Addiction Isn’t a Disease. It’s an Infection
I never understood calling addiction a disease.
Seeing it as an infection makes way more sense to me.
You expose yourself to something dangerous.
You keep playing with fire.
And it infiltrates you.
Addiction lives in the space between voluntary and involuntary.
It hijacks the default systems underneath your awareness—like background programs running on a computer you don’t even realize are there.
You know it’s happening.
You’re aware.
But it’s slippery. It’s everywhere.
And it’s so hard to pin down.
The infection lies just above your body’s involuntary functions—things like:
Blood pressure
Breathing
Body temperature
Digestion
These things happen automatically…
But if you want to, you can control them—for a little while.
Hold your breath, slow your heart rate, tense your muscles.
Addiction works like that too.
You can control it—for a little while.
Until it breaks through.
It’s like holding your breath.
Eventually, your entire being screams at you to breathe.
You have to.
This is what addicts go through every single day.
Not because they want to relapse.
Not because they don’t care.
Because their own system has been infected.
The Nature of the Infection
Addiction isn’t just about the drug or the drink or the behavior.
It infects how you experience:
Happiness
Sadness
Boredom
Pain
Daily life
It retrains your subconscious to believe:
“I need this to survive.”
You spend enough time there, and you can’t even recognize yourself anymore.
You don’t know how to exist without it.
You learn to:
Numb happiness.
Escape sadness.
Use something to survive ordinary days.
It becomes survival instinct.
It becomes your default setting.
How You Cure the Infection
You fight it the only way you can:
One step at a time.
You start retraining your mind, body, and soul.
You show yourself—again and again—that you can survive hard things without the thing.
One sober morning.
One hard conversation.
One lonely night.
One good day where you feel joy without the crutch.
Each time you survive a life moment without reaching for the infection?
You reclaim a piece of yourself.
It’s not just about quitting.
It’s about relearning how to live:
How to be happy without it.
How to be sad without it.
How to be bored without it.
How to survive stress without it.
Everything has to be reprogrammed, one step at a time.
And yes—it’s painful.
But it’s a different kind of pain.
It’s healing pain.
It’s the pain of setting yourself free.
What It Takes
You’ll need help.
You’ll need support.
You’ll need therapy, groups, medicine, mindfulness—whatever it takes for you.
Your brain will scream.
Your body will rebel.
You’ll feel like giving up.
But if you push through, day after day, situation after situation—you will heal.
The infection will loosen.
Your real self will come back.
It’s not “once an addict, always an addict.”
It’s “once infected, but healed.”
There are new treatments out there—things like:
Ibogaine
Ayahuasca
MDMA therapy
Psilocybin therapy
If traditional paths don’t work for you, be relentless.
There are so many ways to heal today.
You can do this.
You will do this.
And when you do—you’ll carry something unbreakable inside you:
A wisdom that can save others too.
Tell your story when you’re ready.
It will matter more than you know.