Vol.10 No.5

Profile of an Addiction
by Melinda Rhoten

If  this is your first week at XYZ corporation, you wouldn’t know that Jim is an addict. He strides into work in a warm, cheery mood, greeting each coworker like a long-lost pal.

You can’t talk to him for more than a minute without catching his bubbly enthusiasm. It’s easy to understand why he’s the corporation’s top salesman.

Jim even looks the part. He wears freshly dry-cleaned suits, is always clean-shaven, and every hair is in place. His hands are carefully manicured, and his grin gives the impression that life always goes his way. Sure, he’s a chain smoker, but so are other office workers.

By the end of the first week, you notice that Jim never drives anywhere. A taxi drops him off in the morning and returns for him in the evening.  Sometimes a friend, driving a flashy red Corvette, picks him up after work. What you don’t know is that two years ago Jim was in a car accident while driving drunk. When the judge discovered that Jim had a history of DUIs (driving under the influence), he revoked his driver’s license. (By the way, the flashy red Corvette is Jim’s.)

But Jim still spends almost every night at a local restaurant that serves his favorite drinks. His coworkers never see him drunk, unless they go to the same restaurant. His fiancee has grown tired of sharing Jim with the bottle and recently left him. Now, to numb the pain, he drinks every night. He knows he has to stay sober on the job, so he smokes to soothe his nerves—at least until the end of the day when the taxi arrives and takes him to the restaurant.

A few months pass, and Jim significantly changes. You notice the shadow behind his broad grin and the red puffiness around his eyes.

Would you call Jim an addict? Surely not. A person addicted to alcohol doesn’t have a job, lives in an alley, and takes swigs out of a bottle of cheap beer wrapped in a brown paper bag. Or, he lives in a run-down, roach infested apartment, just watching TV and drinking. Jim would never allow himself to go that far. He can even go several days without a drop of liquor. Jim’s in control of his habit. He can’t be an alcoholic!

To decide if Jim is addicted to alcohol, we need to have a clear idea of what an addiction is.

What’s an addiction?

There are two main kinds of addiction. The first is minor addiction. Almost all of us have these: eating a favorite kind of candy, watching too much television, or sleeping in late on the weekend. These are habits that we can objectively choose to give up when we see they are keeping us from a higher goal. A major addiction is when the roots of a habit go so deep that individuals will give up their job, home, friends, and even family before they’ll give up their “precious” habit. An individual with a minor addiction can get back on track relatively easily and seldom displays compulsion and denial when confronted. Those with major addictions, however, can’t see that the benefit they get from their compulsive behavior isn’t worth the price they’re paying.¹

People truly addicted will show a loss of control over their lives. In the case of an addiction to alcohol, they might tell you they don’t need to drink and will promise to abstain, but a short time later, they’re at it again. When the urge comes to drink, they develop a compulsive preoccupation with where their next drink will come from.²

The surest sign of an addiction is when an individual continues the behavior in the face of harsh consequences. If the habit jeopardizes a job, or a spouse threatens to leave, and the behavior continues, he or she has a major addiction. Yet, addicts initially have no idea they’ve lost control. Alcoholics, for instance, might compare how much they drink to their friends’ drinking. When they aren’t drinking as much as someone else, they rationalize their addiction away. Without accepting objective feedback from others about their addiction, they will never accept the reality of the problem and will keep blaming others for their mistakes. Until their denial ends, however, the first step towards recovery can’t be taken.³

Alcoholism is only one of many addictive behaviors. But because of alcohol’s socially accepted status, and the the slick advertising used to promote its image as a symbol of prestige, alcohol is possibly the most misunderstood and dangerous substance in the addictive family.

How it All Starts

Alcoholism starts when the individual takes that first drink. And because alcohol is a mind-altering drug which is perfectly legal in many societies, very little keeps potential addicts from experimenting with it. Those who use alcohol over time learn to gain a certain enjoyment from drinking, and the reward center of the brain urges them forward. Eventually, liquor is used as a “pick-me-up” when they are down. Then the urge to drink comes when they feel anxious, lonely, or frustrated, and alcohol becomes the way to cope.⁴  In the last stage the addict feels the urge to drink several times a day. They must drink to survive and don’t know how to cope without drinking.⁵

What causes people to take that first drink? Many try alcohol because of peer pressure. Strangely, others experiment with alcohol because they saw an alcoholic parent drink, even though the parent’s lifestyle negatively impacted their own. Parents who drink could be setting their children and potentially their grand children, and great grand children up for an addiction to alcohol. 

Many excuse the use of alcohol in moderate amounts. But alcoholics will tell you that “social drinking” set them up for addiction. When some sorrow or overwhelming challenge hit them, and they couldn’t cope, they turned to that familiar friend—the bottle—to numb the pain. But alcohol doesn’t make emotional or physical pain go away, it just dulls the mind and keeps the alcoholic from thinking about it.

