Why Do People Do Drugs?

Do we need to know why people do drugs to give them addict help.

Holistic addict help, treats the person , not the symptoms. Understanding why a person has chosen to do drugs assists with enabling them to recover fully from addiction when giving addict help.

Why do people do drugs has as many answers as there are people who do drugs – but the reasons why people do drugs can be put into some general categories.

• People do drugs to find escape – from guilt, or shame, and oppression.
• People do drugs to relax.
• People do drugs out of boredom.
• People do drugs to relieve symptoms of pain.
• People do drugs to feel part of a group.

Why do people do drugs when life offers so many alternative and better solutions. People do drugs because they get instant gratification, the more compulsive our need to find resolution to a painful problem – the more attractive drug use is.

Drug use is magical thinking – creating the illusion of power and control. Drug use is about having feelings of mastery over situations that make us feel weak and powerless.

People do drugs because they are not ready or prepared to look at the reasons why they choose drugs instead of other relationships. Very often people turn to drugs because in one way or another they feel that they have been betrayed, let down or hurt by other relationships – drug use provides insulation against suffering and pain.

Everyone knows that after a while, drugs become less effective – no one ever seems to recapture that first glorious high that we get from a drug that meets our needs exactly. Everything about the drug culture fails eventually to live up to its early promise. People need to use more of the drug just to keep feeling “normal”, money for drugs becomes a problem, jobs can be lost because of drug use. Crime becomes the only option when people have a drug habit, and no other source of income.

Relationships can suffer, friendships can be lost, accommodation is usually downgraded and degraded as money for food and lodgings is diverted to drug use. Dirt, infection, theft and violence all go with drug use. Once people start to discover the truth about drug use, you would think that they would stop. Why do people do drugs – when drugs are destroying their life.

Drugs are addictive, and hard to withdraw from. Yet even withdrawal from heroin, with intensely painful symptoms, subsides within a few days, and can be overcome. Physical addiction to drugs is powerful but it is only part of the story. Psychoactive drugs block emotional pain and that is why people do drugs. They don’t have a disease, a genetic malfunction – drug use relieves emotional tension and takes away our pain.

Therefore if you want to help a drug addict, don’t think that anti-drug adverts and appeals to reason will help. You only make yourself part of the problem when you moralize and berate the addict with appeals to logic and reason. People do drugs as a means of keeping emotional pain away.

Holistic methods to get off drugs provide drug free effective support for detox, but more importantly get you past detox into a new way of thinking. Although getting off drugs is painful at first, true holistic recovery from drug use eliminates cravings, and brings healing from your pain.

Why do people do drugs when holistic addict help is available –choose holistic methods to strengthen and enable you to overcome pain and addiction, and start a happier life.

Author: National Addiction Resources

America's Best Treatment Directory