CHEMICAL DEPENDENCE: ARE YOU AN ADDICT OR AN ALCOHOLIC

Since drugs are so obviously harmful to people, why on earth do addicts go on taking them? Outsiders are usually baffled by the persistence with which addicts and alcoholics will go on taking drugs and drinking - no matter how often they are warned, lectured, threatened, coaxed, helped and even 'treated'.

This persistence is at the heart of the illness which affects addicts and alcoholics - the illness of chemical dependence.

Addicts and alcoholics are not bad people, no matter how bad their behaviour sometimes gets. They are ill people. For chemical dependence is an illness of the body and mind, most of all an illness of the emotions, either deadening or exaggerating feelings.

After all, what sane person would go on taking heroin knowing what it is doing to him? What sane person would take tranquillisers for years at a time? What sane person would continue drinking, when it is obviously doing him harm?

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Anti-Smoking