The Cycle of Addiction: What It Is & How to End It

If you or someone you love is struggling with substance use disorder (SUD), you’re not alone. Since the turn of the century, we’ve lost over 1 million Americans to drug overdoses, and the problem is only getting worse.

Fortunately, we’ve had plenty of time to study the problem since then and we’re now better equipped to treat SUD. Here’s what you need to know about the cycle of addiction and how you can break it and get back to your life!

What Is the Cycle of Addiction?

The sequence or cycle of addiction is categorized into a few key stages. Nearly everybody with addiction experiences these stages in one form or another, so let’s put names to each of them.

Initiation

The first step in the addiction cycle is your introduction to a substance. This could be through peer pressure, self-driven motivations, or even a prescription from your doctor.

Regardless, initiation doesn’t necessarily have to be the first step in addiction. We’ve all seen alcohol, but we aren’t all alcoholics. However, certain risk factors may intensify the possibility of initiating the cycle, including mental illness, trauma, social pressure, and many other possible examples.

Experimentation

Again, the addiction cycle does not have to begin with initiation. You could argue that it starts when you first begin experimenting with the substance. 

Experimentation could be trying to use more than your prescribed dosage of a medication or trying a new drug that your friend offered. Either way, it can quickly escalate to regular use.

Regular Usage

It’s easier said than done to stop before this phase. You can promise yourself you’ll only smoke cigarettes on the weekends, but it’s a slippery slope the first time someone offers you one on a Wednesday.

Consequently, once the cycle moves from experimentation to the regular usage period, it becomes much more difficult to stop using the substance. At this point, it can quickly become engrained in your routine, which can quickly bring us to our next stage.

Dependence

You can think of dependence as a psychological addiction, but don’t let that weaken its effect in your mind. If anything, dependence is more dangerous than an addiction for more reasons than one. Most notably, you can convince yourself to break with an addiction, but if you’re dependent, you won’t.

Moreover, you can become dependent on anything. Just because something isn’t physically addictive doesn’t mean you can’t believe it to be essential to your health, well-being, or functioning. For this reason, marijuana can cause just as many complications in a person’s life as other drugs or alcohol.

Addiction

Let’s state for the record that there’s no specific timeline here. You can go from initiation to addiction within a matter of days or years. It depends on a number of factors.

Regardless, after enough time and regular use, your body will become physically addicted to the substance. Contrary to dependence, addiction is when your brain can no longer produce a certain neurotransmitter that a substance replicates in adequate quantities, throwing this delicate balance off. Therefore, you’ll need to continue using the substance just to function once you reach this stage.

At this point, quitting or restricting your consumption can lead to illness in the form of withdrawal symptoms. These can be painful, grueling, and even lethal in extreme cases. Fortunately, addiction doesn’t have to be the last stop in this cycle.

How to Break the Cycle of Addiction

There is one other step of the cycle, and that’s ending it. Treatment is the final step in the cycle of addiction, and it’s imperative that you find it.

Especially with street drugs becoming riskier by the minute with fentanyl and other lethal substances on the rise, continuing without treatment is a ticking time bomb. The US recently saw over 107,000 overdose deaths in a 12-month period, and the problem is only getting worse. Therefore, finding treatment now can save your life and long-term health.

Finding the Right Treatment Plan

Not all programs are created equally. You will need to find a treatment plan suited to your individual needs.

Generally speaking, inpatient or other intensive treatment plans are the best solutions for early recovery. Having access to medical services during the detox stage can save your life, and a controlled, substance-free environment can help you avoid temptation.

If you can’t commit to a stay in rehab, then we highly recommend a partial hospitalization program. This will offer the help you need with minimal disruption to your work and life obligations.

Regardless of what you choose, don’t wait. Help is available, but you have to take it!

Break the Cycle Today

Now that you know how the cycle of addiction works, take a look at yourself and ask what phase you’re in. Even if you’re near the end, we promise that it doesn’t get easier than it is right now to find treatment. The fact that you’re reading this is a great first step toward a better life.

Keep reading our blog for our latest recovery tips, and don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or for help with your journey to sobriety!