That's definitely one way people get addicted, but I suspect not the most common.
A huge proportion of drug addicts (and I suspect addicts of sex, gambling etc I'm just less familiar with those addictions) started taking their drugs because of how tough their life was. And even if you know that starting to take opiates or whatever drug of choice might not be a sensible plan long term, if you feel so bad that you'd rather kill yourself than live in your head sober, it's possible to actually want to keep using what you re addicted to because you don't believe that life without that drug can be any better.
I don't know how common this is, but anecdotally I've known two people who used high dose prescription painkillers (obtained illegal) to give them enough positive feelings to be able to work on their mental health problems, both who would've been described as problematically addicted by most medical professionals, but who managed to use the opiates to work on their core mental health issues until such a time that they felt ready to not need opiates, at which point they found it relatively easy to stop. Because as horrible as it is to get the withdrawals, it's actually not very last longing and it can be considerably less painful than the pain of having such severe mental health issues that you were desperate to kill yourself before you started the drug use, not because you started the drug use. (Of course there's also people who get addicted because they think it will be fun, and end up suicidal because of it. And I also wouldn't recommend using opiates to work on your mental health, because despite my two anecdotes I believe the almost universal knowledge in medical circles is that it's much more likely to worsen your mental health than to improve it.
Yes, that agrees with the addiction theory of Johann Hari, who has a TED talk and a book[0]. Experiments with rats show a rat will quickly be addicted when the choice is only between water and an opiate. But give the rat something other than a stark lonely existence, like exercise and sexual partners and rat friends, and they hardly use the drug. Similarly, many US servicemen in Vietnam became addicted to heroin while in country, but almost all simply stopped heroin when they were back home around friends and family.
> Similarly, many US servicemen in Vietnam became addicted to heroin while in country, but almost all simply stopped heroin when they were back home around friends and family.
I think this may be ahistorical, or at least vastly overstated. See Jeremy Kuzmarov’s research, published in “The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs.”
Ah, yes, I'm not talking so much about how they start, but about why it's hard to quit. The short term pleasure is always more compelling than the long term benefit of not being an addict.
But my point is that's not the only way people find it hard to stop.
If you're addicted because your life was roughly fine, but you discovered that a drug make you feel amazing, keep taking it too much, and get to the point where withdrawal is so painful that it's impossible to resist taking another dose to feel good again, then that's exactly how you describe it.
But if you're using heroin or whatever drug as a mental health treatment, e.g. because if you hadn't started using you would instead have killed yourself, then sure you'll still have the nasty withdrawals when you stop, but it's a totally different equation. For many addicts, taking illegal drugs is the only way to feel OK about life. Some of these people never manage to get clean, but the ones with this reason for addiction who do (or who try to) get clean, it can be surprisingly easy to deal with the withdrawals, because they're aware of how shit life was before they first started using the drug, and the idea that the rest of your life will be as shit as before you
started using drugs can be a far more scary thought than someone who's life was basically good except for their getting hooked on a drug.
To quote one of the all-time great TV shows, and surely the best about authentic portrayals of drug users, dealers, and cops - The Wire - Waylon, a former addict and narcotics anonymous sponsor, says “Getting clean’s the easy part. And then comes life.” I guess that's true for both types of addict I've talked about, but it's even more true for the addicts who turned to drugs because they hated their lives than for people who had lovely lives until they accidentally got addicted to a drug that they thought was fun to try.
A huge proportion of drug addicts (and I suspect addicts of sex, gambling etc I'm just less familiar with those addictions) started taking their drugs because of how tough their life was. And even if you know that starting to take opiates or whatever drug of choice might not be a sensible plan long term, if you feel so bad that you'd rather kill yourself than live in your head sober, it's possible to actually want to keep using what you re addicted to because you don't believe that life without that drug can be any better.
I don't know how common this is, but anecdotally I've known two people who used high dose prescription painkillers (obtained illegal) to give them enough positive feelings to be able to work on their mental health problems, both who would've been described as problematically addicted by most medical professionals, but who managed to use the opiates to work on their core mental health issues until such a time that they felt ready to not need opiates, at which point they found it relatively easy to stop. Because as horrible as it is to get the withdrawals, it's actually not very last longing and it can be considerably less painful than the pain of having such severe mental health issues that you were desperate to kill yourself before you started the drug use, not because you started the drug use. (Of course there's also people who get addicted because they think it will be fun, and end up suicidal because of it. And I also wouldn't recommend using opiates to work on your mental health, because despite my two anecdotes I believe the almost universal knowledge in medical circles is that it's much more likely to worsen your mental health than to improve it.