I ask myself what is an addictive personality?
I heard this all the time when I was growing up. It would always leave me wondering what they meant. What does that mean to you? I can look around me and I can recognize addictive like people, but what is an addictive personality?
Is it that the personality gets addicted to different things at the same time? Do you figure it makes the difference between someone that just gets hooked on one drug and once he quits those days are over for him. With no trouble to quit? The addictive person would just stay addicted unable to quit?
When people would say to me, ...'ah Brandy you have an addictive personality, I am not gonna let you try that drug'. I would always just stand dumbfounded. What did that mean? I was already hooked on whatever drug I was on presently. So why would this drug be any different? What would make them comment on my addictive personality? I would let the comment just slip past me, confused.
I am now hearing that saying all the time now in NA and again I wonder the same thing. This time however I am doing alot of reading. Studying the 12 step program and understanding what the disease of addiction is. So now the question goes deeper and has a few avenues of exploration.
I found myself angry when I began trying to quit weed. When I would tell people I was quitting weed they would share their stories of ease when they quit. So many of my friends decided one day that they had enough of smoking up. Several of them walked away from it and never looked back. How did they do it? Were they not smoking everyday like me? Did they not get labelled chronic as I had? So one would say while they were hooked, they had an addictive personality right? How could you tell if they didn't?
I don't think you can. When I always wanted to try cocaine when I was a teenager, my boyfriends would block me. Saying I had an addictive personality. It made me question what coke had that all the drugs I was on didn't. As I attend NA meetings now I am told not to tell people its weed I am hooked on. Again I find myself wondering then whats the difference between that and coke? Meth a dirty drug I loved, but never 'hooked' me. Is meth not worse then crack/cocaine?
Is it the drug then or the personality? Is crack/coke the only thing you can become addicted to so therefor those users may not have an addictive personality. Its just the drug? Is that why I have been shielded from that drug all my life? I can accept then that there are two types of addicts.
Those that get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. those are the ones that clean up easily when they work the 12 step program. That would be addict type one.
Addict type two then would be the one that will just transfer that addiction. Moving to whatever it can use to kill the host... food. drugs. sex. alcohol. Would this then be considered an addictive personality?
How the fuck would my little boy toys at the ripe ages of 15 then realize my personality was an addictive one? How was I blind to it? What did they see in me that I didnt? How can one recognize that type of personality?
Tonight while watching a movie with my kids... 8 and 10, I observe something that makes my skin crawl. My kids just got their allowance tonight and had spent the bulk of it in Safeway while I was getting supper. I took notice to the fact that my son had bought 2 rolls of gum as oppose to one. I thought, he's a hoarder and always buys on bulk. It made me smile and think of my mom as she is the same sun sign as him, Taurus. She is the worst pack rat. Later that hour while we were watching the movie I noticed something else. This made me angry.
He had ate a whole pack of gum and had the hugest wad in his mouth. Barely able to chew and obviously not enjoying what he had stuffed in there. I reprimanded him on eating it all. I asked why he would eat the whole pack. He just shrugged his shoulders and said 'i dunno'.
At that moment my daughter who is too smart for her own good piped up...' mom is j eating that gum like you eat a whole chocolate cake and cant stop at one piece? Does that mean j will be a drug addict too?'
My skin went cold. Thats how I explained to my kids what it was like to be a drug addict, or to have an addictive personality. I told them I cant stop at one piece like most people can. And looking at my son I feared instantly the same thing.
Can that be true? Can someone have an addictive personality already embedded into them from birth? Or is an addictive personality born out of a trauma? Does the ladder mean my son is stuffing his feelings already? Or is it the addict gene in him, that would have been passed on by me?
The questions have been spiralling in my mind all evening. Am I turning my son into an addict? Can I stop it now? If so, what do I do because I dont wish this personality on anyone. Least of all one of my children. What can i do to help him now before its to late and he is living on hastings street?
Manage my own type two disease of Addiction, I guess.
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