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With September being Addiction Awareness Month, it is important to address the conversation around addiction. More specifically, we have to create a more serious conversation.
Addiction is mostly mentioned in a joking tone: “Dude, you’re like addicted to Tik Tok.” “Seriously, how many Monsters have you had today?” “If you keep drinking every weekend, people are going to think you’re an alcoholic.” At what point does addiction start being a conversion and not a joke?
Addiction, in simple terms, is “the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.”
Another, more complicated, definition is, “exhibiting a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity.”
A daily explanation of addiction could be, “craving something uncontrollably until the point of denial.”
All of these explanations can be used to describe addiction and are valid. Almost everyone knows what addiction means but fails
to recognize when it’s in their own life.
Since addiction isn’t always about weed or booze, it’s more common than people think. It could be as mundane as being addicted to reading; although, it’s not as life-impacting as being an alcoholic. If a person can’t fall asleep without reading a book, it’s technically an addiction—right?
Many times addicted people don’t realize it because they’ve become desensitized to the situation. It likely also became normalized to the people around them due to the gradualness of it all.
If someone mentioned that they had three Monsters in one day to me, I don’t think I would really bat an eye; sure, I would be a little worried, but it’s more normal since I also drink my fair share of caffeine.
People don’t want to label themselves or loved ones as addicts because they don’t want to admit something is wrong with them. By applying that label to yourself or someone else, it causes them to take responsibility and not run away from their problems.
One might make the argument that since I am not addicted to anything “illegal,” I have no place to talk about this; however, I know what it’s like to lose a part of myself, which causes things to spin out of my control. This is exactly why I feel so inclined to talk about it.
Within a series of upcoming stories, I want to touch on a range of addictions and how they affect all of us. I hope bringing this conversation to a serious but digestible level will help people grapple and deal with their own.
