The Need Beneath the Addiction

We don't just wake up one morning and decide to become addicted. 

There is usually a story before the substance. There was a child before the adult. There were needs before there were coping mechanisms. There was pain before there was a way to numb it. 

When we grow up without safety, consistency, protection, attunement, or validation, we still have those needs. They don't disappear because nobody met them. 

We adapt.

We learn to survive however we can.

Sometimes that means shutting down. Sometimes it means controlling everything around us. Sometimes it means constantly seeking approval. And sometimes, eventually we discover something that makes the pain quieter. 

A substance can become that something. Not because we are weak. Not because we don't care. And not because addiction is somehow excusable. But because our brains learn what brings relief. 

When something hurts and using makes that hurt temporarily disappear, the brain remembers.

Pain. Use. Relief. Repeat. 

Eventually we may not even be chasing a high. We may simply be trying to feel okay.

That's why treating addiction can't always stop at removing the substance. We have to ask what was underneath?

What were we trying to escape? What were we trying to feel? What did we need that we never learned how to ask for? 

Understanding the need doesn't remove responsibility. But it does give us a place to start from. 

Recovery isn't just learning how to live without the thing that numbed us. Sometimes it's learning how to finally meet the needs we were trying to numb in the first place. 

The addiction may be the behavior we see. The unmet need may be where the story began.