Loneliness and Addiction

"With drugs, I withdrew into myself even more. I just was never understood by a lot of people.”

Loneliness can often result in the use of alcohol or drugs to combat difficult feelings. According to the Recovery Center of America turning to the comfort of drugs and alcohol becomes a way for people to cope with feeling alone, unloved, rejected, or confused, to numb the pain. The addictions become vicious cycles, as the initial cause of that negative emotion is never dealt with, so when the high or buzz wears off the feeling comes back.

David, who started experimenting with drugs at 15, says he has spent half of his life lonely, and drug use began as an escape from more difficult aspects of his life.

“Growing up I had to figure things out by myself, and how to do things by myself,” David said.

David realized he had a problem quickly, he was relying on and looking forward to being in an altered state rather than being sober.

“I’d rather not be sober most of the time,” he said.

David used drugs to cope with stress, school, relationships, and a variety of other aspects of his life bringing him unhappiness. If he was upset drugs would calm him down. David always thought a lot, and sometimes he used drugs to cope with a cluttered mind, other times it helped alter his perspective or way of thinking.

“Nobody would understand what I was trying to explain, I always thought no one was on the same wavelength I was. And for the most part, a lot of people weren’t. I had to figure things out by myself again. Even from a young age, I preferred to be by myself. With drugs, I withdrew into myself even more. I just was never understood by a lot of people.”

David felt doing drugs helped in some ways, he was happier to feel like he didn’t have to answer to people or explain himself to others who didn’t understand them. Still, he offered caution to others who isolate themselves.

“I was shutting people off, shutting myself off, shutting the world off. Being alone all the time isn’t good. You can get in your head and that can destroy you.

“Pray for [the lonely],” David said. “Still try to build relationships with these people and don’t make them feel fully crazy. Try to understand them even though we can’t fully understand each other, but try to find common ground.”

An unnamed responder, who has been using drugs for 30 years, began using them to cope with loneliness and unhappiness.

“That’s probably why I do a lot of [drugs], because I’m lonely and it gets me out and about. And it blocks out all the shit I’ve gone through,” the man said.

Like David, this man preferred not to be sober, he’s stopped using for months at a time over the span of 30 years since he started but struggled with sobriety.

“Got off it for a few times, maybe for a couple of months, but I found normalcy isn’t for me, I can’t cope with it,” he said.

Another unnamed responder started taking drugs in the form of cannabis, which he did because it was a sociable drug. Eventually, he began using heroin.

This man found many of the relationships he’d made through the community of drug-takers empty and precarious. He says if he were to stop taking drugs, the people he socializes with would distance themselves from him.

“Say if you had a girlfriend, she would come to just to see you. And when you chat with your girlfriend you socialize a lot more and speak to each other, but drug-taking people only associate themselves with you if they can get what they want from you. And without that, they’d rather go and get it from somewhere else.

“You feel more used than anything,” he said.