Addiction Case - Curable Disorder

This final paper is also going to be about my personal disorder again. The disorder is my addiction and I'm going to be going into what it is, how it started, what it is like to be in the addicted phase, and how I treated mine. My final is about my whole personal process of the disorder from start to how I'm doing with it right now. The two main chapters I'm using are 12 and 13.

Addiction is a curable disorder. To me, addiction is a life long struggle that is possible to overcome. For me, it's heroin. For others, it might be food, sex, a person or even the internet. What I mean about it being a life long struggle is that i will always have triggers when i sense something that reminds me of my drug use, or drug using behaviors. A couple examples of my personal triggers are feeling depressed, being bored, seeing a past using friend. Those are only a couple because the list could go on for a while. Another thing that will last forever is the craving to use. I realized my cravings come from my triggers, because once I get triggered to think about the drug, then I start romanticizing it and doing this can easily lead up to a relapse. One more thing that lasts forever is how far I am into my addiction. I've been clean for almost 2 months but if I go back to using, I'll go straight to how much I was using before it doesn't cure up completely. So the cure for addiction is controlling the things that lead up to drug use and handling them in a healthy and appropriate way. There is no permanent or guaranteed cure for addiction.

How my addiction started was more than just one reason, but one sole purpose. When I was ten years old I moved out here from San Diego. My mom had met my step-dad and we came out here while my dad had stayed in California. That was a lot for me when my father and I had disconnected like that. And after 2 years we stopped seeing him all together. I feel like that was my main reason for using in the first place. It brought a lot of negative emotions in my life. There were times when I felt let down when he would break promises, I felt anxious because I would always wait for the day to see him but then when it came around to it we wouldn't. It caused depression in my life from not being able to see him, and it caused stress because I always felt like there was something I could do to see him. My first time using was marijuana with my sister, and after I did that I started to look for people like that because that's who I looked up to and saw as the leaders in my life. My drug use started to increase to self-medicate for the depression and anxiety from the loss of my father. It started with marijuana, then ecstasy, prescription pills, mushrooms, acid, heroin, cocaine, crack, and meth. I strongly believe that marijuana is a gateway drug to hard drugs because that's obviously how my situation went, and that goes with all the rest of the kids I started using marijuana with who are also now heroin addicts.

During my addiction, it definitely wasn't only my problem. It affected so many people other than me. But when I was in my addiction, I couldn't grasp that concept. People cared about me and I had a belief that I was only hurting myself but when you care about somebody and they are slowly killing themselves right in front of your eyes. My mom, step-dad, and sister were all part of that process. It affected all the people's families who I was dealing to, the neighborhood. The list can go on and on but when all I cared about is getting the drug and doing it, I didn't believe all the facts and was so closed minded to what my beliefs were and how I thought about the whole situation. I have had my disorder for about 5 years now. During the time I was smoking weed, doing ecstasy and mushrooms I was definitely rebellious towards my mom and