Who Is an Addict?
Most of us do not have to think twice about this question.
We know!
Our whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another—the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more.
We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose
life is controlled by drugs.
We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always
the same: jails, institutions, and death.
As addicts, we are people whose use of any mind-altering, mood-changing substance causes a problem in any area of life. Addiction is a disease that involves more than the use of drugs. Some of us believe that our disease was present long before the first time we used.
Most of us did not consider ourselves addicted before coming to the Narcotics Anonymous Program. The information available to us came from misinformed people. As long as we could stop using for a while, we thought we were all right. We looked at the stopping, not the using. As our addiction progressed, we thought of stopping less and less. Only in desperation did we ask ourselves, “Could it be the drugs?”
Reprinted from the Little White Booklet, Narcotics Anonymous. © 1986 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc., PO Box 9999, Van Nuys, CA 91409 |
