Addiction is not only damaging and self destructive, it is costly to trust, relationships and reputation. It upsets and harms other people in a person’s circle. Sobriety remains highly challenging, if not impossible. The disease makes more sense than most observers and critics know. Here’s how addiction really works, keeps people prisoner and how some may eventually move through the horror to an outcome that can heal.

Musician Sammy Hagar asked fellow musician, Joe Walsh: “How do you stay sober?”

Hagar was moved by the thoughtful depth of Walsh’s honest, clear response.

“If you have problems in your life that are directly the result of alcohol or what other substance you’re doing, you have a problem (the last four words said with emphasis),” he began answering.

Walsh paused for a moment to recall his experiences and gather his thoughts.

Walsh knows this well from the dysfunctional relationship he had with a substance.

“I chased it for 30 years and it wasn’t working for me and I thought, oh well, obviously, I’m not drinking nearly enough,” he admitted.

“And that wasn’t it. Right? I needed help,” Walsh added. “And the hardest thing to do — the phone can weigh 30 pounds — pick up the phone and ask for help.”

He later discovered something powerful, deeply comforting and life changing.

“Because,” Walsh said, “there’s life after addiction and it’s good (said with emphasis).”

The totality of his realizations above may not be what everyone comes to understand so there is something that is happening to help people like Walsh come to know that they are becoming servants to their chosen substances.

“At some point, for most, there is a feeling of being beaten by the monster of addiction and that comes with battle wounds, fatigue and a feeling as though you have evolved into an unrecognizable being that you no longer want to be,” says Lisa Goodnough, the CEO at Recovery Centers of America at Greenville.

That is a painful conclusion and it doesn’t look the same for each person.

“Some say we reach our ‘rock bottom’ but that looks different for everyone,” she explains. “I think it is better said that you reach a point of such fatigue that you just know you do not want to continue the way you are and you are willing to endure whatever it takes to have a different life.”

“What strikes me most about that response is the word ‘subtly,’” says Anand Mehta, the executive director at AMFM Healthcare, mental health treatment centers in California and Virginia.

The substance provides some type of reward for users, no matter how dangerous.

“It does what the person needs it to do,” Mehta points out. “It quiets the anxiety, numbs the pain, makes an unbearable day feel survivable. And when something works, you go back to it. That’s not weakness, that’s just human nature.”

He echoes what Walsh came to learn.

“Over time, without them noticing it, the substance stops being something they choose and starts being something that chooses for them,” Mehta agrees.

“And the cruel part is that the very thing you’d use to recognize that, your own mind, has already been quietly recruited to protect the addiction. So you don’t feel like someone who’s lost control. You feel like someone who simply needs what they need.”

He, like Goodnough, points to what observers may not realize.

Nicole Anders, the author of “One Hundred Goodbyes: On Addiction, Heartache, Grief and Love,” a work that is drawn from professional insight and lived experience, sees something additional from Walsh’s response to Hagar.

“It rarely feels dramatic in the moment,” Anders adds. “At first, the substance feels like relief; something that softens pain, calms the mind or fills a gap. Over time, that relief becomes a requirement. The person isn’t choosing it the same way anymore. It becomes automatic, almost reflexive.”

A psychologist with Trauma Recovery Yoga, where she specializes in supporting individuals’ healing from trauma through evidence-based psychological practices integrated with mindful, movement-based therapeutic approaches, she points to what may lead to a higher degree of situational awareness.

“What allows someone to recognize this shift is often a moment of contrast, when they try to function without it and feel disoriented, anxious or incapable,” Anders explains. “That discomfort reveals dependence.”

There can be a deeper, more cutting conclusion that negatively impacts someone as the autonomy-craving human they are meant to be.

Different types of trauma can come become variables as well.

“Unfortunately, this usually comes through significant pain and loss, illness, lost relationships, loss of employment, etcetera,” says Todd Whitridge, director of business development for Recovery Centers of America (RCA) at both Westminster and Danvers.

