Many of us struggling with addiction, along with experts and professionals, believe that addiction is a lifelong illness with no cure, and that once we’ve developed an addiction to a substance or behavior, we will always be addicted to it. Our addiction can be in remission when we’re in recovery, but we would still technically be considered addicts. Do you believe we are always addicts?
Once you’re addicted to something, will you always feel tempted by it, drawn to it and consumed by it? Will you ever be able to develop the willpower to withstand your drug of choice? For some of us, we might develop an addictive relationship with something but not be true addicts in the technical sense of the word. For example, we might drink every day only to then find ourselves losing the desire to drink altogether. We might have been using alcohol as a coping mechanism for a specific crisis going on in our lives, and we might recover from that crisis and no longer need to drink in order to cope. Or, we may no longer feel we have a dependence upon alcohol. For these kinds of situations, it seems possible that people might be able to stop the patterns of addiction from recurring.
For many of us, however, we may always find ourselves wanting our drug of choice, to numb whatever pain we’re feeling, to self-medicate through whatever challenge we’re going through, to distract ourselves from the issues we haven’t resolved yet. Therein might lie the answer. For those of us who are able to recover, we might have found healthier ways of coping with our difficult issues, our traumatic experiences, our fears and our wounds, and in the process shed our need for our drug of choice and our dependence on it. But even then, will we still experience cravings that we find tempting? Perhaps the answer will be different for every recovering addict. Since our experience with addiction and mental illness is totally unique to who we are and what we’ve lived through, whether or not we always struggle with addictive patterns might be unique to us as well. Some of us might feel totally recovered, never giving our drug of choice a second thought. Others of us might still feel the temptation but figure out how to withstand it. And others of us might never get there, continuously relapsing and self-destructing.
At The Guest House Ocala, we have personal recovery experience and over 12 years in the recovery industry. We have helped countless people recover, and we’re here to help you too. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.