Addiction

Essay by Var6High School, 11th gradeA, February 2009

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When most people think of addiction, they think of potheads and alcoholics. Although those are the most common types of addiction, there are also more bizarre things like sex addicts and gambling. In a sense, every person has a form of addiction. Weather to caffeine, or food, or cleaning, they are all small kinds of addiction. Like, if you do not have your daily dose of triple shot espresso in the morning, you will go insane, or whenever you feel an extreme emotion, you feel the urge to eat. There are some people who have extreme additions, that destroy families, demolish their former selves, and lose everything they ever had, just for a drink or a few hits.

Having an addiction can scar a family and leave charred relationships in its wake. Most people dealing with addiction have done it for most of their lives, and have no intention of stopping, or even realize that they have a problem.

Denial is normal in such situations. Because they deny that anything is wrong, the other party in the relationship begins to question their own habits. Growing up with an alcoholic father, I spent most of my childhood questioning myself. I did not understand why he would forget to pick me up on Sundays, or why there was always a half-gallon of Black Velvet in the back seat of his truck. When he was drunk, he would call and tell me that my life goals were not good enough, and that I should consider other routes. He would comment on my weight (which was never really a problem) and criticize my every move. He lied about scratches and bruises and broken ankles from bar fights, blaming them on his job. My mother lived with these habits for seventeen years before she...