The best description of drugs and alcohol addictions I’ve ever witnessed can be summed up by the words of an elderly alcoholic I know. He declared that “the moment I knew I was an alcoholic was the moment I quit bragging about it, and began to hide how much I drank”. Further, he also described that when he was young he and his friends would often meet to share a case of beer over the weekend and boast about how much of it he had.

Then, as he aged, he would brag to his co-workers on how much fun he had that weekend drinking with his friends. Alcohol was slowly taking over his life and he was becoming an alcohol addict.  The drinking increased but his bragging slowly subsided. And the person consequently began to conceal the truth of how much he drank to his wife. He would tell her, “I only had a couple”, even though he knew it was a lot more. His weekend stories also stopped and he was now living only to drink.

As the person grew addicted, work was not as important to him anymore. He would therefore often call in sick and found that his problems at home were easier to deal with whilst drinking more. To the alcoholic’s mind alcohol was his friend in times of stress. Friends gradually began to question his actions as his personality and actions had changed noticeably. and depression began to set in. Have you ever known anyone like this? The truth is that drugs and alcohol addictions can very often take over your life, and your tolerance levels can also sometimes increase which means that you might require more and more in order to acquire the same effects.

Finally, you partake in alcohol drinking only to try and feel normal and feeling normal will then be entirely defined by the addiction. “How did this all happen”, you might ask yourself in the end. In most cases, ninety-nine percent of all people addicted to drugs or alcohol did not set out to become addicted to begin with. Addiction is often learned. You train yourself. The younger you start, the more susceptible you will find yourself to developing an addiction. There are certain recent studies which show that these patterns are liable to occur for all kinds of addiction. Test rats will eventually forsake even food for a “quick fix”. Quite similarly, humans who are addicted will sometimes forsake their family, friends, and even themselves in order to feed their addiction.

Even if the addicted person knows he or she might have a drug or alcohol addiction, they might sometimes fear the risk of withdrawal symptoms which might prevent them from attempting recovery, as the addicted person will now have a parasite thinking instead of them. Indeed, these people will find themselves entirely dependent of their addictive substance to solve their problems. Therefore, if you can relate to any of these situations, please try to consider that you have issues with addiction which should be addressed and try to get some help.

Georgia Kearne is a contributing editor at FitnessHealthArticles.com. This article may be reproduced provided that its complete content, links and author byline are kept intact and unchanged. No additional links permitted. Hyperlinks and/or URLs must remain both human clickable and search engine spiderable.