People who suffer from drug addiction are often misconstrued in our society. Some think addiction is like a switch: the addicted person can turn it off at will. Some are of the view that these people are inherently antisocial and should be ostracized from society. The fact that Addiction is a disease – is hard to digest for people. I attempt to explain in simple terms, why addiction is indeed a disease, and how we should approach a person suffering from addiction
People who have never used any drug would be hard to see. Most people use them for recreational purposes occasionally, and they live their lives normally without getting addicted to the drug. Among them, only a small fraction of people become addicted. Surely there must be something wrong somewhere. Indeed, the foremost part of our brain aka the Prefrontal Cortex plays a huge role in this. It has a say in the measure of control we have in all our activities, including drug seeking.
Most of us won’t run behind drugs jeopardizing our studies, jobs or family lives. The brakes we apply to such harmful behaviours are mostly a function of the prefrontal cortex. Why can’t people with addiction do the same? The answer is that their Prefrontal Cortex might not be working well enough. Why is it so? There could be many reasons.
Genes– most important of all. Some genes make us vulnerable to addiction. So people with such “let’s make you an addict” kind of genes might be prone to addiction. Also, we can see that addiction runs in families. i.e. most people struggling with addiction will have a positive history of addiction in their close relatives.
People suffering from chronic stress are another vulnerable lot. No wonder people look to ease their suffering with the help of a little alcohol, which then becomes a little more and eventually a lot more. Other risk factors are some personality traits like impulsivity, novelty seeking and easy emotionality.
Certain psychiatric disorders are almost always accompanied by addictive behaviours- like clinical depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder etc. People tend to self-medicate with sedative drugs in such conditions.
Though somewhat oversimplified, this is the basic neurobiology behind addictive behaviours. So it’s not a conscious choice, not arrogance or a simple moral problem. The roots go deeper. Most people falling prey to addiction wish to recover. For that, they need constant support and encouragement from their family members along with proper treatment. First of all, we need to stop using the term “addict”. It’s a clinical condition, not a tag to be attached to someone. Just like there are no diabetics but people with diabetes, there are people with a problem of addiction, not addicts. A person recovering from addiction is like a child trying to walk on its own. It’s only after falling many times do the child finally learns to stand and walk. And just like the mom picking up the child each time it falls and finally clapping when it succeeds, the family members need to be patient and understanding. There is always light at the end of the tunnel!
