Drug Abuse and a Return to Sanity

Drug Abuse can and will take a person to the depths of their soul and if they don't get the opportunity to face their addiction to the dregs of society. The behavior exhibited by a person in the grip of their addiction is at lest antisocial and at the worst insane. I don't pretend to be a psychiatrist and therefore probably shouldn't make the diagnosis of insanity but society does it all the time. In this article I intend to look at the word sanity and how that relates to a person moving from the "insanity" of drug abuse to the relative sanity of recovery.

Drug Abuse affects all areas of an addict's life. Relationships are shattered when alcohol and drugs come before the people in someone's life. As relationships end addiction replaces the void left in the addict's life. Family, friends, associates at work all become victims of the addict's abuse. The addict falls deeper and deeper into the abyss of their addiction. What ever ties the addict had to society (church, community, employment) are lost to the growing strength of the addict's addiction. We can see from this progression that the person (addict) is losing parts of the self and is replaced by the growing addiction.

Sanity comes from the Latin word sanitas and means healthy or whole. When the drug abuse has taken hold of a person they are no longer healthy or whole. When the Romans used the word sanity they referred to a healthy personality, a healthy whole person a sane person. When a person afflicted with drug addiction has the opportunity to detox and enter into addiction treatment they are given the chance to return to wholeness/sanity. The relationships that were lost will return. The participation with community will begin again. The addict will return to a whole person not from insanity but to a person that had lost parts of the self.