When the drink wears off, the pain is still there, and often worse than before. People who couldn’t cope with pain before they drank, certainly can’t cope afterwards. So, they numb themselves again, and the cycle repeats itself until alcohol has them firmly in its grasp.⁶

At first, addicts have no idea they’re trapped, and they blame everyone but themselves. If a family member confronts them, they might say, “Everybody has at least one vice. Don’t give me such a hard time!” Yet, the only hope they have for dropping the habit is to realize it is their problem, not anyone else’s.⁷

Addicts and their Accomplices

Some alcoholics never learn to take responsibility for their own choices because someone covers for them. In codependent relationships, the enabler may even accept the blame and take the consequences of the alcoholic’s actions. But, unless alcoholics are allowed to face their own consequences, they will never realize they have a problem.

Heather and her husband had been married seven years. Even though he began drinking in high school, he blamed her for his drinking problem. Because of Heather’s insecurities, she accepted the blame and often covered for him. One day she decided she had had enough. “I thought for years that if I was prettier or thinner or a better wife he would not drink anymore. Of course I was wrong,” says Heather.⁸

“It took leaving him and taking our son to make him realize what we meant to him. Now we are on the right track and are going for counseling and treatment together. My prayers go out to all of you that are the alcoholics or the family of alcoholics. Sometimes love is not enough. You have to know when it is time to say enough is enough. It won’t be easy, but it may be the best way to say I love you.”⁹

Lisa grew up taking the blame. Her mother began drinking long before Lisa was born but blamed Lisa for her addiction. Lisa now admits, “Not until I reached my teen years did I realize what she was suffering from or should I say what I was suffering from. I came from a family, with the exception of myself, who accepted and enabled it by looking the other way or making excuses.”

Lisa tried to show her family that they needed to make her mother face reality, but her family continued excusing the addiction. After her mother died, Lisa decided alcohol wasn’t really a “disease” after all.

“A disease strikes suddenly,” she said, “and cannot be stopped …

No one puts a gun to the head of an alcoholic.”¹⁰

“I learned [an addiction] is a manipulative state of mind in that we had to adjust our behavior hoping it wouldn’t be a trigger [for her] to drink. But it did no good. It is an excuse state of mind trying to justify the abuse of alcohol by blaming it on outside forces such as children, job, or pressures of every day living … Alcoholism killed the relation between my mother and I because she hated that I spoke out. It was up to me to say no more, and I did.

I walked out on my mother to rescue myself because I was tired of the abuse due to the bottle, the excuses, the blaming.” ¹¹

Reaching Honesty

People can be addicted to many things, some of which, in moderation, are not bad in themselves. But alcohol is not one of them. “Social drinkers” believe they are safe from the negative effects of alcohol as long as they stay in control. Yet, alcoholics seldom believe they are out of con-trol. Sadly, when enough negative consequences have jolted them into reality, often families, friendships, careers, and health are shattered beyond repair.

But when alcoholics finally take responsibility for their choices, they’ll need all the support that their family, friends, and others can give. Most of all, they’ll need help from God. When the alcohol wears off, they must cope with the problems of life with no buffer.¹² But God has promised, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). God’s grace doesn’t excuse irresponsible, self-indulgent behavior. God’s grace gives both the power to cope and to overcome. For “we are more than conquerers through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37).

 Is someone you love facing an addiction? Do not excuse or enable his or her behavior. Loving, no- nonsense confrontation, including removing yourself and others from an addict’s manipulation, if necessary, may be the only message that pierces the elaborate webs of rationalization. Ultimately, we do not truly love individuals if we contri-bute to their self-deception. Neither do we respect ourselves to be used as accomplices in their facades.

The Bible summarizes the best advice for those taking the first step in dealing with addiction, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

References:

1. “What Is Addiction?” Just the Facts, www.fadaa.org/resource/jtf/addiction.html, Alcohol and Drug Abuse program.
2. Arthur T. Horvath, Ph.D., Coping with Addiction, Center for Cognitive Therapy, www.cts.com/ crash/habtsmrt/coping.html, September 1989.
3. “Section II: The Reward Pathway and Addiction,” National Institute on Drug Abuse Slide Teaching Packet II, For Health Practitioners, Teachers, and Neuroscientists, www.nida.nih.gov/ Teaching2/teaching3.html.
4. See note 2.
5. See note 3.
6. Thomas F. Fischer, M.Div., M.S.A., “Recognizing Addictive and Compulsive Behaviors,” Ministry Health , genesis.acu.edu/ ministryhealth/076_recognizing_obsessive_ behaviors.html, 1998.
7. Heather, “I Left Him Last Saturday,” Another Empty Bottle Homepage, www.alcoholismhelp.com, 1999.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Lisa, “Adult Child of an Alcoholic’s Lecture,” See note 7.
11. Ibid..
12. “Risk Factors for Alcohol Dependence,” Clinical Reference Systems, p.17, Clinical Reference Systems, Ltd., December 1997.