Why are people addicted?

Unlike many think, it is not the drugs themselves that drive people into addiction. Experts are sure that an addiction almost always goes back to painful childhood experiences.
When we ask what causes drug addiction, many people would probably answer, "Of course drugs!" This deep conviction is the reason for a worldwide and decades-long war on drugs that continues in many countries today.

However, the true cause of addiction is not the drug itself - it is rather a painful experience that causes an imbalance in life. And this painful experience can mostly be traced back to childhood experiences. Most commonly this applies to emotional and physical abuse, but there are also less obvious triggers.

"Not all dependencies have their origins in abuse or trauma, but I'm convinced that they can all be traced back to painful experiences," said Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician who has been involved in addiction and anti-dependency for decades.

Pain in the center of dependence
Maté believes that pain is at the center of any dependency - whether it's drug addiction, internet dependency, gambling addiction, buying addiction, anorexia or addiction to work.

"The wound may not seem very deep and the pain is not unbearable - maybe the injury is even completely hidden - but it's there," Maté said.

And those who feel pain will try to escape this pain.

Addiction is the cancer of the soul
"Those who are emotionally burdened, look for relief and find these, inter alia, in alcohol, drugs or medications," writes psychotherapist Ralf Schneider in "The addiction primer".

This does not mean that anyone who has had a painful childhood experience will later develop a dependency. Everybody deals with injuries a little differently.

However, there are experiences in childhood that cause pain and thereby promote dependencies. They can be avoided early by parents, by making aware that certain educational methods cause harm.

6 Experiences in childhood that cause pain:

1 The lack of satisfaction of basic needs

Security, protection and love are just as important basic needs of babies and toddlers as hunger and thirst. If they are not satisfied, the child gets into an emergency situation: it is ultimately dependent on the parents and it has only his voice and possibly no language to communicate.

For example, when parents make their children scream - for example because they believe that babies learn to fall asleep by themselves (which is not the case - the babies have not learned from experience, they have simply given up), they can unknowingly do considerable harm Serve.

More on the subject: This happens with babies who make you scream

The screaming has no pedagogical value
Babies and toddlers are mentally not yet developed enough to draw logical conclusions from the behavior of their parents. They do not cry to annoy or manipulate their parents, but because they have some problem, some need.

Many children feel safe enough to fall asleep only near their parents. For it is precisely here, in the vicinity of their parents, that children are most secure and best protected from the perspective of evolution.

Shouting damages body and soul
So when the child cries, it calls out to its parents. However, if the parents do not react, stress will arise. The hormone cortisol is increasingly released. According to experts, this can affect the central nervous system and brain development. And of course, in addition to these physical effects, the psychics are not lacking either.

When children feel like screaming as much as they want, yet not being heard, pain and insecurity arise, and in particularly bad cases, even trauma.

Binding problems, sleep disorders, anxiety and depression can be potential consequences. But also dependencies and addictions.

Serious denials of basic needs, which cause long-term stress and helplessness, can, according to Schneider, affect drug preparedness. In the "Addiction Primer," he writes, "Obviously, early stress creates a change in the brain."

2 The experience that love is conditional

Almost all parents would say with conviction that they love their child unconditionally. However, there are comparatively few who really and lastingly succeed.

"There are very few children in the world who were lucky enough to be loved for their own sake," said the well-known German brain researcher Gerald Hüther of HuffPost.

This is exactly what he sees as the basic requirement for a happy childhood:

"A child has to feel that it is right the way it is. That it is loved for its own sake and unconditionally. That's the most important experience every kid needs, "said Hüther of HuffPost.

Affection in exchange for obedience
Children are happiest when they do not feel like they have to make an effort to be loved by their parents.

However, many children feel that their parents would love them more if their grades were better. Or if they were always kind and helpful, would never contradict or break into anger.

Unfortunately, it is still a common educational method to reward affectionate children who behave the way their parents (or teachers, educators) would like to. And most adults do not even mean that - they are simply unaware that this behavior is extremely hurtful.

A child who feels that it is not loved unconditionally has a very big problem. Because children are dependent on the affection of their parents - that's what nature intended.

The sensitive band of love
For this reason, they already come to world with a secure bond of trust and attachment to their parents. Because they love and need their parents, children are ready to do whatever they want to be loved so they can continue to rely on the protection and care of their parents.

But this special bond, this natural bond of trust between parent and child, is sensitive.

"If a child is made the object of parental expectations, desires, goals, ideas or measures, then this volume tears to the parents," said Hüther. "And that comes along with a big pain."

The pain of the imperfect child
This pain is even measurable. It has been proven in scientific experiments that this is the same pain that the body signals even in the case of physical pain. It activates the same areas of the brain that are affected when we experience physical pain.

This pain, which arises when we as a child have the feeling that we are not perfect, is processed differently by each person.

Some people will spend their lives trying to make an effort to be loved and accepted. Others may be able to use pain relieving substances.

3 An overprotective behavior of the parents, which leads to uncertainty

"If you ask addicts retrospectively what mental causes their substance use has had, you get countless plausible answers. Overrepresented seems to be those who do not dare to take risks that 'ate their courage' or reduce their inhibitions through drug use, thus reducing anxiety, "Schneider writes in the" Addiction Primer ".

