Around 1 in 20 people in Australia have a substance abuse or addiction problem. This includes alcohol, illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin as well as prescribed drugs such as opioids. 75% of people eventually recover from addiction however on average 50% of the people who recover relapse back in to their addictive habits.
Let’s be honest here, while substance addiction and abuse is a real problem the greater concern is what causes the addiction in the first place. We live in society where drinking alcohol is encouraged, eating copious amounts of high fructose foods is encouraged and using anti-depressants (among other prescribed drugs) is encouraged. On top of this the media feeds our minds with negativity and fear and I’d say that most of you feel trapped in you work because you have bills to pay, a mortgage and other financial and life commitments you need to support.
It’s general knowledge that people don’t like to feel bad and will do what they can to feel good, and herein is the precursor to addiction and substance abuse. Take alcohol for example. It starts with you giving yourself permission to have a glass of wine, or a beer, to make you feel a little better. Over time your body adapts and the single glass of wine or beer no longer has the same affect and you make it 2 glasses of wine or 2 beers, then 3 and so on. Eventually your drinking at least a bottle of wine or a 6-pack of beer every day just to escape from the stresses of life.
If you can’t go a day with out drinking because you start to feel edgy or depressed then you have become dependent on the alcohol and are addicted.
While there is debate around the nature vs nurture aspect of addition most mental health practitioners agree that both are at play. Your genetics dictate the propensity of your addition while your environment triggers it.
To recover from addition and get back to a normal life you will need to work on both yourself and your environment. With your environment, depending on what the trigger is this might mean changing jobs, letting go of friends that are negatively impacting your life or even moving. When working on yourself it might mean seeing a counsellor or hypnotherapist and creating new healthy habits to replace the habits of your addiction.
Hypnotherapy is useful and proven method when working with addiction. This is because hypnotherapy works with the sub-conscious mind where change is a lot easier to implement. The conscious mind generally doesn’t like change and so talking to a counsellor without hypnotherapy can result is a longer treatment with less effective results.
If you feel you have an addiction then get in contact. The first step to tackling addiction is to acknowledge the addiction a seek help.