Addiction- What is Addiction?

Ron talks about addiction in the little town he lives in now and asserts that for such a small rural touristy town there is a lot of addiction that can be found here. Ron works as a nurse at a clinic. He has never seen a small town with so many heroin and meth users. He supports marijuana use. He saw a lot of opiate addiction. It keeps surprising him how much is going on in a small town. He has a lot of friends from south Florida who used meth, cocaine and alcohol. He talks about a guy he lived with that he knew for decades. They were social friends. They ended up moving in together for a while. Everything was great for a while, then his friend started to get into the meth crowd. It was very popular then. This was around 2008–2009. Things started to go very "wonky". As time went by and his friend was doing more clubbing and using meth, he started to do very weird things. He started to get paranoid. He thought people are watching him and getting signals through the appliances in the house and the neighbor next door is one of "them". (whoever they are). Consequently, Ron said he found a way to get into the wall space between the two condos and he would spy on the neighbor. The neighbor could hear him walking in the space between the condos. One day he took the electric pencil sharpener apart and was showing Ron proof that "they" came into the house and reconfigured the electronics of the pencil sharpener. He was showing Ron how they are transmitting signals through it. Ron told him it looks like a pencil sharpener that was taken apart. He would get very frustrated with Ron because Ron did not see what he saw. His friends did not see it. He slowly thought his friends were watching him and doing things because they did not play along in his fantasy. It became more and more bizarre and less rational and stable; he began to have financial problems because he spent money on meth but not paying bills. Ron came home one day, and his friend handed him a battery charger that was Ron's; it was wet. Ron asked why is it wet? His friend said he had to throw it into the toilet, it was the only way they would stop sending signals. Ron was like, oh, this is bad. All this happened in south Florida where air conditioning is essential. It is hot and humid. Ron thought "we are on a roller-coaster now". He would come home and find his friend covering up the windows and doors with black tarp and plastic taped on. His friend thought that "they are" in the parking lot watching him. It was dark in the apartment. Ron, at this point started to plan to escape. Ron was one of the last one's he was not one of them yet. The circle of friends was getting smaller and now the inner circle of friends was even getting smaller. He was at the deep end. The friends tried interventions, but it did not work. He elected to keep doing meth. One-night Ron's date was afraid to stay over, because his friend was getting very weird. Ron was planning to move out as soon as he could. At night Ron when was sleeping his friend barged in woke him up and asked him who he was talking to. Ron said he was sleeping. He insisted Ron was talking to somebody. He told Ron: "I know that you are talking to them now". At that point Ron become one of them, he was fearing for his safety. He came home the next day, and his key wouldn't open the door. His friend locked him out and told him he cannot come back there anymore. He allowed him to come back on Saturday between 9–11 to get his stuff. Ron was actually glad to be out of there. This event made him move sooner than later. He went from a very good friend to a mentally disturbed person. His friend ended up selling the condo. He moved away and eventually got into rehab and got sober. Ron said we will always be fine. He had not heard from his friend now for about 7–8 years. He was one of those people who got wrapped up in this destroying lifestyle. Ron witnessed this transformation from someone normal with a lot of friends and being popular to this "monster". It was very sad. His friend took the refrigerator and the oven apart, took the air conditioner apart. Ron would tell others these stories and it sounded fictional, but it was not. He would go home and there was no air conditioning. Ron was glad he did not become one of "them" until the end. Ron was telling me a lot of people were dying at this time in South Florida from using meth, overdosing, committing suicide. Ron would talk to other people who confirmed what was common in meth use: voices in the walls, signals from appliances. Ron calls this story: "My roommate from hell". He can laugh about it now, it was sad, but also funny, the things he did was crazy, sad and funny at the same time. The recovery was very hard for his friend from being a meth addict to become a normal person again. It cost a lot of money. All his resources went to getting sober. He got so caught up in the addiction that he did not realize what was going on. He got into it because of the social community around him. It was a party scene town especially in the gay community. Coming from non-acceptance in family or the community. That group become a chemical community, sense of belonging, become a social activity that sucked people in. Ron felt that people got really wrapped up in the party drugs and sex. Sex was a big focus too.

Ron describes addiction as comfort food. It is a way for people to interact, belong, be supported. He compares escape to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at night. I asked him what is the escape from? He said: pressures, sanity, responsibility. It is easier for people he saw to be a meth using sex addict then to be a responsible person in the real world. Joel describes addiction as beyond needing something to get by, losing control over a thought process where a person cannot make another choice besides to follow the addiction what they are driven by. Something that would create a detriment and exclusion of other things. Inability to think rationally about something.

