Comment on Is it true that addicts never stop being addicts, they just replace their addiction?
Starb3an@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Addict/alcoholic 11 years sober. I got sober at a rehab and stayed sober through Alcoholics Anonymous. First, there’s a difference between chemical dependence and addiction. Often these things go hand in hand. Chemical dependence means your body will go through withdrawals if you stop taking in the substance. Something like weed has no chemical dependence aspect, but you can still be addicted to it. Heroin and alcohol can have heavy chemical dependence, and you can be addicted to those.
What AA teaches is not that alcohol is bad. Alcohol is a solution to the problem, but the solution no longer works. The base problem is I wanted to change the way I feel. AA creates a new way to change the way you feel in a healthy way.
If you look at it from that aspect, what you’re replacing is how you change how you feel. Personally, between ADHD and addiction, I very much display addictive behaviors to other things. Whether that’s hyperfixation or addiction, I’m not sure.
What I do know, is that I have no moderation to mind and mood altering substances. If they came out with a miracle pill and said, take one and your addiction will be gone forever, I’d ask for 2.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Marijuana is physically addictive as well as mentally, especially the ultra strong stuff we have today like THC vape pens, or dab. Anyone who has used marijuana daily for a decent amount of time and then quit can attest to the physical withdrawal symptoms.
Starb3an@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
That’s very possible. I haven’t done in-depth research on it.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We were told that it isn’t physically addictive when I was younger, but the weed we got back then was probably 100x less potent too. A simple vape pen is up to 20x more powerful than the hashish that people used to fly to Amsterdam to get. The actual leaf is completely coated in resin now and probably has more THC than everything left over in a pipe from a week or more of smoking in the old days. It is so odiferous that I can smell my local dispensary from a 1/4 mile away.
erev@lemmy.world 6 months ago
i think it’s less withdrawal and more your body flushing out all the cannabinoids, as well as going from smoking daily to not at all is a massive shift in body chemistry. that may have symptoms associated but may not necessarily be withdrawal, although that line can be blurry