ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most difficult thing to understand about addiction is that many addicts do not want to stop taking drugs. Even though it becomes obvious how sick they are and that they are destroying their lives, addicts either cannot see this or don’t want to see it clearly enough to do something about it now (rather than “later”). They have found a way to deal with their world that “works” for them. As they gradually learn to use drugs to cope with everyday living, the drugs they take become substitutes for the things addicts are unable to obtain in life, things most of the rest of us take for granted.
