by BreAnne Kautzky

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

The nature of addiction to me is an attitude. Every clear sober headed person has morals or at least they should. A person with an addiction inside them at one time did have morals but addiction gets rid of your morals and replaces them with the desire for more and the willingness to do anything to get it.

Being a person who has experienced one of the worst addictions, the addiction of methamphetamine, I almost feel I have to share my knowledge about addiction. Addiction tears homes apart and very well destroy them beyond repair. Addictions hurt the addicted and the ones who love him/her most. I have seen the damage drug addictions are capable of, my whole family was in shambles. Addiction does not care who you hurt, who you lie to or steal from, who you double-cross, cares about nothing but the next fix.

My addiction was tired of scrambling for money and waiting on people so I stated to manufacture and got sucked in way worse. People often ask why did you do it in the first place? One, curiousity especially if I am told not to do it and two, to hide and run away from current things in my life like abuse, being high I didn't feel anything and I didn't care. It blocked my emotions and for awhile it was almost a blessing.

My addiction got to the point where I was 85 lbs. and would be dead if God hadn't given me another chance. My heart stopped seven times on the table, my kidneys are basically gone and all organs literally shut down. I was on a liquid diet for six months, almost died and went right back on the drug because I didn't want to feel what I felt.

The quest for treatment is the most challenging thing I have ever done so far in my 18 years of life. The thing I sense the most that people without addictions struggle to understand is that, for me and for many drugs weren't a hobby or done for fun, it was a way life it was what I knew and what I was comfortable with. People who say just quit, thats the best way! Haven't experienced a meth withdrawl where your body has been so starved that when the meth wears off the pain you feel from your own self being eaten away is HORRIBLE! Plus meth makes you awake, not tired. So no food, no sleep, and coming down from meth with out the help of doctors or meds is suicide and can actually kill you. Alcoholics if they just quit with the snap of a finger can die so fast.

That is another aspect of an addiction that people need to understand the physical pain a person experiences when withdrawing that getting that drug is the fastest way to get rid of it.

Basically the nature of an addiction is to control your life and it does and it will. The addicted is the final decision maker as to when they are ready to quit. I got put in treatment over and over and forcing me to quit but the thing is, that is my decision and when I want to. If the addict doesn't want to stop using then then they are not stopping.

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