Drug and alcohol abuse causes a great deal of distress and can ruin lives.

The short answer is drug and alcohol abuse problems cause a great deal of mental, emotional, psychological, and social problems for people who are dependent on them as well as the people who care about people who are dependent.

What’s more drug and alcohol use problems cause family breakdowns, impoverishment, loss of jobs.  More worryingly drug and alcohol abuse problems cause problems of violence both in the household as domestic violence and out of the household as social violence. Every weekend in most modern, countries someone dies or is severely injured because of alcohol influenced violence.

It’s seriously harming your health and wellbeing.

The cost of drug abuse and alcohol problems to the individual is high.  From loss of health, accidents, injury, to loss of jobs and marriages. What’s more drug and alcohol problems tend not to deliver on the promise of a better time.  The reason is as your dependence grows, so too does you tolerance and consequently you need to consume more drugs or alcohol to get the same effect.  Over time this will start to totally dominate your life, delivering more and more costs and harms for less and less benefits.

Many people start out feeling they can take or leave alcohol or drugs only to find that after a few months of using they are always thinking about it.  If this goes on, you eventually start building your whole life around the next fix or drinking session.

If you want to become a shadow of your best self and enjoy life less then go for it.  However, if you really think about it you probably need to address your issues if you have a drug or alcohol dependency issue.

It’s reaching every level of society.

Drug and alcohol use problems are not just confined to lower socio-economic groups. Lower social economic groups may tend to use less expensive drugs or alcohol. However rich socio-economic groups tend to use just as much drugs or alcohol, but spend more money doing it.  Drug and alcohol abuse problems are affecting every level of society and no person, family, or group is immune to these issues.

Drugs and alcohol abuse routinely ruins lives.

We routinely work with people who have flourishing careers that become completely broken and destroyed by drug or alcohol use problems. People with big incomes may think they are immune to these issues however they’re not. We routinely work with people who have high paid jobs who lose that job and then suffer a cascade of disasters that see them broken and poor.

We routinely see individuals who once had thriving careers lose their, job lose their families, and find they are unable to maintain their mortgage payments. They have to take their kids out of private school and ultimately their partners leave them. On the other hand we see poorer people suffering the exact same fate though they may not be spending as much money the undeniable truth is, no one is immune to the problems that occur when you become dependent on drugs or alcohol.

We often see the end result of an accident. A person having spend a night drinking and taking drugs falls over and fractures their skull only to have to spend a week in ICU as they recover from a serious head injury. We see people going to gaol because they got involved in a violent situation when they were under the influence of alcohol.  If drug and alcohol use was safe these issues wouldn’t happen. No one is immune to them.

Life is much better without drugs

What’s crazy is life is demonstrably better, easier, and more fulfilling, when you don’t take drugs and when you only drinking modest amounts of alcohol. From having more energy, more optimism, more confidence, and enthusiasm for life and living, right through to saving money making more of every day and enjoying better relationships, there is no good case supporting the idea of drug and alcohol abuse. But there is a massively compelling case for not using drugs and for using only safe levels of alcohol.