Try to answer these questions honestly. Those who are drinking should substitute the word ‘alcohol’ for ‘drugs’.
1. Do you need more drugs than you used to to get the same effect, or do you use drugs more often than you used to?
In the first stages of their illness, addicts find that their use of a drug increases as their tolerance for that drug grows. They need more drugs to get high, or they need them more often. In the same way alcoholics may have a very hard head for alcohol, priding themselves on out-drinking their companions. This is because their tolerance for alcohol is growing.
2. Do you experience temporary memory lapses or difficulties in keeping track of time?
Addicts find that they lose track of time, either because the drug is speeding them up, or because it is slowing them down so that they nod off. Alcoholics have memory lapses, when they cannot remember what they did or where they were. These are called ‘blackouts’. As the illness gets worse, time difficulties and blackouts increase in number and their onset becomes more unpredictable.
3. Have you ever sneaked extra supplies of the drug?
Addicts often find they are sneaking off to their own room or to the lavatory in someone else’s house to take more drugs while nobody notices. Or they may steal their friends’ drugs. They may start searching other people’s medicine cabinets, or smoking the cannabis plant being grown by someone else.
If they use alcohol, they will start trying to get extra drinks at a party or to sneak in an extra round.
4. Are you preoccupied with drug-using?
The mental obsession with drugs grows as the illness progresses. The addict begins to withdraw from those who do not use drugs, and to avoid their company. Most talk with fellow-users is about drugs, doing drugs, dealers and prices. Alcoholics talk about what they drank, pubs and drinking occasions. Other hobbies and interests fade away.
5. Do you use drugs in a hurry?
More and more the addict uses drugs for the effect, and wants that effect quickly. To that end, using becomes more urgent. In the haste, needles are not sterilised. Standards deteriorate. There is a compulsive need for instant gratification, and to get drugs as quickly as possible the addict will do all kinds of things he or she would not normally have done. Addicts or alcoholics have no idea of putting off pleasure. Just as a baby howls and screams when his rattle falls out of the pram, so an addict will lose emotional control if anything comes between him and his drugs.
6. Are you reluctant to talk to non-users about your use of drugs? Addicts soon begin to avoid all references to their drug habit. They are reluctant to talk about it to non-users, and may be angry if the subject is raised. They feel that other people should mind their own business about their drug-use, and will make them feel guilty about raising the subject. Alcoholics get angry if people suggest they drink too much.
7. Do you sometimes lose control after the first drug or drink has been taken?
Addicts begin to feel they need more as soon as they have taken the first drink or drug. Their control over how much they take begins to vanish. They may be compelled to finish whatever drug supplies are available – even when they know they will have run out of the drug in the morning. Alcoholics may have to finish the bottle, cannot leave the bar till it closes, are always the last at a party. This loss of control may not occur every single time – but the results of taking the first drug or drink become increasingly unpredictable.
8. Do you find yourself inventing alibis, excuses, inventions or downright lies to explain your drug-using?
Addicts soon begin to find alibis for their drug habit. They will rationalise their behaviour with a variety of excuses, reasons and explanations. These are invented to persuade themselves and others that they do not have a drug problem. Alcoholics behave in the same way.
9. Have your family, or people you like, begun to say anything about your drug-using?
As the illness progresses, family and friends begin to notice. Their concern may take the form of anxious suggestions of medical treatment, nagging, rows, coaxing, extorting promises, threats or entreaties.
10. Have you begun to spend too much money, run up debts, started handing out advice to others or spending time on fantasies and schemes which never get accomplished?
A sort of grandiosity sometimes begins to creep into the addict’s lifestyle. Feelings of being superior to colleagues or family begin to grow. Addicts and alcoholics may spend money recklessly, buying extravagant cars or presents for others, entertaining beyond their means, or leading a lifestyle which is out of their financial reach.
11. Do you experience feelings of growing anger, or increasing fits of frustration?
A kind of inner anger or resentment begins to grow in the addict. Impatience and intolerance of others increases. The addict or alcoholic is increasingly touchy, over-sensitive or unable to take the slightest criticism.
12. Do you have moments of remorse and guilt about your drug-using or your behaviour while using drugs?
In the beginning feelings of remorse and guilt grow in addicts and alcoholics. These vary from the remorse which follows bad behaviour, to feelings of guilt and unease which may occur at any time, even if there seems to be no apparent reason. Under the influence of this remorse, resolutions to give up or promises of better behaviour are made – only to be broken. In the end, some addicts feel nothing and show no moral sense at all. In their drug-using they are looking for relief from pain rather than for pleasure.
