Addiction changes personality according to school speaker

Addiction is not only an unhealthy habit, but it can also have adverse affects on one’s personality. When a person becomes addicted to a behavior or habit, he or she slowly undergoes a transformation in personality. To understand how addiction affects personality, it is important to first realize what causes addiction.

According to school speaker and addictions expert Scott Gallagher, all addicts have at least one thing in common. They believe there is something wrong with them. And they believed this to be true before they got addicted. These and other negative thoughts lead to negative feelings. In order to escape the negative feelings, the individual turns to a behavior or habit – such as drug use or bullying – to get away from the pain.

The behavior or habit wards off these negative feelings, but only for a short time. Then the addict "crashes" or comes back down into the negative feelings again, but now they feel even worse. This process is very tiring.

When Gallagher was in high school, he developed a dependency on chemicals. As his dependency grew worse, his personality began to change drastically. During a recent addiction prevention and bullying program, Gallagher explained how he changed.

“My mom would ask me to do the dishes. It was very simple, one night my brother did the dishes, the next night I did the dishes,” Gallagher said. “But now I am doing this drug. My mother has no idea that I’m doing drugs. So I’m crashing and I am so worn out and tired that I can’t even imagine doing the dishes.”

Instead of doing the dishes, Gallagher retaliated. “My mother would ask me to do the dishes and I would just start verbally abusing her,” he said.

Gallagher began questioning his mother’s competency, wondering why she didn’t just do the dishes. He put her down in everyway he could think of all because he was too tired to do the dishes himself.

There are other ways addiction can change one’s personality. As a young child, Gallagher became addicted to sugar. To feed his sugar habit, he would steal money out of his mother's coin jar. He collected money for charity and used it buy candy. He even resorted to stealing from a blind woman and directly from the store. Gallagher became a thief in order to support his addiction.

Unfortunately, as an addict’s personality changes, he or she risks losing loved ones, family and friends. For Gallagher, his chemical addiction resulted in him abusing his mother and eventually being sent to live with his father. In essence, Gallagher drove his own mother, someone who loved him and wanted to help him, out of his life all because he was addicted to drugs.

In short, addiction changes personality for the worse. Many addicts act out of character because they are focused on their next high or tired from a crash. The life of an addict results in broken relationships and unhealthy behavior that is damaging to everyone involved.