The Adverse Effects of Addiction
Expecting people to act according to how I perceive my own intentions towards others and not by what I’m actually doing can cause real devastating problems. The confounders with a person like this are fantasy, blindness and denial which cause an absolute failure in communication with others, especially their loved ones. Here is an extreme example, a person comes home one night drunk and decides to make a fire in the fireplace. In their drunken stupor they forget to close the fireplace screen and wakes up to a house full of smoke. Immediately he runs to his children’s rooms in order to get them to safety. To his astonishment they are not there. He then goes to his wife’s bedroom to warn her. However, again he finds her not in her bedroom either. He then goes outside to find his family all safely standing in front of the house. He is really puzzled as to why nobody in his family warned him or was concerned that he was still in a house full of smoke. This person never realized the deep seated hatred his family had toward him. Secretly they wished he was dead. They all thought that they would be better off without him. The real truth however, is this person truly did love his family, however, he was so locked into himself he could never truly see what was going on in his life. Other examples are the family just dreads the sight of a parent’s car in the driveway. The sight of the car can instill fear in a child or spouse. Honestly, in a lot of cases these people had the best of intentions however, they always viewed others as the problem, and consequently, they could never see their part in any situation. However, this can be the wake up call.
The disease of addiction actually stunts and retards their maturity level. The person in this example clearly does not have the maturity and has a lot of blindness about them in being a husband or a father. As an addict or alcoholic the disease progresses, which causes the person to regress to earlier stages of life. They regress from acting like an adolescent, to a child then an infant. However, in order to reverse this regression it is not just abstaining from alcohol or drugs that will bring us back to adulthood.
Typically a person’s maturity level stays frozen to the age a person first started using drugs or alcohol. When a person decides to get help and go into recovery program they realize that they stopped growing and maturing. The clear realization that they need others to help them make more responsible decision is clear to them. The stage for maturing and being responsible is being set. This process has to be understood in the terms of this person has a disease and is something this person can grow out of, if they treat themselves for their addiction.
The re-gaining and matching our level of maturity, with our chronological age is directly understood in the terms of this person, has a disease and is something a person can grow out of, if they treat themselves for the addiction. This is done by the person asking for help regarding their issues, with close loved one’s and by setting clear limits and boundaries, which are set by a treatment program or a trained professional.
"I am a therapist who has a deep understanding of problems in relationships, addiction, depression, anxiety etc.. This understanding comes as a result of my academic background as well as from having been in active therapy myself. I know all too well what it's like to have challenges in life, and to try and struggle through problems. I personally have experienced difficult times in life, just like everyone else. I tried extremely hard to turn my life around on my own and eventually found that this was an impossible task. I kept trying to resolve my own problems but now understand that I had never been taught effective coping strategies and therefore lacked the appropriate skills necessary in order to turn my life around. I was only after I sought professional help myself back in 1985 that I was able to effectively change my life. Consequently, I found out that drugs and alcohol were only a mask which covered up the real issues that I needed to address. The road to change is not a quick and simple path, but as a result of my perseverance, willingness, the professional counselling I received, along with my experiences in group therapy, my life has been dramatically transformed and I am now able to fully appreciate what a blessing each day is."