Why would someone even try a drug in the first place? When we see someone that can’t live without their substance we think poorly about them, but the fact is their brain is high jacked by the drug. Addiction is the dependence or compulsive use of a brain altering harmful substance or habit. A recent study shows 33% of people who start before 15 will become addicts. You are affected physically, mentally, spiritually by an addiction because you will never be the same again. The four daily requirements are also affected by an addiction these are food, exercise, rest, and elimination.

Physical health is any biological function related to the systems of the body. Addiction can also affect your performance in sports. If someone is at the worst state of their addiction (rock bottom) they can become extremely ill if they do not get their substance. Addiction is a hard path to get off once you are too far down it, and when you have been using a substance for a long time the body becomes used to the substance as a daily requirement. An example of the physical affects of addiction in the book Chasing the High was when the main character didn’t get his substance he would become severely ill all night. Over the night that he described as the worst time of his life, he felt extremely sick and wasn’t able to fall asleep until the next morning when he got the drug he immediately felt better.

Mental health is the ability to reason for example; make decisions, evaluate, calculate. Addiction can harm your mental health because it impairs your ability to judge when you are doing the right or wrong thing. When you are at rock bottom you will do anything to get what you want because your brain is thinking completely different when you’re altered. Addiction also affects your school work making all your grades drop because you are so occupied with getting and doing drugs and you don’t care about school anymore. In the book Chasing the High the addict was affected mentally because he didn’t care about anything anymore and he left everything behind and his number one priority was getting his hands on drugs.

Spiritual health is how you feel about yourself and interact with the world around you using the greater values of mankind. Addiction affects your spiritual wellness because you always feel bad about yourself and wish you never started using drugs. Your family can also be affected because you will leave your family to get drugs. All the friends that actually cared about you are forgotten because the only people that you want to hang out with are the people who do the drug as well or supply you with the drug. For example in the book one time the main character was at the lowest part in his life and wished he never started taking drugs. All he wanted was to be clean and have his family and friends back.

During this unit on addiction I learned about how hard it is to come back from being an addict and the waterfall affect of how once you hit rock bottom to come back is as hard as climbing up a waterfall. I also think I will definitely act much different because I would never want to go down that path and end up only being able to survive by consuming drugs and always feeling terrible about myself. I was really interested in the class activity where we watched an intervention. I though this was very interesting because it showed the real life effect of what can happen to your life when you are an addict.These are just some of the reasons I believe becoming an addict is the worst possible thing you can do to yourself.