Admitting you have an addiction

[attagirl]

For many people the hardest part is admitting that you have an addiction in the first place. I wanted to know if there are ways that you can help people to see and finally admit that what they are doing is not normal and that they might have an addiction problem?

[grant1971]

That is me to the tee. I had a very hard time admitting that I had a problem that was way out of control. I was unable to function at home although I was able to keep it under control while out in public. This has never affected my work which is great. But I have never been able to have a family because of it either.

[attagirl]

That is too bad, are you working on recovery then. Is this what I gather from your statement. So that you might be able to have a family?

[MondDivi5i0n]

I know that my addiction first led me to associate more and more with people that used like I did. Eventually, I started isolating, because I wanted to succeed in the 'real' world and thought if I just did it in private I was OK.

I wasn't OK. I like to think of a technique used in ethics training for CEO's:

"If you were to have the decision you are about to make appear on the front page of the newspaper, how would you feel. If you don't want other people to know about your behavior or motivations, you might want to re-think your actions."

Not having a family is exactly the same thing. We don't want to share our private lives, because we are not proud of them.