Joel came to visit me in a nice sunny afternoon. She is a care provider. We had a discussion on wine, she describes not drinking much before she met her husband. Now, they have a bottle of wine every few days, that is his lifestyle she said. She does a check in with herself about this especially with the history of her family. It is a fear she has; she does not want to tip over to the addiction side. So, what is that mean? We talked about could she and he stop if they wanted too? Can they go a weekend without drinking wine? She is trying to self-evaluate what is this means for her. Is it a need to have it for things to function she asks? She talks about replacing it with something else maybe going to the gym in the morning instead and going to bed early. She feels like if someone stops doing something, they need to replace it with something else. Where is the point of no return? Having a glass of wine with dinner is OK Joel feels. We talked about food, bread and cheese, Joel was off of bread for a year, now she has some, she said she was strong then not as much now and she don't fit the clothes she wore last year. We talked about if we want to, can we stay off of it? Can we say no to bread for a week or longer? Do we absolutely have to have it, or can we survive without it?

Janett feels like addiction is habitually doing something that is bad for the person. Physically, emotionally and/or also bad for our relationships with other people. This is the gauge Janett uses like with her aunt. It is affecting her health and relationships. It is an addiction. If people do too much of something sometimes it does not necessarily mean it is an addiction. If it is affecting our life and relationship with other people and they are continuing to do it then it is obviously out of control Janett asserts. She laughs and said any sane person would stop doing it if it affects those things.

Talking to Bernadette, she describes a lot of addiction in her family. She had been dealing with addiction in her whole life. Both of her parents were dealing with addiction, lots of family members including her brother. Her father had been drinking a lot, he developed cirrhosis of the liver, he started to develop ascites in his abdomen and turned yellow, so he had to stop drinking or he would have died. He gave up alcohol, but smokes pot. He might do other things; Bernadette was not sure. Her mom was a binge drinker and smoker, become an alcoholic when she was about high school age, her mom was in her 30's. Bernadette's mom also smoked for 40 years, she started smoking in her teens. Her mom developed COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) had to be on oxygen all the time, when this happened, she stopped smoking and drinking. Later she developed lung and brain cancer. Bernadette recalls that drinking first was fun for her mother but not for long, alcohol stopped working and she became "pathetic" and hated herself, she had a lot of self-loathing. She would fall down drunk. This made Bernadette feel very sad, she just wanted her mom not to do this to herself and not to hate herself. Bernadette was angry and mad at her mom in the beginning, then she accepted that if her mom wants to drink and smoke and that is how she wants to die, it is her choice. At that point she would get mad when her mom was lying or manipulating. Her mom would say she is not smoking then stuff cigarette buds down the toilet and clog the toilet. Bernadette calls this a very teenage behavior. She really wanted her mom not to hide what was going on and not lie. Her mom would not show up and lie that she had pneumonia when she was hung over. She would say she was sick when she was not. She just wanted her mom to be honest and not lie to her. Talking about it is still upsetting for Bernadette, I can hear it in her voice. She also spent the majority of her career working with people who were addicted to substances, she has been severely affected by addiction. Her brother is deep into addiction, so she lost contact with him for a while. Last year they had to connect because their mother was dying of brain cancer. This was the fourth time. This is when she learned that her brother drank his way through the marriage he had, he is been a binge drinker and was hiding it. He was a youth pastor at a Baptist college. He was living a double life. He was verbally and emotionally abusive to Bernadette when their mom was dying. She did not know her brother was capable of the things he did. He was abusive and accusative in person, in e-mails, in texts. He was telling lies and doing bizarre things like attacking his sister. She describes him as having a cocky personality coupled with being super religiousness. Bernadette had been in Al-Anon for 23 years dealing with the addiction her parents had and from previous relationships. She had relationships with people who were active alcoholics. Because of her experience in Al-Anon she was able to figure out her brother's behavior pretty quickly when it was happening. The behavior got really bad, she had to block him on her phone and social media. This made Bernadette feel pretty alone, it was just him and her left from the family. At her work Bernadette saw families having a hard time with their loved ones dealing with addiction. She saw sadness, hopelessness, sadness. In an education setting she saw students trying to get better. Other students who use substances stop coming to class. A good motivation she saw for college students to get sober is just wanting to be better parents for their kids, or finally just decided to address their lives to get better. Bernadette tells me about her parents, they are from a small town. She tells me that many times in small towns kids just drink, because there is not much else to do, she lives in a small rural community now too, and people drink a lot. Lots of people she knows whom her parents age would drink themselves to death. Lack of opportunity. She describes addiction as the inability to quit. If someone is an alcoholic it is a first drink that gets them drunk.

