Every person i've ever met that's quit an addiction has never thought of themselves as cured. They may not partake in they're substance of choice any more but they've all still called themselves addicts and think about their substances still.
As far as the counting the days thing I think I agree with you on that. A couple years ago a friend of mine was struggling to quit their drug addiction. For almost a year they would count the days or weeks between the times they 'fucked up' as my friend called it. In the end after some pretty bad things happening and a few times almost losing their life. My friend got serious about it and they've been over a year now clean. The thing is this time my friend hasn't been counting the days or thinking about how long it's been. They've just been getting on trying to rebuild their life and avoiding the people and things that used to be part their addiction and I think it's made a big difference.
As an ex-heroin addict, I agree. I also agree with the author/scientist who was interviewed in the article; my personal addiction was far more behaviour based than it was a disease. Becoming an addict takes practice and choices, and it was taking responsibility for that, along with a great support system from my family and governmental medical help that helped me break the 6 year cycle. As of today, I've been clean for three years. That said, N=1, and from others I used to associate with (many who are no longer with us), the disease model makes more sense.
Basically, I think addiction is complex, and any one way of thinking about it will likely miss a lot.
I'm not going to get into specifics of this, mainly because they aren't my stories to tell, however I do allot of work with addicts to help them to recover.
You would be amazed the amount of people how do something similar to this. They get past the first week (typically the hardest part), and because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel they assume they are "cured". They then relapse to celebrate.
Usually it takes several attempts for someone to understand that the voice telling them that they are cured is still just the addiction. It takes even more attempts for someone to understand that you are never really "cured", because the fact is drugs are awesome, more awesome than life itself. That's why they're so dangerous because logically why would you'd choose life in that scenario (esp if your life is already pretty crap)
Quitting an addition is difficult - but staying clean in the long term makes the quitting part look easy
> Not being able to stop for a week shows you are an addict. But being able to stop for week doesn't really show you aren't one. Most addicts do quit for weeks or even months at a time.
Correct. "Not doing $X anymore" doesn't mean you aren't an addict. "Being able to turn on/turn off doing $X" means you aren't an addict. If you haven't had a drink in years, but having a single one means that you now cannot do without the bottle, you're still an addict.
I've always said that there's no such thing as an ex-smoker; they're smokers who haven't smoked in a long time.
Having watched a large number of interviews with addicts I am starting to realise that they know exactly what they are doing and choose to continue doing it. To avoid feeling what they otherwise would be feeling. Addicts who have been clean for months relapse because of a boyfriend walking out etc.
Could you elaborate on how there's no such thing as a former addict? I'm curious, as there are a couple substances I used to be addicted to but am not any longer.
that's a very important point. I've had a number of friends who struggle with addiction (whether alcohol, cigarettes, or other things), and a smaller number of friends who seemed almost entirely impervious to addiction. It's been quite frustrating to find that the latter would simply not understand the former. Some of them would suspend judgment, but others just concluded that those who were addicted simply "didn't try hard enough".
To some extent, I can understand this rather uncharitable conclusion. It's like explaining being in love to someone who hasn't been. Addiction is difficult to explain without having experienced it.
Nonetheless, what makes me side with the addicts, so to speak, and their helplessness, is that when I look at the 'whole' of their person, many of them clearly don't lack willpower or discipline in other areas of their lives. I've either seen the addiction infect the rest of their lives, or seen them being functional, even successful, in other areas despite the addiction. The only conclusion I can draw is that some (most?) people are just unusually susceptible to certain vices.
But don't take my words for it. I'd like to quote from a blog post of Nic Sheff:
"Going into it, I figured that most of the stories would be like mine. But in interviewing these different addicts —addicts that have worked with some of the top addiction specialists in the country— I was surprised to find that quite a few of them have now, after an extended period of abstinence, been able to go back to drinking or smoking pot casually without spiraling out of control again.
It was a baffling revelation to me.
[...]
Take the example of the crystal meth addict I mentioned above. His drug use really skyrocketed around the time he was diagnosed with HIV.
[...]
There was a direct connection between his environmental circumstances and his using, a concept that I’d never actually experienced. I used for no reason at all. But he had a reason."
I don't think there is something like having no reason but he probably knows himself the best. You should check him out if you don't already know him, he wrote 2 books about his teenage meth addiction and his struggle for recovery.
This is the rule, not the exception, among addicts. Every recovery program (12-step or not) emphasizes that drugs are not a drug addict's only problem. Obviously they are a very destructive part of the problem, but every addict who stops using long enough learns that -- surprise! -- they're still a self-centered, fear-driven, manipulative, obsessive person. That stuff doesn't just go away when you stop using; if anything, it flares up in other ways (as you've seen firsthand).
I know what addiction is, of course I’m aware that there’s a biological component. I quit smoking, I have many friends who quit drinking or doing drugs. It was incredibly hard, but I did it. Some of them did it.
I met a young guy while I was backpacking last year who was quitting heroin cold turkey. He was back packing to quit - he’d simply chosen to walk out of his home and go without heroin for thousands of km from the trail system by his home in France.
He was a nice guy - I wonder what became of him, but still, he chose to simply stop. I think you have a lot more agency than you think. Yeah, things cannot be undone, but you can definitely will yourself to change a great many things. It’s just hard and our body resists doing hard things.
To me, a lot of time addiction is a choice. I'm not saying all the time, but very often still. I've tried helping different people overcome an addiction, and even though at first they want to stop it, when they start to think more about it they don't really want it to stop.
If you are not entirely convinced that the addiction is doing more harm than good, it is much more difficult to overcome it.
Trying to think rationally is not going to be very helpful, most of people are not able to think that way, emotions and perceptions are much more important. I often say, life is much much easier when you are a rationalist
The fact that someone, in 2017, would imply that addicted people could just decide to stop being addicted seems to me as reason enough to keep calling it a disease. Just to fight that notion.
That's true. However, I was more or less implying ex-addicts who had been clean, had completed their sentences and were honestly looking to get on with a life, at one time interrupted by bad choices.
As far as the counting the days thing I think I agree with you on that. A couple years ago a friend of mine was struggling to quit their drug addiction. For almost a year they would count the days or weeks between the times they 'fucked up' as my friend called it. In the end after some pretty bad things happening and a few times almost losing their life. My friend got serious about it and they've been over a year now clean. The thing is this time my friend hasn't been counting the days or thinking about how long it's been. They've just been getting on trying to rebuild their life and avoiding the people and things that used to be part their addiction and I think it's made a big difference.
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