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Addiction Information

Types of Addiction and Treatment Options in Washington

addiction informationA drug addiction has a way of gripping your life until you feel powerless to stop it from happening. For drug addicts, it can feel as though you’re going on a downward spiral that has no end in sight. Perhaps you understand how that feels because drug abuse has caused you to experience something very similar.

Specific Drugs Addiction Information

It can be very helpful to learn as much as you can about some of the basic drug information regarding a wide variety of drugs. This is true whether you’re a family member of someone who is suffering from an addiction, or whether you’re struggling yourself. You most likely have a lot of questions, such as

  • What is drug abuse?
  • What is drug addiction, and what’s the difference between that and abuse?
  • Where can I find good drug abuse statistics?
  • What are the signs of drug addiction?
  • What drug addiction symptoms can I expect to experience?
  • What are the specific long and short-term effects of my drug of choice?
Getting the answers to these and any other questions you may have is so important, and in this informational series, we’re going to cover a lot of drug addiction facts so that you can be informed. In fact, if you’re a drug addict, you’re in the right place because we’re covering a wide variety of drug classifications and drug types.

Understanding the Drug Abuse Definition

Drug abuse means different things, depending on the type of drug you’re using. If it’s prescription medications, drug abuse means using the drug outside of its prescribed parameters, or it could also indicate that you’ve taken the drug for too long, even if it has been prescribed for you.

If you’ve been using illegal drugs, any type of drug use at all indicates drug abuse.

Your situation does not move into the drug addiction category until you have reached a certain place in your life where you feel that you need the drug in order to feel normal, or even to survive. The key fact to remember is that the line between drug abuse and drug addiction is frequently blurry. There are some drugs that can cause addiction immediately; even after just one use.

There are other drugs that take a bit of time to become addictions. Of course, the other factor to consider is that everyone is different, and because of that, people respond to drugs in different ways. Your experience might be quite unlike someone else’s experience with the same drug.

Regardless of how long you use a drug, if you continue to abuse it, the chances of you becoming addicted increase dramatically with every use. That’s why it’s so important to consider drug addiction treatment programs as the best way to help yourself stop using.