Stress and Addiction: Where’s the connection?
Relationship between Stress and Addiction
Did you know that excessive stress could lead one to addiction? What is stress and what is addiction and how are they related to each other? Well, I will come to that later in my next paragraph. First and foremost, let’s talk about stress. In everyone’s life, one undergoes or experiences some stress of some kind. With the fast moving life of today one tends to find him or herself always trying to cope up especially since everything and everyone has evolved really fast for the past ten years or so. All this added up together can lead to one easily falling into what we call stress. Did you know that stress can also come from family, friends and peer pressure? These three elements especially the latter has caused lots of pressure in the world today that has been dubbed ‘digital’.
Now let us talk about what stress and addictions are. Well, for starters, stress is some kind of strain or tension felt when one is experiencing environmental, work or even family challenge. This could be as a result of death of a child, a lover and even of a close friend or relative, divorce, peer pressure and financial matters. To mention but a few. Addiction on the other hand is when one is devoted to something that could either be drug related or just devotion to something of some kind. Someone with an addiction problem always have the strong urge and need to always have that thing that they are addicted to. It’s almost if not a disease of some sort and can be treated if one seeks treatment in time.
We all know that a little push is good for everybody thus a little bit of pressure is not harmful. It’s dangerous only when it goes overboard. As the saying goes, too much of something is dangerous, so it stress and pressure. If you push yourself too much you will always get into stress, trying so hard to cope in your job, family or amongst your friends and feeling that you are not meeting their standard could also push one into stress because they will always be trying to fit in. well, trying is not bad but not to an extent that it affects you or drives you into stress and depression. It’s your life we are talking about here.
So how does stress result into addiction?
It’s actually not rocket science to relate the two. Though not all stress will always catapult into addiction, most of them usually do. Infect stress and addiction are almost synonymous. Synonymous in the fact that you can rarely get one without the other. Most or all individuals have their own ways of dealing with different kinds of stress in different ways. Some people will just need to take a few hours or days off from work or whatever stress is it that they are going through and it all goes away but there are some people who will turn to stronger things like alcohol, cigarettes or drugs like cocaine or heroin to relax them from the stress they are undergoing. In most countries, cigarettes and alcohol are legal so they are usually the most sort after as stress relievers. They are equally cheap, affordable and readily available.
One can start by just joining friends or relatives for a social drink over the weekend to put away or forget the stress he or she is went through during the week. It could just be an innocent get together that could start with one weekend then when you go home or is on your own, you will feel like the stress is has gone away or subsided. This trend may go on from weekends to daily because you will always seem to feel tensed during the week and after a few drinks later in the day or even on weekends you will feel better. By this time, you will have found or would thing you have a solution of getting rid of your stress. Is it me or does cigarette make a good companion of alcohol? These two go together very well just like stress and addiction. In fact, it’s almost impossible to separate the two. Most often your drink will be generously escorted with a cigarette. Some will also start with the hard stuff like heroin and cocaine.
- Addiction
Well, remember we had mentioned earlier that addiction is too much devotion to something regardless of what it is? Now when one starts depending too much on something it becomes addiction. Please don’t get it twisted and start looking for comfort somewhere else as any form of dependency may lead to addiction. However there are many ways to know if you are addicted or headed there especially for the ones using drugs. We all know our body and can tell if there any weird changes. If you start losing weight, getting tremors then start getting worried. Honestly though, do we need to wait to experience all these and is it really worth it?
First avoid stress by always keeping away from whatever drives you into stress. It’s given that some stresses are inevitable like death or even family matters like divorce but it will help to know that we are not the only ones going through such calamities. Issues like peer pressure are avoidable. How? Simple. Keep away from anyone expecting too much from you at the expense of your health. All said and done, alcohol, cigarettes or any form of addiction will never be cure for stress.
If you fall victim of addiction from stress related causes, or suffering any form of addiction, we at New Frontier Medicine Academy.
Stress and Addiction: Where’s the connection?
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