Addiction

Below is a piece of writing I wrote when I was 18, in an attempt to lay out and untangle all my thoughts associated with the idea of addiction. Severely chopping, re-reading and editing three years later, not too much has really changed...


Upon reading a book that was brutally honest and eye opening, I've spent some more time trying to comprehend the lives of people with addictions, and in turn, some of those close to me who have at one point been wrapped up in this lifestyle.

It's tragic in the social concept; emphasising and incorporating illicit drug use, jail time, life long diseases, neglected children, a incessant state of poverty and a constant demoralisation of your world and values. These issues are endlessly written and questioned, endlessly judged and endlessly misunderstood. Like anyone else foreign to the world of addiction, who am I to cast my naive thoughts into the world?

Through times in my life, I have dealt first hand with people who have some form of an addiction, in a variety of forms, on a variety of different levels. Perhaps some people would feel it too dramatic to stretch their lifestyles to that strong a word, but I've certainly seen people at their worst, and just how dependent upon their addiction they have been.

In the drug sense; for many it starts with a group of friends, and most people who have reached my age would have considered, if not tried something. Perhaps experimenting isn't being an addict, but seeking for some understanding, but it's turning those experiments into full blown dependencies that becomes a frightening reality for many people.

My family has been exposed to the ways drugs can destroy relationships, and through devastating experience, lives. Perhaps I'll never completely understand the life of someone who wakes up everyday needing their next fix, or sells their body or steals to secure the next hit. Then it all begins again, the next day, when their next score of money is just as unpredictable as the last; an ever demanding battle of what you will sacrifice - and really, what you'll have left?

It’s heartbreaking. It’s supposed to be full of concealment and sensitivity, and can often lack empathy from the ignorance of society. Perhaps, I too, am ignorant to such a life, angry by people's need to follow that life without ever really experiencing it myself, but by no means would I see such people as filth, as people often can.

I want to know who defines the difference between addiction and socially acceptable behaviour. I want to know who casts such judgment, and what their motives are. I’d like to know who judges me, and what I’m judged on, and note the levels of severity people will tolerate.

We all have addictions. Some noble, some feeble, some that will rip you apart. Being in love is an addiction, we’re incessantly pushing to achieve a notion of fulfillment from the thoughts of another; and perhaps, such a void is filled with other things. Addictions can be trivial or turbulent, but they’re all valid to the beholder. We may know something is dragging us down, but it doesn’t always give us the drive to squander it. Sometimes, it’s sickeningly the drive to cast us further into the realms of the addiction, overjoyed by the way it makes us feel, even if it’s infrequent, but powerful enough to exceed the pain of the lows.

And really, we’re all people, We’re all born to parents who generally love us, and hope we live a life full of love and laughter. We’ll all be tempted and swayed to toy with the persistent trails of addiction that will incessantly linger within our lives, but some remain conformist whilst others are displayed as reckless. Whatever, and whenever, an addiction controls you, you’re subject to the rush of it, and the obsession within your minds. You can’t blame anyone, really, for obtaining an addiction, when we all have them. We’ve just got to hope that, along the way, addictions that shred our lives away will be complimented by ones that will celebrate them.