Addiction Catch 22

Addiction Catch 22

Do you know what a Catch 22 is? It is like being between a rock and a hard place. It is being damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It is what many addicts feel like in those moments of clarity that seem further and further apart. Every day, alcoholics and drug addicts face depression, loneliness, self-loathing, numbness, nightmares and lost hope. How do we give it back to them?

We should recognize the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction. We should counter it with therapy and care. We should go after it as a soldier goes after an evil force.

Does anyone wake up one day and decide to become an alcoholic instead of a doctor? Does one decide instead of being a firefighter, to become a drug addict? It is not the goal of a person to succumb to substance abuse. Why act like it is?

It is time to band together and treat the patient. Treat the addict. Go after the addiction. If our legal system is figuring out things like dual diagnosis, then shouldn’t our other departments do so as well? Anger management, community service projects, and jail time could help with successful rehabilitation in different situations by recognizing that the person is not the problem; the addiction is.

If a person injures another, we go after that person. That is what addiction and alcoholism do. Go after the root of the problem, that addiction. Battle the enemy. Yes, a person can be held accountable for his or her actions but tell them they are responsible because they are worth saving, that person deep inside who is now being controlled by substance abuse is still in there and worth helping.

By doing so, you could be helping someone who could very well go on to becoming an addiction counsellor, or the parent of the future doctor who finds a cure for cancer. How awesome would it be to have had a hand in that by helping an addict or alcoholic?