Forget everything you think you know about addiction, please. For the sake of my sanity, work with me here, try to believe that I’m not going to sit here and take time out of my day to tell you lies… I, Mariah McKeown, promise that all information is 100% true to the best of my knowledge, it is a collection of things I have learned through my experiences before addiction, loving an addict, then becoming the addict myself.

Here goes, enjoy...

Addiction is one of the few things that is completely impossible to understand if you’ve never lived it. Being related to or knowing someone who suffers with addiction makes you understand just that, the struggles of knowing or loving an addict. You still don’t understand what it’s like to physically be an addict. If you can’t grasp the idea that you have the inability to understand us on the level that we understand each other, stop reading this now because you won’t get anything out of it.

Let me get started by saying that addiction is an illness, contrary to many people's beliefs. Have you ever noticed that the only people who argue that it isn’t an illness are the people who have never suffered with it? Just trust me when I say, it is a sickness of the brain, like schizophrenia it consumes your every thought. Looking back I know I wasn’t thinking clearly but in the midst of my addiction, I had no idea the person I had become. Just like the voices talk to schizophrenics, the drugs tell us we must do certain things, frequently terrible things, to survive as well…

Sounds crazy right? That’s what I thought as well.

I went from a non-believer to being in love with a heroin addict, to being the heroin addict in 4 short months. So I can tell you I truly understand all points of view. I have experience with them all which makes me more than qualified to tell you that, as a non-addict, you just do not understand. You can’t, it's not your fault. Only two short years ago I was with the nonbelievers, like many I thought drug addicts were just losers who were too weak of human beings to just say no. I didn’t understand it, though, I thought I did. Loving an addict makes me qualified to also tell you, with confidence, that loving an addict is the most frustrating thing, I remember asking why my love wasn't enough to make him stop… Then I became the addict and it all made sense. Suddenly I understood why he couldn’t say no. You psychically can’t regardless of how badly you want to.

In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you cannot achieve a higher level until the level before it is met. The foundation is physiological needs, which are required for survival, like sleep, food, air and (for an addict) getting your fix. That's just how serious it is, we can’t even get the the second level, our need for safety, until our need for drugs are met. This is why an addict doesn’t care about the chances of overdosing when they are sick, because their safety doesn't matter until their physiological need for drugs are met. We can’t “just stop”, our brains are telling us we need this substance to survive. It’s like telling a schizophrenic to “just stop hearing the voices”, they can’t and you would sound like an ass hole. Know that to millions of addicts, you sound like just as big of an ignorant ass hole telling us to “just stop”.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The thing about addiction is that we hate it, we hate the things we do while we are addicted and we hate the thoughts that go through our heads when we are “sick”. Often times we know our thinking is irrational, I know that pawning that laptop (which was a gift) is wrong but once that thought crosses my mind there’s no stopping it. My brain is now telling me that I have to pawn that laptop for survival, “you are actually going to die if you don’t go pawn that laptop and buy drugs with the money”. We know the thought isn’t rational but the thoughts won’t stop until we give in.

Overdosing doesn’t scare us, not because of f*cking Narcan, but because if we die maybe the pain will be over with. It isn’t fun, we don’t want to want it. But heroin doesn’t care about what we want. Death is something that most addicts look forward to, I remember thinking that the only way I could ever stop was if I died. I remember hating myself so much I hoped for death every hour of every day for months.

No person who is happy with their life decides to just casually pick up drugs one day. This is why I have always told people that drugs are not the problem, they are the solution to the addicts problem. Don’t get me wrong, drugs are definitely a problem but something leads a person down that road. Something happens in the person's life that is so unbearable that they will do anything to ease it. Looking back, don’t you remember how hurt you were when your high school boyfriend cheated on you? That event seems so insignificant now, usually you look back and think ‘wow, I overreacted’, but at the time it was important, at the time it mattered and the pain hurt. That’s how an addict feels, like things are never going to get better… So they numb themselves.

So the next time you see an addict on the street remember that they live in emotional and physical pain every single day. No one wants to stand on the side of the road and beg for money, they feel just as pathetic as they look. That is someone's daughter, son, husband, mom, dad, sister or brother, and it could be your child one day. I don’t wish addiction on anyone or anyone's family but maybe some people wouldn’t be so quick to wish death upon them if their children were one of the “junkies” on the street. We know they need all the prayers they can get. Look at them with a little more compassion because the hell they live in inside their heads every day is enough to make anyone wish they were dead…

Don’t let the power of the drugs make you look down on the physical drug user in active addiction.

Xoxo,

The recovering addict