Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

Mental illnesses also have this stigma of permanence, and it's also inaccurate and damaging. Plenty of people "snap out" of schizophrenia, or stop having bipolar symptoms, or have a few depressive episodes over a decade and then never again. We don't know why remission happens to some people and not others, but it definitely happens. We just don't understand these diseases very well. (I tend to think of depression and bipolar, for example, as symptoms common to multiple diseases.)

Time of diagnosis has a major effect on how your disease is modeled (the term I would use instead of "diagnosed"). Technically speaking, if you've ever had a manic episode, you're considered to have Bipolar I, the most severe version. If you're 28 and had one at 17 and never again... you probably don't have Bipolar I. That could be cyclothymia aggravated by a hormonal or sleep disturbance. It could be a one-off. Perhaps out of a fear of getting it wrong, the medical assumption is that a person who's had one episode is prone to having more. That might be a good policy for doctors (i.e. don't prescribe certain medications to people with histories of depression, or (hypo|)mania) but it's not a great model of how mental illness actually works. Some cases get better with age, and some get worse, and we really don't know why.

As addiction is a mental illness with behavioral complications, I'm not surprised. An episode of addiction is something one has to be aware of for one's life, but the treatment (don't use the drug) is something that, evidently, many people follow perfectly.

Demons don't exist, and their mythical properties are ascribed to real addictions. Addictions may not be incurable, they may not be uncontrollable, they may not require exorcism by an expert, they may not have been induced by sin or fed by it, Jesus may not be the answer, etc.

edit: really? Happy to accept the downvotes on this one.

If you grow out of an apparently addictive behavior, doesn't that -- by definition -- mean it was not an addiction?

OK, I know the definition of an addiction is that the behavior is having a significant negative affect, but there must be some notion of lack of control too, I would think.

I know plenty of my friends in college drank quite heavily. Afterward it tapered off. And some of had quite bad grades during that time. But no off us ended up as alcoholics after college. This was 20+ years ago, so one would assume real alcoholism would become apparent in this timeframe.

I can count 7 or 8 dead. I know more that died from things other than drugs, though.

False dichotomy. Recreational drugs (such as cocaine and heroin) are dangerous. If 95% "grow out" of the addiction and 5% die (I made those numbers up) then the drugs are very dangerous, but the "growing out" premise is true.

LSD might cause a bad trip (if used under sane circumstances, such as with a non-tripping sitter) less than 1% of the time, but the medical establishment has good reason even still to be nervous about it. (It probably shouldn't be illegal to research it. It's also not "safe" in the recreational context; not even close.) If aspirin seriously hurt 1% of the people who used it, it'd be off the market.

Also, losing 3-5 years of your life and career to a stigmatized health issue is a Big Fucking Deal even if you remit fully.

The OP may be taken to under-report the long-term psychological and neurological damage that can occur even when the addiction itself (and the use) goes away. For drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, the "graying" (the loss of the ability to feel pleasure due to dopamine floods) can last for at least a decade. Then there's all the heart damage, which is not to be taken lightly. Plenty of people die from drug-related damage in their 50s and 60s even when they haven't used in years.