I've never had an addiction problem, but have been through long, grueling months of cancer treatement - surgery, chemo, radiation, etc. Like other cancer patients, I know how grueling and painful it can be dealing with the side effects of chemo - months of illness, bone pain, digestive tract problems, mouth sores so bad you can barely even eat soup, debilitating depression, hair falling out, constant hot flashes, numbness in hands and feet, chemo brain so bad you can't remember your own phone number, fever, giving yourself shots in the stomach. Most of us go through that daily for months at a time. But we do it because we want to live, to raise our families and be with our friends.
Maybe it would help addicts to think of that, to really ask themselves how much they're willing to go through to kick their addiction. To think about other people who tolerate much worse problems for a much longer period of time for the same end result - to live. If we can tolerate that for months and, for some, years, you can do it, too.
