’re desperate to regain the high, so they follow one hit with another, and then chase that hit with another, until they’ve done a significant amount of damage to their brain cells in no time at all.

6. Heroine

Heroine can be smoked, snorted or ingested directly into the veins. Heroin attaches to brain receptors and triggers the release of very potent chemicals associated with pleasure. That rush is followed by a period of profound sedation, in which the user drifts in and out of consciousness. The remarkable sensations heroin can deliver are, in part, responsible for heroin’s addictive nature. But the drug can also cause profound changes in the way the brain functions. The withdrawal symptoms are so severe and incapacitating that they make it extremely difficult for the user to stop using the substance.

7. Prescription Painkillers

Drugs bought from pharmacies, prescribed for pain reduction can also be quite addictive of taken in excess. They can cause serious harm to the brain chemistry in the long run. Of those painkillers, OxyContin might be the most notorious. This medication has a single ingredient, oxycodone, and it’s prescribed for moderate to severe pain. This ingredient can also cause euphoria, however, and it can cause the same types of brain changes seen in people who take heroin.

8. Benzodiazepines

Some of the medications prescribed for anxiety, depression and insomnia may turn out to be quite addictive if taken in excess of the prescribed dose. This substance is addictive due to its capacity to affect the production of chemicals associated with pleasure. Benzodiazepines do seem to be addictive, but those addictions usually seem to spring up when other addictions are already in play.

While there is no absolute scientific formula for identifying when an individual’s drug consumption has developed into a full-blown addiction problem, most addiction counselors agree that there are four distinct stages of drug use that may lead to addiction. The four stages are generally acknowledged as drug use or experimentation, the misuse of drugs, the abuse of drugs and a drug dependency or addiction. While individuals in the first or second stages of use and misuse may not necessarily progress into drug addicts, individuals in the third stage of drug abuse are likely to develop full-blown addiction problems.

Stages of Addiction

Alcohol & Drug Use or Experimentation

The first stage on the potential road to drug addiction, the use of drugs without experiencing any negative consequences is what addiction counselors refer to as experimentation or simple drug ingestion. Enjoying a drink, smoking a marijuana joint or taking any other drug with friends or colleagues without any serious social or legal consequences is regarded as drug use or experimentation. While such behavior is not to be encouraged, it is a fact of life for many teens and adults.

Misuse of Drugs

The misuse of drugs occurs when the individual experiences some form of negative consequences as a direct result of having ingested any one particular drug. For example, someone who becomes inebriated at a party or get-together and is stopped for drunk driving on his or her way back home has misused alcohol even if that person does not normally drink to excess and is not an alcoholic. Examples including the one just mentioned occur in a fairly large percentage at some point in a person’s life, and while not everyone who has misused drugs becomes an addict, the regular misuse of any drug is a telltale sign of an addict in waiting.

Abuse of Drugs

When an individual frequently misuses drugs in spite of any negative social or legal consequences that may result from such misuse, the said individual has progressed from an occasional misuse of drugs to the more serious stage of the abuse of drugs. In effect, the negative consequences arising from the misuse of drugs have done nothing to curb the individual’s appetite for drug ingestion to the point of inebriation even in the face of serious penalties and possible broken relationships. Often begun as a temporary form of emotional escapism, drug abuse leads to much more serious problems in the long run and requires treatment as much as drug addiction.

Alcohol & Drug Addiction and Dependence

Once an individual has begun to abuse drugs, it is likely that the continuation of such behavior will lead to a drug addiction or dependency problem. Drug addiction or dependency is defined as a compulsion to take drugs despite any and all negative consequences to the individual’s relationship with his or her family, friends and work colleagues; physical and mental health; personal finances; job security; and at one extreme, a criminal record. While the reasons individual progresses from the simple or occasional use of drugs to a possibly fatal dependency on drugs are not all clear, once this stage has been reached, most addicts cannot function without consuming drugs. Addictions can be physical, psychological, and emotional or any combination of the three, but at this stage professional help must be sought.

Scientists now know that addiction is the result of key changes in the brain. For example, all drugs of abuse affect the dopamine pathway in the brain. Dopamine is a kind of neurotransmitter - a chemical produced by nerve cells that process and transmit information in the brain. The dopamine neurotransmitter’s job is to produce feelings of pleasure so this pathway is commonly known as the pleasure pathway.

What happens when people develop a substance use disorder is that they tax the ability of their dopamine system to keep up, says Dr. Kathleen Brady, an addiction researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina. The amount of dopamine we have in our brain is limited by the substances that the brain uses to make dopamine. And if we release it too often, we get into a situation where the brain has less dopamine. What that means is that an individual who has depleted their dopamine source in their brain has a difficult time feeling pleasure from even the normal events that would make someone happy - a mother seeing her child, or having a good meal.

The dopamine pathway is not the only part of the brain affected by addiction. Alcohol and drugs can profoundly affect different neurological circuits. Prolonged excessive alcohol use, for example, is believed to cause pervasive alterations in the brain’s stress and anti-stress systems. These changes, in and of themselves, may lead to additional compulsive drinking.

Alcohol & drugs of abuse affect the parts of the brain that control pleasure, motivation, emotion, and memory, these changes can lead to the disease of drug addiction. Using drugs repeatedly over time changes the brain structure and function in fundamental and long-lasting