What Is Addiction?

Addiction is a condition that is causing a lot of problems in our society today and yet many Filipinos still understand so little about what it is or what causes it. And while there are private and government institutions such as drug and alcohol rehab centers that exist to deal with cases of addiction in the community, a great portion of people that have fallen victim to addiction are still unreachable and are still suffering from the disease. The role of the family and the society is essential to helping victims of addiction, and in order for us to get involved; we need to first understand what addiction is. If we are familiar to what we are dealing with, we could totally win over from it, no matter how difficult it is.

Addiction is defined as “a continued repetition of behavior despite its adverse consequences” by many psychological experts and medical doctors. It is often viewed with negativity due to it being attributed to prohibited substances, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, sex, internet or computer games. To put it simply, addiction is a person’s intense longing or desire for something that creates in him or her endless hunger that no matter how he or she tries to fill could never be satisfied.

Victims of addiction find themselves unable to control their passions, resulting in them constantly wanting to satisfy this passion even if it has negative effects in their lives. This often escalates to the victim resorting to any means - even violent ones - to get what he or she is addicted to, which greatly affects the people around him or her. This seriousness of the effects of addiction is the reason why we need to understand more of it so we can respond to its victims accordingly and help them get out of it.

The most important thing to understand about addiction is that it is a mental condition - in other words, addiction is all about the individual’s mind. And while experts and psychologists have categorized various kinds of addictions based on how they affect a person, when you dig deep into an individual’s condition, you can always trace it back to something that has to do with his or her mind.

This is why a large percentage of rehabilitation programs constitute conditioning the individual’s mind - whatever the mind believes, the body follows. Victims of addiction act the way they act because their mind has been made to believe that without that thing that they are addicted in, they would not be able to live or function properly.

Another important aspect to addiction that would greatly help to prevent it is the fact that addiction is not something that a person acquires in a day - it is a result of an individual’s continued interaction with the object of his or her addiction. Addiction, in other words, is a negative habit. A good example of this would be a victim of drug addiction.

Drug addicts didn't become what they are today in just one take. It required them to continuously ingest the drugs to the point that their body became tolerant to it, while their mind was being conditioned that they needed the drugs. As time went on, their mind became subjected to the thought of needing the substance that it subconsciously took control of their decisions on whether or not to take that substance. The drug intake soon became a habit, which then led to the addiction.

Getting an individual free from addiction is not easy, because in many cases such as drug or alcohol addictions, the body has gotten used to the substance that immediate abstinence may result in drug or alcohol withdrawal symptoms, which is the body’s negative reaction from being deprived of the addictive substance. This is the reason why in rehabilitating an addiction victim, the individual’s mentality must first be changed in order for the transition to become smoother. In other words, the victim must first have the perspective that he or she is being destroyed by the substance and must get rid of it.

There are many available help when it comes to fighting addiction. One option is entering an alcohol and drug rehab center that has the goal of treating patients with addiction. A rehabilitation facility has the necessary tools to help an individual get rid of his addiction and start a new life for his family and loved ones. While it is essential for the person to possess strong motivation and self-control to win over addiction, rehab centers is the avenue where all these values can prosper and develop.