The willingness to take risks and fearlessly face challenges is largely shaped in childhood.

Children must be allowed to fall
Children have to play unattended, they even have to put themselves in danger to some extent to see where their own limits lie.

"No child can learn how to get up if it never falls. It can not learn to walk a child, if the stones are put away, "said Gerald Hüther the HuffPost.

As hard as it gets - you really do not do a child a favor when you protect it from any danger.

4 The lack of free play that leads to fantasy lameness

A vivid imagination could be a very effective protection against the development of addictions. Eckhard Schiffer, author of the bestseller "Why Huckleberry Finn was not addicted" comes to this conclusion.

During his many years working with addicts, Schiffer discovered that boredom and boredom can be precursors of later dependencies. Many patients would use narcotics to escape an inner void.

And from his perspective, this barrenness and boredom arises from a lack of imagination, which in turn is due to a lack of free play in childhood - a problem that is affecting more and more children today.

The attack on the free game
The free game is hampered by two crucial developments: Firstly, children have less and less time to play because many parents want their children to be further promoted alongside school in sports, music or language courses.

On the other hand, more and more children are intervening in the game so that it loses its spontaneity and randomness; It is less played for the sake of playing and more to achieve a certain result. We are far too often interfering with the childish game by organizing, showing "how it works better", explaining that trees have green and not blue leaves.

Creativity protects the mind
However, creativity and imagination arise exactly where the child is allowed to be free. Where everything is allowed and everything is possible. A child who is allowed to play enough will not get bored. It will always find new ways to engage and it does not even need toys.

The resulting creativity will help him throughout his life to find solutions to the most complex problems. To think outside the box, not to let others limit his thinking. And she will save it from the barrenness and emptiness that favors addiction and addiction - even if it is "just" a craving for consumption, addiction or gambling addiction.

5 The performance principle of our society, to which children are subjected

What children have to do today is enormous. School at eight o'clock in the morning, concentration and as much as possible participation in all subjects, then homework and extracurricular activities - even children have a tight schedule, so sometimes work as much as adults.

And that's all right as soon as you do not fall out of the grid, fall short of expectations or simply can not keep up with the fast pace.

Already in the kindergarten the little ones are taught: Only those who work hard can be successful. And only those who succeed can be happy.

Children should work and perform
We bless our children that they need good grades to be able to compete later. If you come home with a three, we'll make them realize they could have a two, if they just made a little more effort. But what many children hear is: You would like us better if you had better grades. A five on the certificate would disappoint us a lot.

"36 percent of all parents are willing to give their ten-year-old children drugs to improve concentration," Schneider writes in the "addiction fagula". However, this aspiration demands its price: "Among the good students, the proportion of those who regularly consume drugs is highest."

Schiffer writes about such career- and culture-oriented families:

"Here, a continuous inner peace is generated, because the performance of their own children is compared to each other's performance. The scene is dominated by competition and market value. What is my market value? How do I kill my competitors? "

The false self is poisoning the soul
This would eventually create a false self. "And that is addictive or doping-prone because of the inner peacelessness."

Our meritocracy turns those into losers who can not compete. Those who do not live up to expectations often try to bend - to create that false self so as not to be excluded.

The resulting stress, the ongoing pursuit of success and happiness, which seemingly can never really be achieved, is poison to the soul. For children's souls much more than for adults.

The constant feeling of not being good enough causes a pain. Maybe one who slumbers beneath the surface, as Maté put it, but one that is quite noticeable.

It is precisely this drive for achievement that leads to the new common diseases such as depression and burnout - and which can trigger a need for distraction, flight and after anesthesia.

6 The fear of failure that parents transfer to their children

It is not easy to raise a child today and many parents feel strongly pressured. In addition, there is often the fear of failure. What if my child is not good enough at school? What if it can not compete in this globalized meritocracy?

Many parents want to protect their children and therefore are very active in their lives. They plan their free time, they intervene in their game, they expect their child to live up to their expectations. They believe that they do it out of love. In truth, however, there is fear behind it:

Parental security can quickly turn into a stranglehold, writes Schiffer, "when the parents out of their own misery no longer have the needs and interests of their child in mind, but mainly keep their own fear in check".

Performance as a magic remedy against fear
The remedy that our society invented for this fear is performance. As long as you work hard enough, you will not go under.

"Performance as a magic remedy for fear is already demanded by children today," Schiffer writes. "And that means a significant restriction of autonomy and one's own path."

Children who can not decide for themselves, do not discover and experience their own environment, are not allowed to follow their own interests at their own pace, lose their attachment.

Drone up against boredom
The loss of stubbornness, however, does not remain without consequences:

"When adults have the ability to be daydreamingly appealed to by their environment, and thus have lost much of their lives, lost, or not acquired enough, they lose part of their attachment. At this moment, they depend on media, media, 'drones' to experience something. "

What children need so much more than good grades and straight CVs are free spaces. Space for adventure, spaces for self-development. And the chance to fail, too.