09/12/2023
Substance
Why would people ever want to take a mood-altering substance? Clearly, the answer must be in order to speed up the the natural process of changing feelings through healthy behaviour. In short, it is cheating: giving the person an unearned psychological lift.
Yet the three most commonly used mood-altering substances - alcohol, sugar and ni****ne - are killers of vast numbers of people every day.
At our peril, we forget that the human brain is a physical substance. Its magical function depends upon its physical integrity. If we distort its biochemical processes, we poison its capacity to think and perceive.
Mood-altering substances also commonly have significant physical effects, damaging many body organs including the brain substance itself.
Inevitably, addicts - by using more of a mood-altering substance - get more damage from it. They fill the physical and mental hospital beds. Yet doctors tend to prefer to treat the consequences of use of mood-altering substances rather than attempt to influence underlying behaviour, other than by telling people to cut down or stop.
If addicts could have heard, and acted upon, that simplistic advice, they would have done so.
Sensible advice works for sensible people, not for addicts. They need professional understanding of their specific clinical condition, just as much as do those individuals who suffer from cancer, diabetes and heart disease. And very often these are the same patients, becoming interesting to doctors only when suffering the consequences of their compulsions.
And behind all addicts, who are killing themselves with substances, are determined compulsive helpers, keeping everything going in the same progressively fatal direction.
Written by the inspirational
Dr Robert Lefever