What Makes Drug Addiction Start?

People do not set out to become addicts. It's not like going to the gym to change your body to promote health and fitness. It's not like people take crack cocaine for the first time because they truly believe it's the best possible way to a better life. They take it for its effect. They want to get high. The problem is that the high is captivating.

Even if addiction does not set in, getting high becomes an alternative to experiencing life as it is. Users want to feel good, so they get high. Some users want to escape the realities of life, so they get high. They numb the pain. In either case, there is something missing. There is a hole in their heart and they try to fill it.

Our experience of life holds the key to understanding what is missing. We go through life gathering information and storing it in our memory. The information we gather is filtered by our mind and we add our interpretation of the event on to the event itself. It is how we interpret the event that assigns negative or positive to the experience. For example, I fail a test in school. I can either interpret this as an opportunity to improve and do better next time, or I can chose to dwell on the failure and perhaps even turn the event into a crisis. In both cases, my interpretation of the present is determined largely by our past.

Addiction disease may require a medical intervention, but there is also a spiritual component to it, and that spiritual component deals directly with the interpretation of life events. The need to use may be locked in a distant memory, or event a series of memories. That's where psychotherapy comes in. Like peeling an onion, the task is to find the original memory. In his book, "When Feelings Don't Come Easy," therapist Craig A. Miller talks about the necessity for people to find their feelings, and express those feelings. As an adult, one may look back at a childhood event and relive the emotions of the event, and through that reliving of the event learn to interpret as an adult. The Apostle Paul said that when he was a child, he thought like a child. As an adult, he thinks like an adult. Through reliving events, people can find the truth about those events and receive healing for the hurts.

The value of therapy to unlock feelings is enormous. As a pastor and chaplain, I firmly believe in a Christian-based approach to the therapy, based upon accepted psychotherapeutic theories and techniques. I have seen too many religious quacks, spewing out a toxic faith that leads to doing more damage. Remember, we are body, mind and spirit, and so trained professionals in each area are best suited to help people get in touch with their memories and the feelings that accompany them.