Walsh recognized, at least retrospectively, how addiction ran his life for three decades and that, surprisingly to observers and critics, he really believed that the crux of the problem was that he “wasn't drinking enough.”

As obviously incorrect as that is, this should not be determined as shocking.

“It says, ‘I feel terrible and I know what fixes that.’ From the inside, that logic makes complete sense, even as everything on the outside is being destroyed.”

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It’s a point on which Whitridge agrees.

“This phenomenon comes from substance use disorder (SUD) hijacking the natural reward mechanisms in the brain,” he says. “Things that give healthy people joy, fulfillment and connection, like helping a friend, visiting a loved one or accomplishing a task, no longer work for people suffering from SUD.

“The only thing that ‘works’ is consuming their drug of choice.”

This attempted solution comes at the expense of healthier, beneficial approaches.

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He brings up something people may not know or believe.

“And underneath all of it, is shame,” Mehta says.

“Many people I’ve worked with sensed the connection between their using and the wreckage in their lives,” he shares. “But facing that fully meant facing an enormous amount of grief and loss.

The body abused by a substance becomes the body working against a person.

“That belief that the problem is not having enough, comes from how the brain adapts,” Anders says. “When someone uses a substance repeatedly, their baseline shifts. What once felt like enough, no longer creates the same effect.

“So instead of questioning the substance, the mind starts to question the amount.”

She says this becomes very dangerous and misleading.

“It becomes a logic that feels convincing: ‘If I just had more, I’d feel okay again,’” Anders details. “This is reinforced by temporary relief. Each time the person uses more and feels a short-lived improvement, it confirms the belief. Over time, it creates a cycle in which the person is always chasing a version of relief that keeps moving farther away.”

Contrary to popular belief, she adds, this is not as much autonomy as others assume.

“It’s not a conscious decision,” Anders stresses. “It’s a learned pattern shaped by repetition, emotion and the need to avoid discomfort.”

The reasoning and the harmful, discouraging reality, is clear.

“The tragedy, is that the solution begins to look like the problem, but it doesn’t feel that way from the inside,” Anders says.

People watching the self destruction and the damage it does to other people, plead or encourage people to seek help and even if a person wants to do so or believes that they do, it’s far more difficult than what appears to be a simple decision and act.

Walsh knew he needed help yet talked about how heavy that the phone looked and felt, emotionally and psychologically speaking, saying that it could “weigh 30 pounds.”

“They must believe two things,” Whitridge says of people thinking about pursuing professional care, “that it’s safe to ask for help and that it’s possible to get help.”

Picking up the phone is not mostly a physical act for the vast majority of people within addiction. It’s a different difficulty.

“One of them is exhaustion,” Mehta says. “Not the kind that sleep fixes but the kind that settles into a person’s bones after years of hiding and managing and keeping up appearances. At some point (however), the energy required to maintain the addiction just gives out, and in that collapse, the resistance sometimes falls away with it.”

He brings up what Whitridge did about the power and need for trust in the process.

Mehta doesn’t stop there. He brings up one more common thread he’s recognized and argues that it often can be the strongest motivator: relationships.

“It tends to be a specific person, not the general idea of support, that finally breaks through,” he says. “It’s either a friend who called on the right day or someone who simply said I’m still here.”

This makes sense, Mehta implies.

“Isolation is where addiction lives and breathes and even one genuine human connection can be enough to lift that phone,” he says.

Doing it initially, at times at least, can make it less hard in the future.

“What I also notice is that asking for help the first time makes the second time just a little bit easier, even if the first attempt didn’t lead to lasting recovery,” Mehta says.

“Something happens when a person hears their voice say the words out loud, ‘I need help.’ It starts to change how they see themselves. It plants a seed that says, ‘maybe I’m someone who can do this.’”

Why Summoning Strength is Heavy Lifting

“Asking for help is difficult because it goes against everything addiction builds,” Anders says.

