Addictions

Getting High Just To Get By

By  | 

One of the factors that delineates recreational drug use from addiction is that addicts cease trying to move from normal functioning into the altered state, but start from a sense of deficit and are trying to reach that baseline state of existence with the aid of their drug of choice. A shift happens where they start getting high just to get by.

We see what a nefarious hold drugs have on people when all they end up offering is a temporary reduction in the psychological and physical pain that they contributed to in the first place before plunging addicts back into the nightmare existence of withdrawal.

This idea of starting at the baseline and using drugs or alcohol to temporarily move above it or starting from a sense of deficit and using drugs or alcohol to temporarily get to it can serve as an early warning sign that you are developing an addiction. If you’re starting to feel like you need your drug of choice to feel normal, if you’re getting high just to get by, that’s a big problem that needs to get addressed sooner rather than later.

Related posts:

  1. Drugs and Happiness Many people have always felt like something is missing from their lives, although they can’t put their finger on exactly what, until the first time they try their drug of choice. Most drug users who become addicts end up trying and using a variety of drugs, but they also usually have this preferred drug, which […]...
  2. Drugs and Alcohol Only Cover Up The Problem We tend to use drugs and alcohol when we’re feeling really good as well as when we’re feeling really bad. To deny that they are capable of making you feel better would be to deny direct experience. People who drink at weddings also drink at funerals, and their motivations in each case are obviously quite […]...
  3. Addictions And Pain It’s often said that at the root of every addiction lies pain. We take this to mean emotional or psychological pain, though physical pain almost always ends up in the mix too, as a psychosomatic manifestation or as a symptom of withdrawal. But except for those cases where the addiction is to painkillers that are […]...
  4. Marijuana And Personality The point of this article is not to be moralistic but to try to show one of the hidden existential dangers of heavy marijuana use, which is the paralysis of personality development. Most addicts smoke several times a day so that they’re in the altered state pretty much all the time. What ends up happening […]...
  5. Anxiety and Drug Addiction “Those drugs you got won’t make you feel better and pretty soon it’s the only little part of your life you’re keeping together.” -Elliott Smith Elliott Smith describes an interesting oddity of the unconscious reasoning process for a person who is addicted to drugs. He will let everything around him fall apart to keep using […]...
  6. Scaling A Mountain I had a dream last night where I was riding in the backseat of a car eating a hamburger when I told my mom, who was driving, that I had an idea to help people struggling against drug and alcohol addiction. She patiently asked me to describe it and I did. My brother was sitting […]...
  7. Drugs And Loneliness “You don’t deserve to be lonely but those drugs you’ve got won’t make you feel better.” – Elliot Smith Drugs temporarily solve the problem of existential loneliness and this is one of their biggest draws. They start out acting like good friends, creating the illusion of connection, filling up those lonely hours with their intoxicating […]...
  8. Common Barriers To Successfully Quitting Or Cutting Back On A Drug So you’ve decided the disadvantages of your drug of choice have come to outweigh the advantages, that the harm to your body, your relationships, your professional development, your finances, your growth as a person, etc. has come to outweigh the pleasure and other perceived benefits derived from indulging. In the motivational interviewing paradigm you’ve already […]...
  9. Changing Your Conscious State of Being The primary reason for using drugs and alcohol is changing your conscious state of being. As anyone who has taken them knows, these substances markedly change the way you think, feel, and act for a period of time. Usually when we think of addictions we think of the addict as not liking himself, as someone […]...
  10. Anxiety And Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms We have written about how alcohol is often used as a way to find temporary relief from painful feelings of existential anxiety. Psychologically speaking, alcohol seems like the ideal substance because of its intrinsic properties as a depressant (which doesn’t mean it makes you depressed but that it lowers neurotransmission levels in the brain) and […]...
  11. Drugs Hinder Creativity A rationalization creative types often use to try to legitimize their continued drug use, in the eyes of others as well as their own, is that their drug of choice is an indispensable aid in their creative process. They cite the works of art and music that were created by artists while intoxicated, and swear […]...
  12. Addicted To A Lifestyle We saw a heading for a post entitled Addiction as a Love Affair With Life? by Rune Molbak and found the idea intriguing so we decided to add our own thoughts to the mix. One of the great follies of the Western way of thinking is our attempt to conceptualize everything as its own discrete entity, […]...
  13. Alcohol As A Numbing Agent It’s a well known fact that one of the major reasons people abuse alcohol is for its properties as a numbing agent. They get temporary reprieve from unwanted or unpleasant emotions, basically feeling better by not having to feel anything at all for a while. If this is you, a helpful existential insight is that […]...
  14. Marijuana Consumption Marijuana consumption is a hot topic these days since it is now legal in two states and will probably be legal in a lot more soon. When something becomes legal, in the minds of many it not only becomes practically acceptable but also morally acceptable. We want to use this space to show that it […]...
  15. Filling a Void in Your Life Current research around addictions shows that the various substances activate the reward center of the brain. The idea of rewards has always been central to behavioral psychology. A positive reinforcement applied at or around the time of a behavior makes that behavior more likely to occur in the future. All sophisticated animal training uses reinforcements, […]...
  16. End On A High Note Good animal trainers know to end sessions on a high note. The way they accomplish this trick is by cuing the animal to perform a behavior that has already been mastered and therefore usually doesn’t garner a positive reinforcement, but this time it does receive praise and a treat. In this way, no matter how […]...
  17. Meaning From On High The common belief is that it can’t be meaningful unless it’s given from on high, as a commandment or sanction from a godlike presence. But this sort of relationship to the metaphysical is a projection of relationships to authority figures in the real world,  relationships of dependence relied upon to guide thoughts and actions. In […]...
  18. Power From On High In every religion the same situation unfolds, which is that a priestly caste arises and begins to act as intermediary between gods and adherents. This caste becomes highly concerned with crystallizing all aspects of the religion, attempting to halt the organic and natural evolution of thought and practice that spawned that religion in the first […]...
  19. High Standard Of Living And Existential Vacuum There’s a powerful societal expectation that increasing material wealth is the key to happiness and fulfillment. But we only need look around us to see the fallacy of this notion. In the West most people enjoy a standard of living beyond what previous generations could have imagined but they’re not happy. If you think that […]...
  20. Psychology Of The High Pressure Sales Situation Why is the high pressure sales situation so effective in spite of the fact that people loathe being subjected to it? Actually through the lens of behavioral psychology it’s precisely because they loathe being subjected to it that it works so well. They are being negatively reinforced, and the way to escape the aversive stimuli […]...
Related Items