3 Subtle Signs Of Addiction You May Not See

Most people don't realize that they're addicted until they get to the point that they actually want to stop and they can't. But they usually miss and sometimes ignore all those warning signs leading up to that point. Which is unfortunate because the earlier you catch an addiction, the easier it is to deal with it. For example, a couple years back, I had this client named Sheila. Well, at least we're going to call her Sheila. Anyways, by the time she showed up in my office to talk to me, her husband was threatening to leave and take her kids with them and file for full custody. Of course she was devastated. When I was listening to Sheila tell me all the things that led up to this point, I couldn't help but really kind of empathize with her situation and feel a little bad for her, to be honest. I mean, for most of her life she was just a normal drinker. But after she got married, they wanted really badly to have kids, but it just wasn't happening. They had to go to all kinds of fertility specialists. It cost them a lot of money. And finally they got pregnant with their first child. And of course they were blitzing, blissful and happy and it was wonderful. And then several months after that, she found out she was pregnant with twins. And naturally she was pretty shocked because it had been so difficult for her to get pregnant that first time. But nonetheless, even though that's not the way it was planned, she was still pretty excited. She always wanted to be a mom. As you can imagine, after those twins were born, life got exponentially more difficult. Anybody who's ever taken care of little kids, especially three little kids, like very, very little, knows how stressful it is. I mean, I only have one son and I thought that was really hard. But Sheila had these three little kids at home and of course she loved it. She loved being with them, she loved the fact that she could be a stay at home mom. But let's face it, it's stressful. When you become a mom, your human needs don't matter anymore. Becoming a mother is definitely a humbling experience. You kind of figure out that you're really just a mammal. You feel like you're just sort of like a vesicle here to take care of the needs of the kids. And it's not that you don't want to do it, but it's exhaust frosting and the crying and the diapers and everything they need and the mess and the toys and. Her husband owned his own business. He had been running it for a few years, but he was Gone all the time because he had to make a lot of money. There was three little kids at home to take care of. But most days it was just Sheila and the three kids. So she started drinking wine in the evenings to kind of calm her nerves, settle down and chill out after the kids went to bed. That's actually pretty common for moms and dads, right? A glass of wine, it feels even a little sophisticated, and you're just relaxing and you're just winding down. Well, it got to the point that those couple of glasses of wine eventually became the only time in her day where she felt like she could relax at all. So she started really looking forward to bedtime because that was sort of like mommy time. After a while, she noticed her drinking was getting to me more and more. Now, she still wasn't drinking every day, but she was definitely drinking more than she was intending to drink. At first it got up to where she was drinking a whole bottle at a time, like a bottle of wine and a half. But she wasn't drinking every day because when she would wake up the next, she'd feel like crap. And she would make promises to herself like, I am not going to do this anymore. I am miserable. Why did I drink so much? So a lot of times on the day after she would drink, she would actually not drink because she was feeling so crappy, and she knew she needed to kind of take a break from it. But on the next night, Sheila was back at it. So she was in this, like, every other night of drinking pattern. And by the time she came to my office, she was drinking a bottle and three quarters of another bottle, three or four, sometimes five nights a week. Now, I asked Sheila about this bottle and 3/4. I said, the deal with the bottle and 3/4, is it because if you drink the rest of that second bottle, then it's like, oh, my gosh, now I'm drinking two bottles. And she's like, that's definitely it. I wasn't going to let myself get to that level. When it all first started, her husband didn't think that much about it. In fact, he would look forward to coming home from work and having a glass of wine or two with her. But eventually he started to get kind of aggravated with her because sometimes she would already be drunk by the time he got home, and it just wasn't that fun to interact with her. He let it go for a while, but eventually he said something to her, and of course she got defensive. She's like, dude, I'm here all by myself. All day I'm taking care of these kids. They scream they need me, and I do all the things. This is my only thing. Why are you being critical of me? Why are you taking this away from me? Why are you judging me? And he didn't mention it again for a long time. But he started like monitoring and kind of like secretly watching how much she was drinking, like measuring the bottles and counting the bottles. He found that he was getting more and more aggravated with her. And on top of that, on the days when she wasn't drinking, like the hangover days, she was becoming less and less functional and he was getting more and more frustrated. So it was at that point that Sheila really started to hard on hiding how much she was drinking. Now, she wasn't trying to hide the fact she was drinking at all, but she was trying to hide how much she was drinking. And actually she was jumping through a lot of crazy hoops just trying to get rid of these bottles of alcohol. I mean, it was a lot of work. She would buy bottles of wine at the grocery store and she would put some in the cabinet because she kind of knew that he was secretly watching them and monitoring them. But there would be other bottles that were hidden. And she would have to sort of calculate how much to drink out of the bottles that he was watching and how much to drink out of the hidden bottles and then how to get rid of all the d. Ultimately it turned into this sort of cat and mouse game. Her anxiety was going up, her marriage was falling apart. No, this part. But she actually started smoking some weed on top of that in the evenings as well. And he didn't know about the wheat at all until one day he was trying to find like the oldest ones, like old winter coat. And you know how it is, like you have the winter stuff, like stored away. So he was like. He was like back in the storage area, opening up like the bins, looking for this coat. And he opens up one of the bins and it looked like they were like clothes. But when he moved all the clothes apart, he found like tons of empty wine bottles in there. Andy found the secret weed stash. As you could imagine, he was livid. And there was a giant fight. And that's what landed Sheila in my office. By the time she got to me, she really did realize she had a problem, but she couldn't stop. She felt terrible and she was desperate to fix it, but at the same time, she felt kind of unfairly criticized and not supported from her husband. You see, most people think that if you can stop doing a drug or substance or behavior that you're not addicted because you can stop. But that's not an accurate met measure of addiction. Most people are addicted for years and years and years before they get to the point that they can't stop. I mean, just think about it. To get to the point where your body is so used to a drug or a substance that you absolutely have to have it to function. That means that you've ingested that substance, like, habitually for a long time. And that is the addiction part. If you're experiencing any of these red flags, you need to take note. They are important indicators. For example, if you feel defensive every time the topic is brought up, that's a flag. If you feel ashamed about your behavior, if you're hiding it, especially if you're sneaking to the point that you're having to lie about it. And for sure, pay attention if you find that you get to the point where you're planning your whole day around it, or you don't want to go to any activities, or if you're going to go inside me involved, you have all these, like, plans and ideas about how you're going to sneak it into the event. You might even start making up reasons to not go to important family functions because it's interfering with your addictive behavior. Please pay attention to these signs. Now, those red flags that we just talked about, those aren't the official criteria for addiction, but they're almost always in place. And they're usually in place long before someone is physically dependent. If you want to find out about the official criteria for addiction, I've put a link in the description. You can click it and download it, and you can see the exact clinical criteria that medical professionals use to diagnose addiction. Actually, they don't call it addiction, they call it. To learn more about the psychology and thinking of addiction, I want you to watch these videos next. I made this playlist especially for that.