Steps to Addiction

The four steps leading to addiction are a continual process. Usually addiction does not happen overnight. They vary in the time required to take them. It could take twenty years for an alcoholic who started drinking as an adult. Or it could be with lightening speed with someone who tries crack cocaine.

Both adolescents and adults progress through the same steps. However, since the adolescents brain and nervous system is still developing it is more susceptible to drugs. Since adolescents do not have the same internal controls adults usually have, they frequently move through the addiction process ten times faster than adults. This explains why teenagers become a "pot head" or alcoholic in just a few months. These facts helped me to understand what happened to me.

The First Step is Experimentation. If people never try drugs they won't get addicted. So yes it all begins here. Fortunately, many who experiment with drugs do not like the feelings the drug produces, or like being under its influence and stop after the first few times. Unfornuately others, including me, like the good feeling they get and this euphoria brings a person back for more. Continued use leads a person to the next step, Occasional Use.

This Second Step, Occasional Use was short lived for me. This step is also referred to as "social use". At this stage the user is learning how to use the drug "properly". They are helped by more experienced users. This is also the stage where other drugs are added or tried. This is called "polydrug use". Few people only use one drug exclusively, the exception being alcohol. Most use many drugs, depending the amount of money they have or the availability of the drug. If a person loses control under the influence of their drug they fulfill the definition of addiction. Therefore a person may be fully addicted even if they are not a daily user. People who drink uncontrollably from Friday through Sunday and tell themselves and others, "I'm not an alcoholic because I only drink on the weekend", are "weekend alcoholics".

There are some people who can remain at Step Two indefinitely, but many go on to the next step of Regular Use. It's here at Step 3 that usage escalates to almost everyday, if not everyday. The drug now becomes the major focus of their lives. If they are confronted by family or friends they deny that any problem exists, or that it is as bad as it is. All activities revolve around drugs and their drug using friends. The user is frequently intoxicated and anything of value, such as family relationships, school, job performance, health, are being destroyed. At this point addiction, if not already present, is not far away.

What follows is Step Four Full-blown Addiction. The drug use becomes daily and consumes the entire day. Everything, all of life, evolves around getting, keeping and using the drug. What was not destroyed in Step 3, is in Step 4. The abuser has to use the drug to "feel normal" because their brain chemistry has changed so that the drug is now a part of the "normal" functioning of the brain. If the drug is stopped, withdrawal and severe cravings for the drug sets in. Everything good in the drug abuser's life, family, friends, education, job, talents are destroyed.

This is my addicition story. The fact that I started drinking as a teenager is why I moved so quickly through Steps One, Two, and Three. Its a long and difficult road back, and unfortunately many never make it.