“Addiction often thrives in isolation. It convinces people to manage things on their own, to hide what's happening or to minimize it. So, when someone reaches the point of picking up the phone, they’re not just asking for help. They’re breaking a pattern of silence.”

Stigma is More Powerful Than is Realized: The Judgment

“I have worked in substance use disorder treatment in multiple states over the last several years and the stigma, particularly in the southern states, is very challenging and creates barriers to treatment,” Goodnough says.

There can be more, much more, to the story.

“There are still many people who think addiction results from just a series of bad decisions and irresponsible behavior and people who suffer should just stop using today,” Goodnough says. “If only it was as simple as that.”

It’s Not the Same

People don’t view their addiction the same as other health problems and they know that they won’t be judged as fairly and compassionately as people and patients with common health issues.

“If you were diagnosed with cancer or heart disease, you would likely seek treatment immediately and finish the full recommended treatment to improve your chances of survival, even if that meant not working for a while or asking for help from your family or friends,” Goodnough says.

“For those suffering with substance use disorder, they hide in shame and struggle in isolation, preventing help because they are worried about what others will think or (the) public shaming,” she adds.

An Idea to Implement

Goodnough makes a suggestion.

“I think we have to keep educating the community to encourage folks to find courage to seek treatment and have others try to understand that those in recovery have a complete understanding of meeting challenges and inner strength and discipline to meet goals…”

Walsh, in his conversation with Hagar, wanted people to know that, “there's life after addiction and it's good,” a conclusion and assertion he made with conviction of voice.

Many people want to experience it and many who love people in addiction want them to experience recovery. Those hurt by those in their struggles want it too, for themselves.

“When someone says that from the other side of everything they’ve survived, it carries a weight that nothing I say as a clinician, ever could,” Mehta says. “What I hear in those words isn’t just that life gets more manageable, though it does.

“It’s something bigger than that,” he stresses. “It’s the promise that the person buried under all of it is still there and still reachable.”

The Bright Outcomes He’s Noticed

People come to see life without substance differently than they used to believe.

“And they don’t describe it as a life of deprivation or white knuckling through each day,” Mehta has learned. “They describe it as more,” as in, “more of themselves, more presence, more connection.”

The Illusion That Acts as a Trap

“The hardest thing to communicate to someone still in the middle of addiction is that the substance that feels like relief, has actually been functioning as a ceiling,” Mehta explains.

The Other Side of Addiction

“Recovery, for so many people I’ve known personally and professionally, is where life finally opens up,” he adds.

“When someone who has genuinely lived that (such as Walsh and who Mehta has watched succeed), looks you in the eye and says “it’s good,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘you don’t know yet what’s waiting for you on the other side.’

“And to me, that is about as real and powerful a form of hope as I’ve ever encountered in this work,” Mehta says.

Walsh worked through his struggles, with help. Not everyone does and for many, it’s due to hopelessness at the root.

“Many people in addiction doubt that a better life is possible, not because they don’t want it, but because their experience tells them otherwise,” Anders says.

“When someone has lived for years in a cycle of use, withdrawal and struggle, it becomes their normal. The idea of a different life can feel distant or even unrealistic.”

Whitridge goes further.

“In active addiction, they are certain it’s impossible,” he pointedly says. “This is the main driver behind the success of peer models with lived experience, seen commonly now with peer recovery coaches working alongside social workers in hospital emergency departments.

“Most people suffering from SUD start their journey to recovery by believing it was possible for someone else, but not themselves."

Fear plays a role for reasons most people may not fully grasp.

She’s witnessed something encouraging.

“What I’ve seen, again and again, is that belief doesn’t have to come first. Change often begins before full belief is there. People take small steps without being fully convinced.

“Then, through experience, not words, they start to see that something else is possible,” Anders says. “Walsh’s quote is powerful because it reflects lived reality.

“And that’s what shifts doubt: not being told that life is better, but slowly experiencing it for yourself.”

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