It happens often that people around you more easily recognize an addiction than you do yourself. In many cases, people with an addiction deny that they are addicted or try to hide their use from other people.
Step 1: How often do you use the product?
The results of how many glasses of alcohol per week you can drink without being addicted, differ. Yet, the idea behind these results is rather simple: if you consume large amounts of the product every day or several times per week, chances are that you are addicted. Whether this produce is drugs, alcohol, or even cigarettes. People who are addicted can no longer live without the product and therefore use it as often as possible.
Step 2: What is the impact on my life?
If you have a glass of alcohol once a week, you most likely will not suffer any consequences. You can keep functioning normally and sometimes drink a little. By overconsumption which occurs for people with an addiction, they find that large changes occur in different parts of their lives. For example, they can become more aggressive, fight more often with their partner, are late at work more often,... An addiction has severe consequences. This, on top of the use, thus is a point at which there is a difference between addiction and normal use.
Step 3: How do I usually feel?
A question which you can ask yourself is how you usually feel throughout the day. Do you feel happy? Do you feel like something is missing? Do you feel depressed? We notice that people with an addiction often feel depressed or anxious and therefore start to drink. Of course, the drinking also has consequences which leads to them feeling depressed or more anxious even more often. The cause of the drinking behavior often lies in wanting to hide psychological suffering. You can thus check for yourself if there is something in your life which you feel sad about, or if something has happened which might have left psychological scars.
Addiction? Take the test!
Would you like to know if depression or anxiety might lie at the basis of your addiction? And if this addiction eventually enhances psychological suffering and causes it? Then take the free depression test here and find out what you can do to break out of the psychological cycle of suffering!
