To wonder if addiction is a choice

[BarbaraAnnee]

I am sorry if this sounds insensitive to some people but I just wondered what people thought of this. A relative of mine is an alcoholic and due to her being unfit, her parents have had to permanently look after her DD. I feel so bad for her and just wondered if she really loved her DD she would just stop drinking?

I dont think I would either. Addiction sounds absolutely horrible and I am so thankful for these stories, it has helped me look at my own lifestyle choices and analyse.

Is that maybe what it is, that it happens more in young people rather than starts in not young people ? Maybe to do with brain development

Well once you’re in the grips of it it’s not a choice but it’s debatable (to me anyway) whether the first steps of over drinking is a choice. (I am speaking of adults not youngsters). I speak of experience with my ex. He could have, and should have, sought help before it crossed the line. He deliberately and consciously chose not to (I was there, I know). He’s many years sober now but his refusal to seek help at the start of his ‘journey’ is hard to forgive or defend.

(Not including starting off as prolonged pain relief)

I agree with this. There is a process, you don’t wake up addicted. I think my dad could or would stop for the right reasons, sadly his children aren’t one of them. If offered £3 million he would though.

so sad

I'm honestly not having a pop at you but my father was a gambler. He had four small children and a wife - and he nearly lost the house due to gambling. He carried on, lying and leaving us with very little money.

He ended up in an old folks home (the best of the best, funded by the taxpayer). He died alone and whilst I miss (still miss) not having a dad, I don't miss him for a second.

Most of this thread is about alcohol and drug addictions and I don't have experience of those (although I did smoke for 20 years before giving up), but I don't see gambling in the same light and, perhaps due to my own experience, I have no respect for gambling/gamblers and I don't see it as an illness at all, just wilful selfishness.

OP, I hope your relatives comes through.

Careful OP, you are starting to sound irritatingly smug............

Very easy to say. I am a recovered alcoholic, I'm nearly 12 years sober and genuinely, when I was drinking, although I loved my child, I had no real concept of the damage I was doing to her. I seemed to function as a parent and a worker and a wife very very well n the surface but the trauma I caused was still there. It's not easy to say that and I don't say it lightly. I now, of course know and am so bloody lucky that she has forgiven me, understands that the drinking person was not actually 'me' and we have both worked through it.
don't you think that had i understood what was happening, I would have stopped it? I loathe myself for what I put her and others through, and I loathe the circumstances that led me into addiction. It's not a simple thing at all

dont mean to come across that way

If only everything was that simple.

It's no different than asking why someone with a broken leg will not walk.

The motivation is irrelevant.

I am sure gamblers dont want to end up in a position where they are putting their family at risk. It must be like any kind of addiction surely?

You don't choose to be an alcoholic. You can choose to seek treatment for it.

I've struggled with this my whole life op. My parents were drug addicts. I've been in and out of care due to neglect. Suffered every kind of abuse thanks to the company they kept. I've had years and years of therapy and I don't think I'll ever fully understand why they hurt me. But I never turned to drink and drugs. Because I choose not to become like them.

I always felt that they chose drugs over us. You see they would get clean and things would go well. Then they would choose to start mixing with their previous still addicted friends and we'd be back to square one.

They had good upbringings and nice families. No reason other than curiosity to start taking heroin. My mother told me it started with experimenting with weed then a dealer offering them heroin,for free to try. They chose to take it. They became addicts.

My mother chose to sell me to punters once she realised how much money she could make from an 8 year old. She chose to leave us hungry while she took a hit. She chose to keep going back to that pitiful life time and time again even though she had lots of help and support.

You see I kinda understand when people say it's an illness but it's hard to understand when you yourself are a mother who'd walk barefoot through hell for your kids. Nothing has ever come before my brood. I choose to be a good parent for them.

Maybe I'll forgive or understand one day who knows.

I suppose if my parents had put me through that I would be extremely resentful too.

I know I'm comparing two very different things here, but I see addiction like being in an abusive situation, you need to seek the help to get out of it, but sometimes you just can't see a way out. So sometimes it's not necessarily easier, but the path of least resistance to just not fight it.

It's very difficult. Next to no NHS provision - years long waiting lists and you have to be literally on the verge of death.

Private provision can be accessed much sooner but is prohibitively expensive for many alcoholics.

I got clean through AA and NA but they are definitely not for everyone. Many atheists and people of non-Christian religions find it difficult, and outside of London it's harder to access atheist AA groups.

Oh @vidflex you poor thing. I couldn’t ever forgive or understand that.

It’s a choice whether to first take hard drugs, anti D’s, cigarettes, gambling or alcohol.

After that, who knows?

i'm fairly sure someone doesnt just wake up one morning and think.. stuff it, i'm gonna become an addict! (be it drugs, alcohol, women, gambling or whatever else people become addicted too).

addiction is an illness.

OP, did your relative voluntarily give up her daughter?

My Mum insisted on “raising” us despite knowing she was a raging alcoholic. My Dad didn’t both taking her to court about it either. I can’t forgive either of them for it.

Whilst alcoholics might not feel like they have a choice over their drinking, they absolutely do have choices to make to minimise the damage, for example, relinquishing custody of their children, not drink driving etc.

They are not innocent just because “it’s an illness”.

Speaking from experience

It's not a choice in that your brain is rewired so addictive part takes over

It is a choice in that it's possible to overcome this when the time is right and the addict is ready

I've got generational addiction in the family, including my mother. She drank, and it had a shocking impact on our family, and nothing - no amount of begging and pleading from her children, her lack of contact with her grandkids - was enough to get her to stop.

I've been paranoid about my use of alcohol and drugs my whole life because of it, and still am. There's clearly a genetic component (it's all over the wider family as well, if in a more 'functional' way), as well as a social one. I 'rebelled' by disapproving as a teenager and that probably bought me the time to become aware of the need to be careful.

But, I'm also lucky that the 'common' addictions for my family I seem to be lacking the 'gene' for, as it were. I can drink, without being unable to stop or without it feeling so 'nice' as to make it chaseable. I can take moderately strong painkillers without hitting any switch in my brain except the one that turns off the pain when needed. I've never touched weed, not once, or smoked, and I won't. I wouldn't dare risk anything else. Those have been choices on my part.

Too, I'm very rarely in a personal or social place to need to be actively looking for a crutch to help me cope, which was not the case for my mother, or my grandad and great uncle. I can say no, because I've got a great deal to say no for and not a lot prompting me the other way.

The potential is definitely there, though. I've had Diazepam once, as part of sedation for a medical exam and boy, can I see how that becomes a problem for so many. I've honestly never felt so calm, so peaceful, so uncomplicatedly happy, in a situation where I should have felt anything but. I'd be very reluctant now to let myself be 'prescribed' that, as opposed to the 'one-off-in-hospital' for exactly that reason - but, again, I'm fortunate to be able to say that.

I guess I'm saying - it's both, in a way. I saw what addiction did and I make and have made choices not to expose myself to things that could become a problem, but I also have education, luck and where I am in my life on my side. It's really not straightforward.

Totally agree with this.