Addiction is complicated. It can’t be reduced to oversimplifications. It’s convenient to make moral assertions about people stuck in addiction but the real issue has to do with the effects of drugs and alcohol on brain chemistry and this is a much more complex issue than simple caricatures can define.
To make judgments on the moral character of an addict is either an underestimation of the power of substances or an overestimation of the moral superiority of the one who makes such judgments. This isn’t to zing judgmentalism. That’s easy enough. The goal here rather is to shine some light on some pretty pervasive misinformation out there and to explain the more complicated reality of addiction and its effect on neural pathways.
Here are 3 links for people who want to gain a deeper understanding of addiction and the effects of substances on brain chemistry…
Neurobiologic Processes in Drug Reward and Addiction
Brain regions and neuronal pathways
Neural Pathway Explains Why Addicts Become Addicts
So we tried everything that our best thinking offered — to fix ourselves. We tried quitting. We tried control. We tried tapering. Some of us even tried moving. But there we were, everywhere we went. Geography didn’t cure. Control didn’t work. Tapering? What a joke. We had to come to the end of ourselves to get to the beginning of recovery.