Addiction is more than an obsession, a lot of people think they understand it when they have not experienced it, and if I must confess, those that have not experienced it can not really understand the pain and struggle of addicts. Stopping an addiction is like going against yourself and normal structure. It’s like refusing to pee when you are very pressed. That discomfort, that pain of holding back when everything in you wants to let loose, that feeling you get when you see running water while in that state is your body reminding you of how it really feels to let it go. This is how an addict feels when they choose to break loose and be free from that addiction. You see some of them feeling like dying because their bodies really feel like it would collapse if they do not take or do whatever it is they are addicted to. This is also why the rehabilitation process for addicts can be slow, and although it takes willingness to stop as the first step, it takes even more willpower to fight it every single time and for a lot of addicts the battle becomes a lifetime fighting which requires even more will power.
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Think of it as a bone injury, the very first stage of such injury can be messy, the pain and everything needed to reset the bone back into position. Even after coming back into position, sometimes it doesn’t fully heal, making the person leave with the pain their entire life. At the end of the day the person would no longer be able to do some of the things they used to do because that injury has changed their lives forever. When a person gets addicted to something, certain things come to play before they can really fight it. One is how long they have been addicted, second is their environment, and third is the people close to them. The reason why a lot of people usually stay addicted no matter how they try to break out of it is because of the last two. The society already sees them in a way, if those around them also see them in that way, it becomes hard to cultivate the will power to continue fighting. The fact that continuous fighting can make a person wear out, if there is nobody to hold them up when they are worn out, they end up falling back into the addiction and have to continue in despair.
People become addicted for different reasons, but not generally because they want to. They are usually looking for something but end up in the circle of addiction. For some, it is happiness, others it is distraction from their surrounding environment, for some it is pleasure, for others it is per pressure and for some they just need an escape for themselves. For all these reasons the only time a person knowingly decides to be addicted is when they have seen that they are becoming addicts but choose not to do anything about it and instead try to make other addicts so they do not feel alone. Apart from this, I do not think it is right to judge addicts or make them feel they are less human for being addicted. These people are psychologically and some even mentally injured and like every injured person, they need help and a lot of it.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S
PROMPT FOR WEEK 229 EPISODE 1
