Drug Addiction at its Roots

The first thing you must understand about addiction is that mind-altering drugs are basically painkillers. For drugs to be attractive to a person, there must first be some underlying unhappiness, sense of hopelessness, or physical pain.

Drug addiction follows a cycle like this:

A person has some problem, sense of unhappiness or hopelessness, or physical discomfort. It could be a teenager experiencing his first romantic rejection, or a grandmother with arthritis, or it could be a man in his prime, wondering why he keeps failing on the job. Or it could be someone at any age in between.

This person drinks or tries drugs. The alcohol or drugs APPEAR to solve his problem. He feels better. Because he now SEEMS better able to deal with life, the drugs become valuable to him.