By Kieron McFadden

Continuing my series ofarticles on the basic nature of addiction.

No-one sets out to become a drug addict.

Every cycle of addiction begins with a difficulty that for the person isextremely uncomfortable and for which he struggles to find an answer. A personexperiences in his life some problem or difficulty that is physically oremotionally painful. Addiction begins with physical or emotional pain.

This can be something as apparently "innocuous" as shyness or thechronic dread that comes with trying to live in an environment the personperceives as threatening or dangerous. (why do you think addiction is sowidespread in "rough" or criminal neighbourhgoods? The environmentcontains a continual high level of threat!) Other examples include difficulty"fitting in" as a child or teenager, the turmoil of puberty, or somepainful chronic physical condition.

From the perception of the individual, the problem is a major personalmisery from which he can see no immediate escape or relief. Most of us haveexperienced something like this in our lives at one time or another. Many of uswere lucky enough to survive the difficulty, to find a solution or alleviationthat avoided drugs.

We live however in a society where drugs are heavily pushed on us as easy"solutions" to our problems: aspirin for a headache, prozac and otherantidepressants for "seasonal blues," alcohol to render us sociallymore at ease or "recreational" drugs to "release" us fromdrudgery.

Indeed, the psychiatric pharmaceutical foes of Man profit from successfullypersuading us to pop pills to quick-fix every ill and more pills to quick-fixthe ills preciptated by the first pills and so on.

We have sunk from a race that a generation or two ago lived through WorldWar Two without becoming mentally deranged to one where increasing number ofpeople are persuaded they need pills to get them through the seasonal blues ofChristmas!

This introduces a burgeoning legal and illegal drug culture and the pushingof drugs into society as "medicine" is the virus that spawned ourdrugs epidemic.

There are two broad categories of pusher and drug baron with a vestedinterest in turning as many people as possible into drug addicts and both ofwhich often target children asd potential life-long customers.

The first category is the type of person most commonly understood to be a"pusher:" the street criminals whose sale and distribution heirarchyextends all the way up to the arch-criminal drug overlords.

The second is the corporate pusher: the medical practitioner/psychiatristwho dispenses psychiatric medications from his surgery, extending up though aheirarchy of drug sales operations and drugs manufacturing to the overlordshipof the pharmaceutical giants. These stand at the apex of a massive global drugsempire that utterly dwarfs anything achieved by the illegal drugs industry.

Marketing campaigns obscure the true lethal nature of the drugs and engendera culture in which human beings will more readily imbibe chemicals to"solve" their problems.

Spawned by the aforementioned vested interests, one sees an outpouring ofliterature, the glamorization of drugs by irresponsible (and oftendrug-addicted) song- and film-makers and other avenues of pro-drug propagandathat influence social attitudes. From this comes the peer pressure thatdetermines the readiness with which the person will turn to a drug to alleviatehis pain, his belief in the "harmlessness" of the drug and the typeof drug to which he will turn.

But this it a TRAP.

Every trap, to be effective, has to have a juicy bait that will entice theprey into it. The bait is the sense of release from discomfort the person feelswhen he takes a drug.

Albeit that relief is but temporary - and sometimes VERY temporary - it isperceived as a solution to the discomfort with which the individual wasstruggling and the individual thereafter places value on the drug or drink; itbecomes his way out from pain. This perceived value is the only reason theperson ever persists with drugs or drink.

The severity of use of the drug is determined primarily by the degree ofrelief the person experiences. Put simply: the greater the discomfort theperson has been experiencing, the more importance the person places onrelieving it and the greater the value he therefore assigns to that whichbrought about the relief.

This is the beginning of the indvidual's road down into the sticky dark oftheir personal hell of relentless misery and despair, ever greater pain thatthey seek to alleviate with more and more drugs.

More on this spiral of addiction in my next article