Solving the True Beginnings of Drug Use

Problems, unhandled situations, stress, anxiety, worries, phobias, pains, aches and diseases are the most common beginning for regular drug or alcohol use.

If you come home, happy, not stressed after a busy but nice day at work, to have a nice evening with the family, body feeling good and healthy, would you pop a pill? Unlikely, right?

If you come home stressed after a difficult day at work, with unhandled situations there, to a difficult home life, anxious about bills or children, maybe with a headache, would you pop a pill? Perhaps more likely, right?

These situations almost always underlie excessive drug use.

Drugs are taken to solve something or at least to cover it up.

Think of some common examples:

• Big excessive social drinking, probably done to make you less inhibited, more comfortable dancing, chattier etc.
• Painkillers, probably taken for something like recurring headaches or period pain, or pain from an injury etc.

These and many more are so common as to become normal, but they do lead to an interesting fact. Drugs don’t handle these problems, they merely mask them. Those underlying problems are in fact still there.

Cycle

Once the drug wears off you are right back where you started. In your unhandled problem, stress or pain, leading you to take another pill or drink; and so the cycle goes.

For an addict this situation is compounded, because coming off drugs causes its own mental and physical reactions of withdrawal, which will now be on top of your original problem(s).

For this reason, any rehabilitation needs to consider the sources and beginnings of the drug use. Why was it taken up in the first place? Otherwise the cravings can be handled but if the existing problem isn’t given a solution, then what is the only solution that the addict knows…drugs of course, and that leads to the high rates of recovered addicts, turning back to drugs.

Now of course not everyone fits into these cut and dry examples of the reasons for taking drugs, but interestingly enough if you look into it carefully there will always be something negative that prompted the beginning of regular drug use, even if the problem was utter boredom with life.

What you can do?

If you want to avoid turning to drugs, or helping your friends or children from turning to drugs then real problems that exist need to be addressed.

If the person is miserable and doesn’t know why, maybe they need counselling. If the person is bored out of their mind, maybe they need to change their lifestyle or job. If family life is stressing someone out, maybe they need to sit down and have a real heart to heart with their partner. If there is a recurring pain, go to the doctor, or alternate/natural doctors and get some help on what the cause of the problem is and how to solve it (remember a painkiller is just a drug that will temporarily mask the symptoms). Whatever it may be, there needs to be some solution worked on, something that leads to a way out and a better life. Otherwise drugs become that ‘solution.’

Only by addressing and solving these life problems, will someone be able to live a truly happy and fulfilling life. By living a happy and fulfilling life there is no need or reason to turn to drugs.