Do You Know What Causes Drug Addiction?

What causes drug addiction? Is it genetic? Social? Does it stem from our environment? Maybe a person's personality plays into it; or, is addiction a disease that just hits random people when circumstances have "prepared the soil"??

Researchers have found there is a resounding link between traumatic events and addiction. Sometimes, substance abuse has a direct link to mental health disorders, which some researchers say have their origins in a traumatic event. For example, a crisis or series of crises -- such as physical or emotional abuse -- can often lead to dependency on prescription drugs or on the use of self-medicating substances meant to manage pain or symptoms.

It's so hard to know! Especially when everywhere you look, there's more information to consume about the subject. Recognizing that anyone with a computer and a bit of digital know-how can contribute to the "database" on what causes drug addiction, we had better understand how to discern true data from anecdotal hearsay. Our lives -- or that of someone we love -- just might depend on the information we choose to accept!!

Medical slipups and/or human error are what causes drug addiction sometimes!

I have a friend, who began a horrific journey of addiction to a controlled drug when she was only an infant. Her family doctor prescribed for her a barbiturate, to combat the epileptic effects of what he diagnosed as an allergic reaction to a wasp's sting.  

Her problems did not end when that doctor decided, almost a decade later, that she should stop taking the pills she had known all her life ("cold turkey," at that). In fact, as you might imagine, my very young friend-to-be would then begin to experience agonizing withdrawal symptoms and, with them, deleterious episodes of  fear.

Here's part of that incredible story, in her own words:

"…The year was 1967, and I was nine years old.

"I was hiding just around the corner of the kitchen wall as I listened to my mom talking to the doctor on the phone about taking me off my seizure medication. When I was just a few weeks old I was stung by a wasp on the soft spot of my head. I had a severe allergic reaction that was thought to have produced epilepsy. I was given phenobarbital, a highly addictive anticonvulsant drug. 

"Over the years, I had become dependent on this medicine. The doctor had determined that I had outgrown my epilepsy to a degree that I didn’t need to take it any longer. Back then everyone believed what the Preacher and Doctor told them. They were the chief sources of information, and whatever they said was considered to be the absolute TRUTH. 

"As I listened to their conversation, I began to panic. That doctor didn’t know how I felt! How could he determine what I needed? My mom hung up the phone and I followed stealthily behind her, watching through the partially closed bathroom door as she took my bottle out of the cabinet and hid it behind a stack of towels on the top shelf of the linen closet. 

"I wasn’t weaned off, and no one had talked to me about how I might feel without the medicine. Without it, I couldn’t sleep and would get nervous inside, jittery and very uncomfortable, my stomach would hurt, and sometimes I would throw up; I understand now that I was having withdrawal symptoms back then.

"I sneaked into our linen closet, climbed up on the clothes basket, and retrieved the pills from behind the towels. I used them every day until they were gone. Then I took medicine from the cabinet above the bathroom sink, not knowing what any of it was. My mother had several prescription medications, creating an arbitrary smorgasbord of choices. I was a victim of circumstance. I didn’t ask for an addiction, it wasn’t a matter of juvenile rebellion; however, this situation created a residual effect for years to come…."

PTSD is real, and subsequent substance abuse can lead to a vicious cycle of addiction-trauma-new addiction-new trauma-new addiction....

This same friend (who would fifty-some years later team up with me to coauthor a book) also experienced the terrible tragedy of believing her mother was about to die -- a traumatic sense of loss which exacerbated an already spiraling emotional health challenge:

"It’s funny how adults can overlook explaining things like, 'Your mom is still sick but she’s not dying anymore.' No one ever thought to tell us she was no longer dying. A nurse would come to the house every day to change her bandages. Because of the heavy medication, sometimes my mother would fall asleep at the table during mealtime, and we would be told to go play in the basement because Mom needed to rest. This is why I thought she was still dying. It was a very long time and multiple surgeries before she fully recovered.

"Over time, quite a bit of old, half-used medications had accumulated in our bathroom cabinet. It would turn out that the medicine I was taking from the cabinet were narcotics. When they ran out, I resorted to taking meds from other people’s cabinets. 

"Being a victim of circumstance, for me, started changing to willful drug use after a period of time. It wasn’t withdrawing that caused my inside jitters anymore, I had an emptiness, a sense of sadness, a lack of love. My lack was internal; there were these outside circumstances that contributed, but I had a dissatisfied spirit. By age eleven I was sniffing glue and trying other drugs that were showing up for sale at school. Had I known that such a thing existed, I would have said this was an empty hole in my spirit that I needed to fill."

My friend, Karen, and I have come to understand addiction (of any kind) to be an attempt to fill a void.
An emptiness in one's soul that only a relationship with the God of creation can fill.
Do you know God? He is able to replace your sadness with joy, your emptiness with contentment.
Come to your Creator fully, in faith, and He will fill you up!

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