Addiction takes you so far away from reality, you tell yourself things to keep your perspective as the right one.  If you admit your viewpoint is wrong, your whole house of cards comes crashing down.  You are left staring at “square one”, admitting you are empty, lost, and totally vulnerable.  This isn’t a very pretty feeling, something most everyone would like to avoid.  Drug addiction turns this tendency to resist humility up to turbo-drive strength.  It will train you to believe your own lies over the observations of people you would normally trust (spouses, friends, coworkers, children). 

The Truth About Drug Addiction Does Not Disappear

Once you have come to terms about something deep and painful like this, it stays with you deep inside.  You just voluntary ignore or cover it up if you decide you can’t face it.  So, why not try to resist seeing that reality in the first place?  Fight the truth tooth-and-nail before it has a chance to seep into your consciousness and wake up your brain. 

Many addicts do not have good self awareness.  Often, they have spent their life (or a significant period of time) trying to survive emotional pain by blocking it out or ignoring the obvious signals.  One example would be children growing up in alcoholic or drugging families.  The dysfunction and pain is clearly there, so they devise various ways to ignore it since they cannot change it. 

The chaos and contradiction is too hard for the young brain to deal with in many cases.  It is much easier to just make it seem like something else or pretend you aren’t there.  This escapism most likely does a lot to protect children from trying to process serious adult problems.  However, these survival tactics often continue on past the time they are needed.  

Addiction and Poor Self Awareness Go Together

If this self awareness problem continues into a time when they are introduced to drugs or alcohol, these people may easily become addicted themselves.  They continue to push aside obvious signs of a problem because of their early survival techniques.  They may even have resentment or great dislike of the addicted parent.  Realizing that they have gone down the same path may be too difficult to admit.

The internal facade of addiction is that you are not at fault - everyone else is.  You wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for them.  They pushed you to be like this.  (Or) This isn’t even a problem - they are blowing it up way too much.  I am in total control.

These lies give the drug addict relief from any anxiety or guilt they may start feeling.  When facing rehab, anxiety and guilt can be a good thing - it may prompt the addict to begin realizing the impact of their addiction on their life and others.  The denial of reality (lies to oneself) is a defense mechanism, designed in their mind to protect them from pain.  In fact, the closer they are to pain, the more defensive they are likely to be.

Facing Drug Rehab With Courage

Facing drug rehab can be one of the scariest and terrifying moments in a person’s life.  It feels like a huge risk to go into the company of strangers, knowing that they are expected to make changes and reveal the ugliest parts of themselves.  If you are the one needing drug rehab, or your loved one does, contact the Orchid for help.  They can give you information about their unique drug rehab for women.  Take the leap of faith and learn about starting drug rehab at The Orchid.

Tags: Drug Rehab, Drug treatment, Why Addicts Resist Drug Rehab

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Alcohol Rehab, Drug Addiction Treatment, Drug Rehab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.