13. Do you have spells when you abstain from drugs?
Addicts may change the pattern of their drug-using from daily using to spells of abstinence followed by using again. These days or weeks of abstinence may be part of a resolution to stop using-but there is always an excuse to start again. This can be a way of deluding themselves that they are not dependent. For there is a myth that if you can stop using drugs you are not an addict. But it is a myth, since all addicts can stop for a time. It is the way they start again, and again, and again that shows they are dependent. Alcoholics go on the wagon for a time in much the same way. Sometimes periods of abstinence – at home, in health farms or even in clinics and hospitals – are a way of trying to control the drug. After drying out and getting better physically, the addict feels able to start using again.
14. Have you changed your pattern of using drugs?
In the battle to control their using, many addicts start changing their pattern of using. They may switch from one drug to another, claiming it was the previous drug that caused problems. They may change from snorting to injecting in order to maintain or increase the high. Or they may start taking prescription drugs, including methadone, claiming that these cannot harm them. Alcoholics may start switching drinks, claiming that drinking beer or wine only is the way to control their drinking.
15. Have you lost friends you had before using drugs? Childhood friends, or work friends made before using drugs, begin to drop away as the addict’s life centres more and more around drugs. Friends are now chosen because of their mutual interest in drugs or drink.
16. Have drugs affected your work?
Trouble at work begins to show in the addict’s life. Days lost through drug-use or drinking, warnings about irresponsible behaviour, or loss of promotion are the first signs. Later, jobs are lost, or sometimes the addict or the alcoholic resigns from a job before being fired. Those who are self-employed start losing work or clients. As the illness progresses, addicts have to use drugs to function. Then they cannot function properly because they have used drugs. This is the illness – first addicts start using drugs and then drugs start using them. Or, as the old proverb has it – man takes a drink: drink takes the man.
17. Has the attitude of your family and friends towards you worsened? Family and friends who were once anxious and concerned about the addict’s drug-using or the alcoholic’s drinking now begin to lose patience. Addicts and alcoholics may find they are now thrown out of the family home.
18. Have you had medical treatment, hospital treatment or residential treatment of any kind for your drug-use?
Addicts and alcoholics begin a round of medical establishments for their problem. Sometimes they are treated for drug dependence or alcoholism. At other times, doctors or clinics may diagnose them as suffering from depression or some other mental illness. These are often mistaken diagnoses and are convenient because they allow addicts to continue to deny their addiction.
19. Do you feel growing resentments?
The inner anger of the addict and alcoholic grows. He or she blames others for everything. Even small setbacks produce inappropriate fury and resentment.
20. Have you tried changing jobs, changing friends, changing homes or changing countries to escape your problem?
In an attempt to escape the growing pain of the problem, addicts and alcoholics start changing their outward circumstances. They may change jobs to avoid the stress that they themselves have created. They may change partners. They may try living in a new area in order to get away from dealers, drug-using friends, or drinking pals. They often start a new life abroad, in the hope that this will do the trick. Recovering addicts call this escape behaviour ‘doing a geographical’. They do not realise that through all these changes they take themselves and their drug or drink problem with them.
21. Do you protect your supply of drugs?
Here are some of the things that addicts do to protect their supply: they have more than one hiding place for drugs or for bottles; they hide drugs even when they are living alone; they try to save part of the drug or drink for the next morning; they con the doctor into giving them more than one prescription; they have more than one doctor in order to get more than one prescription; they keep a spare prescription in case they run out; they collect drug paraphernalia; they purchase more drugs or drink before their supplies run low.
22. Do you use drugs to get you started in the morning?
Some alcoholics start drinking in the morning just to get themselves together. In the same way, eventually addicts have to use drugs shortly after waking in the morning just to face the day.
23. Do you do things under the influence of drugs that you would not have done before you started using drugs?
The addict’s behaviour begins to show signs of ethical deterioration. Drug-using affects behaviour. The addict may come to accept lower standards of behaviour. Often this behaviour is the direct result of being high; sometimes it will occur when the addict is in a period of temporary abstinence. Here are some of the things addicts and alcoholics have done while they were using or drinking: lied to loved ones; fiddled expenses; fiddled the housekeeping money; run up debts knowing they could not pay; stolen money from family; shoplifted; mugged people; had sex with people they did not like; had sex for money; stolen a friend’s drugs. By the end, most addicts and alcoholics show total and utter disregard for themselves and others.
24. Are you using drugs more or less continuously now?
At the late stages of the illness, the addict may need to take drugs more or less continuously. Drugs are needed last thing at night, during the night, and first thing in the morning before getting out of bed. Addicts start keeping their supply by the bed. Alcoholics have a bottle within reach of the bed.
25. Do you have indefinable fears?
Addicts and alcoholics suffer from fear which has no reason to it. They may also have inexplicable anxiety and panic attacks. An appalling sense of impending doom afflicts them.
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Posted by admin on
March 22nd, 2011 :: Filed under
Anti-Smoking