Chelsea is an inspirational and caring person. She describes addiction as any type of behavior that is done in excess. It is causing distraction in someone's life or causing bad outcomes. Albert feels addiction is hopelessness mostly, numbness. It seems to Albert that a lot of people he talked to after they are clean for 2–3 months, they are surprised about all the feelings they are having. Albert feels they buried their feelings before to mask things. He sees a lot of people coming back after 2–3 months and saying they could not handle all the feelings and other stuff they were dealing with so now they are in trouble again, back in the system. I asked Albert why they could not handle it what had happened, do they tell him? He tells me sometimes people get overwhelmed, coming out of numbness now they have to deal with recovery and learn how to function in society again. It is hard. If someone is not used to that and are out of it for a while and now have to do it again people get overwhelmed and slip back sometime. Albert also tells me that he believes that there are some people out there using drugs for just fun, but it is also really easy to spiral down from that when things go bad. Era describes addiction as a habit combined with emptiness or something that is missing from inside, something that is lacking in someone's life and turns into habit. She describes addiction as a branch on the tree. A person might think they can pull themselves up, they can't. They get into deeper and deeper every day. One day the branch breaks and they can lose everything financially, spiritually. They lose their family.

Dr. Frazier Beatty describes addiction as a loophole state, or a chronic disease. He tells me that we cannot look at someone and tell that they have diabetes. He feels that addiction is one of those things that had been missed, misdiagnosed neurologically or in the brain. He feels like the tendency to addiction is to fill that void that is missing in the person. He was not sure. He definitely felt that addiction is more of a disease, that gets misdiagnosed or misdescribed because he does not think it is a chemical that causes a problem but a neurological issue. He describes to me people feeling a certain way about themselves then using a drug to numb the pain. Dr. Beatty describes that he met people who had a lot of mental health problems that caused shame, and a lot of people use substances to make them feel better. It can also be a reckless sexual behavior as well, that could be someone's drug he adds. Brenda tells me she sees addiction as a behavior that becomes prominent in a person's life. The person gets some type of benefit from the addiction. It might not be positive, but a benefit regardless. The benefit can be a "high", dealing with anxiety, it becomes encompassing in their life where to be able to get whatever they are addicted to them, they are willing to make poor choices that affect relationships and their own lifestyle.

Susan describes addiction when someone is not able to enjoy life the way it is, hide from something. She feels that people get so into it that they can't see that that is why they are doing it. Then they can't remember what life is without substances. They just keep falling more into it. Susan had a little uncertainty about how to describe addiction. Dolores feels addiction is an unhealthy reliance on substances to get a person through the day. She tells me that the unhealthy part is the issue, it affects people's life in a negative way. Dolores tells me about chemical reactions in the brain that occur when someone take any addictive substances. The brain will continue to promote to keep taking those substances and do those activities. She mostly thinks about addictions as drug and alcohol.

Sitting on the porch with a nice August afternoon I have a conversation with Bob. He tells me he has seen changes of behavior of co-workers and people around him when they drink or use other substances. I ask him what the changes were that he noticed. He noticed agitation, shorter attention span or just being short with other people. He tells me that can be frustrating in a workplace. He feels peer pressure can be a big thing, something people do in a group in bars, parties, he feels it is pretty en-grained. I ask him how he feels about that. He said it is too bad that it is the way it is. I ask Bob what addiction means to him based on his experiences. He thinks about it a bit. Then he tells me doing something that is a mistake that people know it is a mistake, yet the person still is having some compulsion to keep doing it again. He tells me it even can be a good thing, just if it is done excessively. I ask him what he means. He gives me some examples. He tells me we need carbs to survive but too much can lead to obesity or diabetes. He talks about general addiction to sugary things. We take a moment to acknowledge that this can be very hard in our society today. It can be anything he said. He knows some people who are dealing with addiction. He could tell from people's behavior. He feels that they are in a loop. Bob also tells me that people might be using drugs and substances to cover up deep trauma and pain. Interestingly when I ask Bob why he thinks people would use substances to cover up things, he tells me he imagines it being more exciting than being at home and taking a pill. People are able to go out and party or hang out with friends. More sociable, more enjoyable especially if someone is depressed. We discuss coping skills. He also feels like that some people are using drugs and drinking because all this had been done through generations and that is the coping they know.

Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered. Hear the voices of everyday people - collection of stories and experiences.

Dancing Elephants Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright @ 2020. 1st addition on Amazon KDP.

2nd addition Jan 2021 Barnes & Noble

This book is dedicated to the memory of

Bagóczky József my uncle who died at age 19 - alcohol-related car accident

and to everyone else who has been hurt or lost related to addiction

Many people had been supportive and inspiring to me so I could create this book. Both of my wonderful children told me, just write that book, mom. My mom. I could have not done this without all the stories provided and the encouragement love and caring from my family and friends, nurses, doctors, counselors, teachers, professors, friends who are dealing with addiction and staying sober; and children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers of people who are dealing with addiction currently. Thank you for speaking up, sharing your stories and life experiences. Thank you for all the people who read this book while in progress to provide feedback, ideas, and encouragement for me to continue writing. I would like to say special thanks to my friends and family for believing me and encouraging me to go on.

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