Alcoholism and the Drug Culture
With most of us, our first experience with any kind of excess when we’re younger is drinking. Some will start with pot or some other drug, but usually alcohol is more accessible, particularly if you are under age.
Once you start drinking and whether you take a liking to it or not, sooner or later most of us run across some form of recreational drug. Pot, designer drugs, pharmaceuticals, or even harder street drugs, which are the worst possible scenario.
Assuming you move on to some kind of drug, and alcohol is frequently part of the high too, this use can go on for a few years. The people who don’t have an addictive personality will eventually put a stop to using drugs or at least minimize the usage and get on with their lives. The person with the addictive personality won’t be able to stop and will continue to use, eventually moving into addiction usually without realizing it for some time.
One of the oddities of giving up drugs when you are still drinking is one day you say “that’s it, I’m not doing drugs anymore”, and you will be amazed at how easy it can be. But what you realize later that the reason it was so easy is because you continued to drink (and alcohol is a drug) and could very well be on your way to alcohol addiction.
It can be easy to give up one substance when you are using another one. And it is all a sort of a trap. You are happy with the fact that you are improving, when in fact you are becoming addicted to the substance you didn’t give up, which tends to be the more socially acceptable alcohol.
