It's always interesting to see a balanced view in threads.
I'll add that I didn't compare drugs and alcohol to nicotine and caffeine. I actually was lumping them together in the same category. Yes. They are ALL mood altering chemicals. So's chocolate. All on the spectrum.
Should you question this, think about how you feel if you don't have them when you are accustomed to them. Uncomfortable, right? And therein lies the addictive/habit forming quality of the mood-altering substances. We start using them to feel good and end up using them because we don't feel good unless we have them. With continued use they eventually turn on us.
Where do we cross that individual line? No one can say. It's like a frog in a pot on a stove. The heat is turned up so gradually. We keep saying, "So far, so good." And then one day, surprise! How did I get into this mess?
We all like to believe that intelligence, education and common sense are the factors which will prevent us from falling into problematic use. But that's a fallacy. A comforting one nonetheless.
Our body's function is changed by the chemical and no amount of smarts can override that fact. Many famous addicts have been brilliant and productive. So functionality is no guarantee of safety either.
Are we still ourselves when we are using? That one is still up for debate. It's no surprise that it is a confusing question. I have met murderers, rapists, child abusers who no longer use whom I would never believe could have done some of the things they have done. They say they can't believe it was really them either.
The sad truth is that addiction is labled addiction because it has a definable process. It's progressive. And regardless of the substance will eventually lead to multiple problems in many life areas.
The level of the severity of the substance will usually dictate the level of degree of the problems. It would be good to be able to predict what is safe use and what is not but it varies so much from individual to individual that it is very difficult to know what safe use is.
We'd like to blame it on someone being dumb because that makes the rest of us who use feel safer. But addiction is no respecter of intelligence, education, class, status, sex, age, motivation. Any more than any other illness is.
Do a habit-forming substance long enough and it is habit-forming. The weird thing is that because it is mood-altering it lulls us into thinking we are okay. Others can see it; we can't. That's why we started using it in the first place; we feel better. But eventually we slip from using to feel good to using to just feel normal. Eekers.
It's a hard thing to talk about without raising uncomfortable feelings, itself.
