Most addictions start as protection, not destruction.
Addiction looks dramatic from the outside, but the real version is quiet. It is not a fall from grace or a movie moment. It is a slow dimming of the self, done in small daily doses. A way to soften emotions that feel too heavy to carry.
Everyone chooses a different method. Some drink. Some chase highs. Some gamble, smoke, or get lost in sex. The list is endless.
And the most invisible of all is the one wrapped in pixels.
Screens are easy to defend.
They are allowed, expected, and built into everything. No one questions you when you look at your phone. No one worries when you spend hours in front of a monitor. The glow feels harmless, but it numbs with the same chemistry as any other escape.
A small hit now, followed by a faint emptiness later. Over time that emptiness grows. Hunger fades. Drive thins out. The instinct to push against life weakens.
The desire to create gets quieter. Boredom disappears, and boredom is the doorway back to yourself. Without it, you lose the feeling that something inside you wants to move.
People do not choose their addictions consciously. The choice begins in places that were painful long before awareness existed. Old wounds create a pressure that needs release, and addiction becomes the simplest valve.
It is never about pleasure.
It is about avoiding the mirror.
Fear, sadness, shame, guilt, unfinished grief, all of it gets sealed behind the behaviour. And the sealing becomes a habit long before the person notices anything is wrong.
A friend from my past made this clearer than any textbook ever could.
He was one of the most intelligent people I have known. He understood human behaviour so precisely that he could explain anyone to themselves. But he could not do the same for his own scars. He drank heavily. Used cocaine often. Turned conflict into armour. He was brilliant at analysing others and blind to the things eating away at him.
When we were close, I tried to help him.
Later, after I became a father, the distance between us grew without a fight.
Our last conversations were always short. A quick greeting, a polite smile, and the line he used on strangers when he wanted to hide everything. I am always good. He said it with the same tone he used for people he barely knew. A sentence worn down by years of repetition. A shield that protected him from honesty but also kept him trapped.
There was no anger in me about it. No judgement.
Just a quiet understanding that no one can save another person from themselves.
I still care for him. I still respect him. I still miss who he was when he let himself be real. But the direction he chose is his, and until he meets himself again, nothing in his life will change.
Every person chooses a poison.
Not as a conscious act, but as an old emotional pattern that found the easiest place to hide. And until the pain beneath it is faced, the poison continues to look like comfort.
The urge is never for the poison. It is for the quiet beneath it.