ADDICTIONS COME IN MANY FORMS

Can you stop drinking alcohol for 90 days? What about quitting
caffeine for three months? Smoking cigarettes or weed? Gambling?
Binge eating? Endless Internet surfing?

"Just check out what you're feeling as these things are being read,"
Medicine Hat College Addictions Counselling Coordinator Colleen
Hillock says. "Just check it out: does it resonate?"

In the cross hairs of National Drug and Addictions Awareness Week,
it's a question that hits a bulls eye marked "uncomfortable," for
many Medicine Hatters.

"People who don't have a problem typically don't have a reaction to
that question," Hillcock said. "People who have a problem tend to
start to have a reaction to that." Are we all addicts, then?

Perhaps not, but definitely people with a problem behavior taking root.

Addiction is classically defined as a tolerance for a drug or
behaviour as a result of quantity and frequency of use. It's a
progressive disorder marked by increasing dosage, loss of control,
preoccupation and negative side effects.

"It becomes more and more of who you are," Hillcock explained. "When
I'm not with 'it,' do I feel more depressed, more agitated? Do I feel
more 'out of my skin' when I don't do it and more 'in my skin' when I do it?"

A 2002 Ottawa study shows 30,000 individuals in that city of about
775,000 reported some form of substance use problem requiring
treatment. An Ontario Student Drug Use Survey conducted in 2005
reports 13,000 Ottawa students reporting binge drinking (five plus
drinks on one occasion) at least once a month, with about 4,800
students binging two to three times in a month.

In addition, about 8,500 Ottawa students report symptoms of a drug use problem.

A Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse study released this March stated
that the social and economic costs of abuse of alcohol, tobacco and
illegal drugs is draining almost $40 billion a year from the economy,
through increased pressure on the health care and justice systems as
well as lost productivity resulting from disability and premature
death. These pressures represent a cost of $1,267 to each individual Canadian.

But if we're not actually addicted, what's the problem?

"We know there are a lot more who are 'problem people,' periodic
users who...can can abstain as long as they know they can use again,"
Hillcock said. "They're not puking in a bag on a street corner, but
they still depend on using."

Looking to rationalize your problem behaviour? Technological
evolution in the last 50 years has exploded. The human body,
meanwhile, has stayed the same for thousands of years; our evolution
hasn't kept pace with technology.

Then there's the great American dream, now exported to all free societies.

"Everything is leading you to believe that your happiness is on the
outside instead of the inside," she said. "There's a whole
infrastructure saying: buy this and you'll be happy. Money, greed,
consumerism... all that kind of stuff leads to chasing the fix
versus: 'do I need this? How am I? Am I comfortable on the inside?"

It's enough to cloud the mood of even the sunniest optimist. But there is hope.

"Despite the appearance we're spiraling out of control, addiction
rates have flat-lined," Addictions Counselling faculty member Dr.
Mary Crozier says. "The majority of people aren't addicted, and
certain drugs like nicotine (tobacco) are going down, marginally."

It is an issue as complex and unique as every individual in Medicine
Hat. If problem behaviors become addictions, a cure can only occur
from within, one day at a time. Eventually, that adds up to 90 days
substance free.

That's a start.