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Who Gets Hooked, and Why?

WHILE driving your car down a highway, you hear a peculiar rattle coming from the engine. How will you respond? Will you look under the hood to examine the problem? Or will you simply turn up the volume of the radio to drown out the noise?

The answer seems obvious, yet people who are addicts consistently make the wrong choice​—not with their cars, but with their lives. By means of addiction to such substances as drugs, alcohol, and even food, many attempt to drown out their personal problems rather than successfully cope with them.

How can a person tell if he or she is addicted? One doctor describes it this way: “Basically, use of a drug or activity is an addiction if it’s causing problems in your life but you keep doing it anyway.”

When this is the case, often there is a much more serious problem under the hood, so to speak, that needs to be examined before the addictive behavior can be changed.

Drugs and Alcohol

What starts a person on the path of addiction to drugs and alcohol? Peer pressure and curiosity often play a significant role, especially for youths. Indeed, the reason many people become addicted is their bad association with those who are abusing alcohol and drugs. (1 Corinthians 15:33) This may explain a U.S. survey that revealed that 41 percent of high school seniors go on an alcohol binge every two weeks.

However, there is a difference between abuse and addiction. Many who abuse substances are not addicted.a These can stop the abuse and then not have a compulsion to return to it. But those who are addicted find that they cannot stop. Furthermore, any euphoric pleasure they once derived is overshadowed by anguish. The book Addictions explains: “The classic path for addicts is that, somewhere along the line, they start to hate themselves, and they become hideously tormented by the hold their addiction has gained.”

Many who are dependent on alcohol or drugs use them as escape routes from emotional crises. Such crises are all too common today. And this should not really surprise us, since the Bible identifies these days as “the last days” of this system of things, when there would be “critical times hard to deal with.” The Bible foretold that men would be “lovers of money,” “haughty,” “disloyal,” “fierce,” “betrayers,” and “puffed up with pride.” (2 Timothy 3:1-4) These traits have created an environment that is fertile soil for addiction.

Susan’s emotional crisis resulted from mistreatment during her past. Thus, she turned to cocaine. “It gave me a phony sense of control and self-​esteem,” she says. “It gave me a sense of power that I didn’t feel on a daily basis.”

A study of male adolescent addicts revealed that more than a third had been physically abused. Another study of 178 adult alcoholic women found that 88 percent had been severely mistreated in one way or another. The Bible at Ecclesiastes 7:7 says: “Mere oppression may make a wise one act crazy.” A person suffering emotionally because of some terrible life experiences may later irrationally turn to drugs or to alcohol for relief.

But drugs and alcohol are not the only addictions.

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders (which some experts call addictions) sometimes serve as a distraction from unpleasant feelings. For instance, some use excess weight as a scapegoat for personal disappointments. “Sometimes I think I stay fat because everything that is wrong in my life can be attributed to that,” says Jennie. “This way if someone doesn’t like me, I can always blame it on my weight.”

For others, food provides a false sense of control.b Food may be the only arena in which an individual feels any authority. Many with eating disorders think that they are somehow defective. To build feelings of self-​worth, they strive to subdue their body’s craving for food. One woman said: “You make out of your body your very own kingdom where you are the tyrant, the absolute dictator.”

The experiences cited above are by no means a total explanation of addiction to drugs, alcohol, and food. A variety of factors may be involved. Some experts even suggest a genetic link making some more vulnerable to addiction than others. “What we see is an interaction of personality, environment, biology and social acceptability,” says Jack Henningfield of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We don’t want to be fooled by looking at only one factor.”

Whatever the case, no addict​—no matter what the cause of his or her addiction—​is physically or emotionally doomed. Help is available.

[Footnotes]

[Box on page 5]

A Worldwide Plague of Addiction

▪ A survey in Mexico revealed that 1 out of 8 persons between the ages of 14 and 65 is alcoholic.

▪ Social worker Sarita Broden reports a proliferation of eating disorders in Japan. She says: “Between 1940 and 1965, the incidence of eating disorders increased steadily with a subsequent jump in both in-​patients and out-​patients between 1965 and 1981. Since 1981 though, the increase in anorexia and bulimia has been dramatic.”

▪ In China the number of heroin users seems to be rising rapidly. Dr. Li Jianhua, who works at the Kunming Drug Abuse Research Center, says: “Heroin has gone from the border area to the interior, from the countryside to the cities, and to younger and younger people.”

▪ In Zurich, Switzerland, an experimental open drug market ended in disappointment. “We thought we’d ferret out the dealers, but we failed,” says Dr. Albert Weittstein, lamenting that they were simply attracting dealers and users from far away.