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Looking for help with an eating disorder or an alcohol problem?
Covering Morayshire, Aberdeenshire and the Highlands and Islands
Addiction - a real disease, not a moral failure.
Don’t run away from the word “addiction”, it has more than four letters, so it can’t be a dirty word!
No one raises a glass of alcohol, snorts a line of cocaine with a toast "here's to addiction". When first using these drugs, people simply choose to do something that makes them feel good. But, with continued use, people can find themselves addicted:- they depend on the drug not simply to feel good but to feel normal. Using drugs is no longer a choice but a compulsion. These people don't plan to become addicts, it just happens.
Addiction can strike at any age, doesn’t care whether you’ve had a privileged upbringing, or whether you lived from hand to mouth. It doesn’t care whether you’re sixteen or ninety six. It doesn’t care whether you’re happy or sad. It doesn’t care whether you’re a man or a woman.
It’s a bit like a virus; anyone can get it. It has nothing to do with willpower, moral integrity or level of intelligence.
If you are a human being, you can suffer from addiction. It’s an illness, not a moral failing.
The World Health Organisation recognises it as an illness, following definite signs and symptoms.
People suffering from addiction are not bad people trying to get good; they are sick people trying to get well.
Slowly but surely, day by day, recovery is possible and so is a life better than the one you’re emerging from.
There are as many theories about addiction as there are days in the year, and then some! However, part of the recovery process is to accept that you can know all there is to know about addiction and still drink or drug or eat or starve yourself to death!
