While the number of people suffering from addiction is disheartening, the good news is that nearly 75% of them are either in recovery or have completed treatment and are working on staying on the right path. Similarly, roughly 75% of all individuals who seek addiction treatment are successful.

Something that helps battle addiction is support and understanding. This can be done by educating ourselves and shedding more light on the misconceptions about substance abuse, which can hinder the progress of providing people with the care they need. 

To better our understanding of this epidemic, we reached out to experts for their insights. One of them is Gillian Tietz, educator and host of the Sober Powered podcast, who uses her biochemistry background and previous experience of alcohol abuse to spread information about addiction.

We also contacted Dr. Hannah Roberts, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and mindful drinking coach who helps individuals change their drinking without judgment or a sobriety requirement through her online course, Mindful Moderation.

Tietz explains that some people find illicit substances appealing because they let a person feel however they wish to at any moment. Roberts mentions, "Humans are always looking for ways to feel different or better and have done so throughout time. Many substances DO alleviate physical or emotional pain or help people feel different in some way. The problem is that these effects are often fleeting."

Another reason why people abuse substances is to relieve negative emotions like anger or strengthen positive emotions like happiness and excitement. “Boredom is also a big trigger for addiction because you don't have to find someone fun or interesting to do, alcohol/drugs can instantly make boring activities fun and make us instantly feel comfortable and connected around people we don't know or like,” Tietz adds.

She also mentions that people who struggle with addiction tend to have a lower tolerance for discomfort and can't tolerate a wide range of emotions without getting overwhelmed or checked out (known as the window of tolerance).

“When emotion goes beyond what we can tolerate, it feels very unpleasant, and we can use alcohol/drugs to bring it back into our window. However, when you repeat this process over and over, your window shrinks and you become less resilient. Plus, alcohol damages all areas of the brain, and when we get sober, emotions will actually be heightened and more intense for the first few weeks or months after all the years of numbing.”

Some turn to harmful remedies when they wish to escape a life they don’t enjoy. Tietz shares this from her own experience. “I looked forward to the 2 hours of enjoyment I'd get from drinking because it made the next 22 hours of misery tolerable. I couldn't stand my life, and drinking was an escape from that.”

However, something that people don’t realize in the moment is that even though addiction provides a couple of hours of relief, it’s actually fueling those bottled-up feelings even more. She further explains, “Plus, when we drink/use constantly, we can't improve our situation or make our lives more fulfilling. A main part of sobriety is to build a life you don't want to escape from. Your actual life becomes the reward, not the 2-hour escape.”

Tietz also mentions that people who struggle with addiction usually don't have appropriate self-care mechanisms in place. ”They can be people pleasers, not know how to set boundaries, put everyone else's needs before their own, and go go go all day without breaks. By the time the end of the day comes along, alcohol/drugs feel like "me time" because they don't know how to practice self-care. In reality, they're not getting "me time." They're checking out and turning off their brains because they desperately need a break. Poor self-care is one of the most reliable predictors of relapse.”

The most harmful misconceptions about addiction that Roberts hopes to debunk are that people become reliant on these substances the moment they try them or that they can’t get better. 

“Growing up, a lot of us received the messaging that drugs were bad - that we would become addicted the second we tried something—and that we were morally bad people if we tried or used drugs. There are so many harmful stereotypes in that. First off, many people use different kinds of drugs without ever becoming addicted. And no one really plans to become addicted. Many of the people who struggle with substance use have real problems and real pain that need attention and care.”

There’s also not one moment you become "addicted.” Addiction is a social construct that isn’t easy to define medically. The clinical term we use is substance use disorder, and the disorder is understood to exist on a spectrum of mild, moderate, or severe. People’s drug use (and the related problems) can move up and down on that spectrum throughout the days and weeks, as well as over a lifetime.”

Another stereotype she mentions is that people with addiction problems can’t get better. “People DO stop using all the time - sometimes on their own! But relapse is sometimes part of that journey, and that doesn’t mean the person isn’t “serious” or doesn’t “want to change.”I always say taking two steps forward and then one step back is part of normal human learning; the same thing happens when we are changing our drug use. Recovery is an ongoing process,” she explains.

“The concept of “rock bottom” is a stereotype too. Hollywood loves to play with this myth, so it’s what we all think of as the step before recovery. People will sometimes say “Oh, they aren’t ready to change yet. They need to hit rock bottom before they do.” 

This is a dangerous stereotype because it prevents people from getting help earlier. People can want to change and even create change at any time. It’s normal to feel some ambivalence about change, especially if you don’t have solutions for your pain, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself the opportunity to change.”

Meanwhile, Tietz wishes people would stop thinking that people struggling with addiction are severely lacking willpower and acting selfishly. She emphasizes that people acting this way don’t have a choice. “As we drink or use more and more, the brain adapts to the presence of the drug/alcohol. After a while, the brain can't function normally without it. We drink or use just to get back to baseline, not even to get anything good anymore.”

“I believe that if the general public understood that addiction changes the brain, then they wouldn't have such harsh judgments. I believed everything the stigma said, and when I realized I had a problem with alcohol, I couldn't handle it. It made me stay stuck longer, desperately trying to learn how to moderate because I didn't want people to label me and judge me. I genuinely believed I was a weak-willed loser and it made me deeply hate myself. We can't shame ourselves sober.

What I've learned from my work helping people get sober is that there is usually a lot of pain and hardship behind someone's drinking. I've worked with hundreds of people, and I have never met a weak-willed loser. The more I learn about someone's story, the more I understand why they were so drawn to alcohol or drugs.”

Recovery is definitely possible, as Tietz and everyone on this list are living proofs of it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy. There’s still a lot of stigma and anxiety surrounding it. “We worry about other people judging us or labeling us. We worry that we will lose all of our friends, and they won't invite us to anything anymore. We worry that we will never fit in again,” Tietz explains.

She further mentions that learning to manage emotions is a difficult task while working on getting better. “When someone begins drinking or using, their emotional maturity halts, and usually we weren't that good at managing emotions before the addiction either. This means that if someone began drinking at 14 and quit at 50, they are now like a 14-year-old in a 50-year-old body.

We do not develop any coping skills or tools to handle life while we drink or use them for every problem we have. Often, these skills were never modeled for us while we were growing up, so we had to figure out how to learn them as adults.