The much revered Christian organizer, preacher, and publisher, Edwin Louis Cole, once said “Life is lived on levels and arrived at in stages.” This may mean that there are levels of intensity or learning that we will experience throughout our lives, and there are also times in life when we enter a new stage. Reaching a new stage generally means that there is no receding back to the previous one. That progression is also true with the stages of addiction. Once we hit a certain stage, there is no going back to the way things used to be. However, with the right recovery plan, things can not only return to normal but be even better than they were before.
The Prevalence of Teenage Addiction
Many people may be surprised to realize that teen addiction rates are staggeringly high. A prevalent misconception is that a new generation of online information experts brings with them a better awareness surrounding drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, this is not how addiction works. As they say in 12-Step recovery, addiction is “cunning, baffling, and powerful,” and no generation is immune to it.
Statistics reveal several troubling trends. The “Monitoring the Future” survey funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recently found that 27.3% of 12th graders reported vaping nicotine in the past year. A total of 30.7% of 12th graders reported cannabis use in the past year and 51.9% of them reported using alcohol. Additionally, eight percent of 12th graders reported illicit drug use other than marijuana in the past year.
While there may be some teens in the later stages of addiction responding to this survey, there is a good chance that many of them are in what is known as the early stages of addiction. These are the “initial use” and “abuse” stages.
What Are the Early Stages of Addiction?
While it would be nice to believe otherwise, the truth of the matter is that adolescents often experiment with alcohol and other substances. This doesn’t make it okay; it is just reality.
Experimenting
While discovering that your daughter has experimented with alcohol or drugs can feel devastating, the good news is that “experimenting” is the earliest stage of addiction and one that offers the most space for parental intervention.
Abuse
However, if parental intervention, consequences, and boundary setting don’t work, your daughter may move on to the next stage of addiction. This is the “abuse” stage, and it can be significantly more dangerous. The abuse stage is a stage that represents the beginnings of the loss of control. For teens, not having control can lead to dangerous and risky behaviors. What’s more, this lack of control can lead to the next, more serious stages of addiction. These are the middle stages of “tolerance” and “dependence.”
What Are the Middle Stages of Addiction?
The two middle stages are when the substance starts having a more significant effect on the body, causing a person to have greater difficulty ceasing its use.
Tolerance
Now, the tolerance stage can be rather troubling because it means that physically the body needs more and more substances to feel the desired euphoric high. This also is a psychological stage in which the more substances a person uses, the better they will feel while also disregarding any consequences.
Dependence
The next stage is difficult to define because it involves dependence on a substance, yet the substance does not wholly control an individual’s life at this point. A person is dependent on a substance to function, but the full-scale consequences of their dependence have not yet manifested. The full consequences only occur in the last stage of “fully formed” addiction
Fully Formed Addiction
The last stage of addiction is where the total loss of control takes place (though an individual may have the illusion of control). This is also the stage where the addiction supersedes all other aspects of a person’s life. Sadly, this includes activities they normally enjoy and the friends and family they love.
This is also the point at which some form of professional intervention will be needed to help an individual recover. Addiction is a chronic disease. Just like other chronic diseases, such as heart disease or diabetes, it gets worse without help. However, the good news is that it is never too late to seek this help.
It’s Never Too Early, Never Too Late: Recovering With Clearview
The iconic 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” Here at Clearview Horizon Girls Academy, we witness many students ridiculing and opposing the recovery process initially.
However, through honest effort and a new vision for their lives, these same students come to understand that their value and worth are self-evident. This realization helps them know that they deserve to live a substance-free, healthy life. They simply had to walk away from the stages of addiction to see it.
While some models vary, the most commonly agreed-upon stages of addiction are initial use, abuse, tolerance, dependence, and eventually a fully formed addiction. For parents, spotting the earlier stages of addiction can be crucial for avoiding full-fledged addiction. Also, with a child in recovery, spotting these signs can help to avoid the sixth stage, which is relapse. If you feel your daughter may be struggling with issues of addiction, we can help get her on the road to recovery. For more information on how to spot the stages of addiction, please reach out. We can also explain the effective treatment and recovery options we employ when addiction has taken hold. Call Clearview Horizon today at 866-584-4788.
