5 Signs That You Are Addicted to Drugs or Alcohol
It’s hard enough to tell whether or not someone else is addicted to drugs, especially if they’re trying to hide it from you. It may be more difficult, however, to figure out whether or not you are addicted to drugs. Earlier, we posted about 5 Signs of Drug Abuse and Addiction. Today, we’ll talk about how you can figure out whether your own drug use constitutes abuse or addiction.
Take a hard look at your life and your actions around drugs and alcohol recently. Have you noticed any of the following?
* Need for the drug. You may feel like you have to have the drug or alcohol at regular intervals every day. Physically, you may be addicted to it or mentally, you may feel that it is necessary to have the drug in order to deal with stressors or problems, to relax or to celebrate. In other words, there’s always a reason to get loaded. Hardly a day goes by that you don’t use.
* Maintaining a steady supply. You tend to stock up on your drug of choice or alcohol, making sure that you always have some or have a way to get more should you run out. For example, before you go to bed, you make sure that you have something for the morning or if alcohol is your drug of choice, you always have some on hand.
* Failed attempts to quit. You may have tried to stop using drugs or alcohol for any number of reasons, just to take a break or to prove to yourself or someone else that you can. Whether you rationalized it or not, you quickly returned to your old habit of using despite your best intentions to abstain.
* Focus on obtaining the drug no matter what. Even if you run out of money, you’re intent on getting more of your drug of choice. Maybe you choose to hang out with people you don’t like or trust knowing that they’ll supply you with what you want. Maybe you end up stealing from family or friends to pay for it. Perhaps you’ll get try fraud or theft to pay for your drugs. Your focus on getting more of what you need no matter what the cause is a definite sign of addiction.
* Continuous bad decisions under the influence. Because you are rarely NOT under the influence of drugs or alcohol or recuperating from a binge, you end up doing things that put you and others in harm’s way. Driving is one common example, but if you have small children or work in a place with heavy machinery, the wellbeing of those around you is also threatened just by you not being at your best.
Of course, there are a number of different physical and psychological effects of drug addiction that will vary depending upon your drug of choice, how long you have been living with your addiction and your current dose or the combination of substances that you’re using.
Be honest. You’re not doing yourself any favors by minimizing the extent of your drug use. Addiction is a medical disease and, as such, can be treated. There is no cure, but The Canyon can provide you with medically supervised detox services as well as comprehensive, multi-faceted therapeutic options in either an inpatient or outpatient format. Give us a call if you have any questions and check out our site for more informative articles about the complexities of dual diagnosis or the co-occurring disorders of depression and drug addiction.
Tags: Drug Addiction, Drug Addiction Treatment
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