What Is Addiction? Your Guide to Understanding Addiction
UNDERSTANDING
ADDICTION
Understanding addiction is one of the most important parts of addiction recovery. Drug and alcohol issues are complex and often stigmatized, making it critical to find accurate information to understand how substance misuse impacts you or your loved one.
This “What Is Addiction” guide will help you understand the nuances and impact of substances on the mind, body, and spirit. While addiction can seem like an impossible cycle to escape, recovery is possible with addiction rehab.
The experienced and compassionate staff at Tree House Recovery provides individualized care that meets each person where they are on their journey to recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, we can help. Call (720) 640-0202 to talk to our admissions team about our evidence-based, holistic addiction rehab in Colorado.
What Is Addiction?
Experts consider addiction a chronic, relapsing brain disease. This means that even after someone completes treatment, they remain at risk for relapse.
Addiction is similar to other chronic diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, because there is no cure. However, people can treat addiction. Building healthy coping skills and support systems is key to sustaining long-term recovery.
The Causes of Addiction
Addiction rarely comes from a single cause. It’s usually the result of a mix of genetic, psychological, and environmental factors.
Some of the most common factors that can lead to addiction include:
- Family history
- Mental health issues
- Trauma
- Early exposure to substance use
- Peer pressure
- Social isolation
Tree House Recovery believes that addressing all of these factors helps individuals fully recover. Our evidence-based approach includes individual and group therapy, family support, experiential activities, and holistic recovery.
We understand that addiction is complex, and we are here to help you or your loved one on the path to recovery.
What Are the Types of Substance Use Disorders?
Alcohol and drug addictions are known as substance use disorders (SUDs) by healthcare providers and medical providers. SUDs have concrete diagnostic criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).2
Substance use disorders can include substances such as:
Each substance affects the user differently, but they all trigger the brain’s reward center, creating pleasurable feelings that the brain wrongly interprets as beneficial. This helps explain why addiction can develop.
How Addiction Affects the Brain
The human brain is a complex organ responsible for all our activities. Even as you read this, neurons activate circuits and networks in the brain that recognize each word, assign meaning, and form a thought. Engaging with that thought helps shape you and how you interact with the world.
When drugs are introduced, they interfere with how neurons send, receive, and process information. This can disrupt the connection between neurons, creating abnormal messages that alter the brain.
Some of these signals may reinforce unhealthy behaviors because the brain mistakenly perceives them as beneficial. Since drugs release large surges of dopamine, creating intense euphoria, the brain encourages continued use to repeat the pleasurable effect.
Unfortunately, this unhealthy relationship between the brain and drugs creates a cycle of addiction that is difficult to escape.
Why Do People Misuse Alcohol and Drugs?
People may misuse substances to relieve emotional stress, anxiety, depression, or physical pain. Some people often take these substances out of curiosity and may experience a euphoric effect that feels positive.
Taking drugs for the first time is typically voluntary, but continued use can have negative consequences on a person’s life.
While some people can take drugs and drink once and stop, others may form unhealthy habits with these substances to feel “normal.”
Risk Factors Leading to Addiction
There is no single factor that causes substance misuse. But the more risk factors that a person has, the greater their chances are of developing an SUD.
- Peer Pressure: Friends and peers are a strong influence on teens, increasing their risk of substance use and misuse.
- Mental Health Conditions: Depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health disorders are strongly linked to a person’s risk for SUDs.
- Environment: You are often a product of your environment. Your family, school, and community can factor into your risk for addiction. Parents or family members who use drugs or misuse alcohol can increase a child’s risk of future substance misuse.3
- Your Biology: Researchers have estimated that genes account for 40% and 60% of a person’s risk for addiction.4
What Are the Signs of Addiction?
Symptoms of SUD can vary from person to person and depend primarily on their substance of choice. However, there are a few signs that can indicate someone is experiencing addiction.
Some signs of addiction can include:
- Inability to stop
- Lack of control
- Increased tolerance
- Relationship problems
- Physical health issues
- Substance withdrawal
These signs of addiction could be indicators that someone needs help.
