Is It About the Alcohol or Is It About the Pain?

A former alcoholic contemplates

As a former nurse and recovering alcoholic, I contemplate what my addiction meant to me and what it means to others too. These thoughts become even more profound when I think of my father, who I lost to alcohol addiction five years ago. And now, I just learned that another family member, who is very special to me, might be dying from alcohol addiction as well.

I’ve had a lot to process over the past several years; my addiction and those of my family. The first instinct is to feel angry and lash out at the alcohol or the alcoholic for “choosing” to destroy their lives. But what I sometimes forget, and what most people don’t realize, is that alcohol addiction is not about alcohol. It’s about pain and the amelioration of pain. Plain and simple.

People use alcohol for pain because it works. Not only does it work for mental pain but for physical pain too. However, what most alcoholics don’t know is that alcohol will make the pain worse. Unfortunately, we don’t realize this while we’re drinking. All we see is that those first few drinks seem to make everything better. And this pain relief becomes so precious to us that we’ll even forgive the worst hangovers just to get relief.

The problem with alcohol and pain is that you keep going around and around in a circle. You crave the pain relief of alcohol, which then creates more pain, and you have to keep drinking to keep the pain away. Alcoholics that drink all the time rarely go into withdrawal because they always have a steady supply of alcohol in their system. Unfortunately, over time, the body starts breaking down from the alcohol, which causes even more pain. Problems like depression and anxiety become much worse. The cycle never ends until you either die or quit.

Alcoholics become trapped in a terrible cycle, and the walls close in around them. But the worst part is that they often can’t see a way out. They can’t imagine their lives would be any better without the alcohol, and the withdrawal is so horrible that the person avoids it at all costs — which means they have to continue drinking. For them, there’s truly no way out. This is why the suicide rate for people with addictions is so high. Many of them can’t see any good that can come out of…

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Melissa Mepham is an Enspiral Dev Academy graduate from Te Atiawa who received a Te Uru Rangi scholarship to attend the web development programme. She is currently working as a Full Stack Web…