At the early stages of your addiction, balancing life and using was probably hard, but it was manageable. Nevertheless, as your addiction grows stronger, and it becomes harder and harder to feed, the balancing act will fall apart. You will struggle to sneak to get your drugs or alcohol, you will start to get caught, your family will start to push you away, and you will begin to feel all alone—with only your drugs and alcohol to sooth your suffering. If you truly want to avoid losing everything, and possibly your life, you should pay close attention to these four signs that addiction has taken control and is about to ruin your life.
1. You See Your Life as Dim and Bleak
When your addiction begins to spiral out of control, your outlook on life will change. You will begin to see life through dark colored glasses. Depression will ensue. A feeling of helplessness and regret will monopolize most of your sober minutes. When you are not feeling depressed, you will feel anxious about all the different mistakes you have made. The anxiety will make it hard to focus on just one facet of your life to fix. This is why so many people refer to addiction as “spiraling” out of control or “spinning” out of control. You bounce back and forth between depression and anxiety, and the only way to fix these emotions is to use so that you feel normal. Sadly, the more you use, the worse these feelings get when you are not using, so the cycle has to continue until you break it. The only way to break the cycle is to get professional help.
2. You Have Begun to Lose What is Important to You
Have you lost any of the following?
- Your job
- You home
- Your children
- Your spouse
- Your valuable items
Are people who are important to you no longer involved in your life? In your eyes, you feel victimized, like everyone is turning their backs on you, right? The truth is very simple, if people who love you are leaving you, then your choices and your addictions are the reasons. There is no way to rationalize the loss, and you cannot blame others and ignore the plain truth. Your addiction has driven a wedge between you and your loved ones. People who love you enough to leave you know that it is the only way to help you. By leaving and letting you figure it out on your own, you are more likely to get the help you need. If you want to reclaim the things you’ve lost, the only way to do so is to find the help you desperately need.
3. You Feel Like You Cannot Control Your Day
Regrets are hard to handle, and masking them with a substance is one way to make them seem easier to handle, but eventually, you can’t mask them, and your life will spin out of control. If you are part of the addiction cycle that is spinning out of control, your typical day goes something like this:
- You wake up promising yourself you are not going to use today.
- You get anxious and restless.
- You start to rationalize with yourself about how it will be ok just to use a little. You think it will help you quit.
- You use, but it’s not enough.
- You figure, I’ll quit tomorrow.
- You use more and neglect all other responsibility.
- You crash.
- You wake up feeling guilty and start the cycle over again.
Simply put, you’ve lost control of your own free will. You are literally enslaved to your addiction. The only way to break this cycle is to find the help you desperately need.
4. You Use to Avoid Withdrawal
When you stop using, your body physically reacts. That reaction is extremely uncomfortable. If you are using just to control the withdrawal, you are clearly not in control of your own life. Your addiction has taken hold of you, and it is demanding that you feed it. It is literally ruining your life. Your only choice at this point is to find a facility that can help you detox from your substance. When you step back and look at the big picture, you will see that your choices have led you down a very dangerous path, and you have lost control of your own life to a substance. While that substance may be ruining your life right now, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Reach out for help today, and get your life back on track. It’s never too late to start over.