When they are ready to find a solution to prevent substance misuse, Tree House Recovery is here to help. Calling our admissions team can start the recovery process by assessing the level of care needed for treatment, verifying your insurance benefits, and answering any questions you have about addiction rehab in Colorado.
Who Is Affected by Addiction?
Drug and alcohol misuse can impact more people than just the user. The person experiencing a SUD can feel the side effects of their misuse, and their loved ones, friends, co-workers, and community can feel the impact, too.
Tree House Recovery provides high-level addiction treatment that is effective and supportive of you as you follow the path toward recovery. We are here to help you achieve the life you want to lead, starting with your decision to reach out and take your power back from addiction.
Steps to Successfully Treat Addiction
Addictions are treatable disorders. The level of care or type of treatment needed for recovery will look different for each person, and will factor in the substance, dosage, lenght of use, and SUD history.
Here’s how Tree House approaches addiction treatment:
Starting Your Recovery Journey
Once you or your loved one has decided to find help for addiction, choosing the right rehab facility near you is the first step. While there are many options available, the best rehabs for addiction recovery will focus on treating the whole person, not just the symptoms.
Keep these four factors in mind when choosing the right rehab for you:
- How is success measured?
- Are there testimonials?
- Is there an experienced, certified treatment team?
- Is human connection emphasized?
Each of these factors can help you find a rehab that supports your recovery journey and teaches you relapse prevention skills to create sustainable sobriety.
Drug and Alcohol Detox
The next step in your recovery process is detoxification and withdrawal management.
This step may not be necessary for everyone, but it is crucial for those who are in addiction rehab for alcohol and opioids (heroin, morphine, methadone). These substances have withdrawals that are incredibly painful and could lead to relapse.
Medically assisted detox and withdrawal management can help treat the symptoms of addiction before you start healing your mind in the following stages of treatment.
Addiction Treatment for Substance Use Disorders
Evidence-based and holistic rehab can help treat the mental, physical, and social symptoms of addiction. A few different levels of care can help you in your recovery journey.
Inpatient Care
Inpatient programs require patients to live at a facility while receiving treatment. It’s usually recommended for severe addictions because it offers 24/7 medical supervision and reduces outside factors that could trigger a relapse.
Outpatient Care
There are three levels of outpatient care that offer addiction treatment, allowing patients to return home:
- Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP): PHPs are a structured, high-level care that allows patients to return home or to their sober housing after spending a day in the facility.
- Intensive Outpatient Care (IOP): IOPs are rehab programs that allow patients to return home in the evenings and continue working or managing other responsibilities as they receive treatment for a few hours throughout the week.
- Standard Outpatient Care (OP): OPs provide the same flexibility as IOPs but happen less frequently.
Reclaim Your Power Everyday
After completing evidence-based, holistic rehab, patients are ready to return to everyday life, using their new relapse prevention skills. However, this doesn’t mean they’re on their own after graduation.
Aftercare offers planning, resources, and ongoing support to help those who have completed rehab sustain their recovery after leaving treatment.
Find Addiction Treatment Near Me
Tree House Recovery is here to help you or your loved one who is experiencing addiction. Our compassionate and experienced team is ready to support you on your journey to recovery.
Through evidence-based treatment and a commitment to your long-term sobriety, Tree House Recovery CO can help you build a foundation for a lifetime of recovery.
Contact us today at (720) 640-0202 or connect with us online.
- NIDA. 2020, July 6. Drug Misuse and Addiction. https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drug-misuse-addiction.
- Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5. (2013). American Psychiatric Association.
- Biederman J, Faraone SV, Monuteaux MC, Feighner JA. Patterns of alcohol and drug use in adolescents can be predicted by parental substance use disorders. Pediatrics. 2000;106(4):792-797.
- Bevilacqua L, Goldman D. Genes and addictions. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2009;85(4):359-361. doi:10.1038/clpt.2009.6