Addiction and Medicine: What I’ve Learned

Addiction is one of those words that people whisper — even in medicine. We talk openly about depression, cancer, diabetes… but mention addiction, and the room shifts. Eyes lower. Voices soften. We still struggle to see it as an illness, even though we know, clinically, that’s exactly what it is.

Over the years of being a GP, I thought I had learned and understood addiction. I’d seen it in patients — in people who drank too much, used painkillers beyond their prescriptions, or couldn’t stop smoking despite years of trying. I listened, empathised, and advised. But now I know that I never fully understood it. I'm still learning about it now - the mask is off and I am staring it right in the face.

Addiction doesn’t arrive with flashing lights or a dramatic fall from grace. It creeps in quietly, disguised as coping, as relief, as a way to function. It tells you that you’re in control and masquerades as your party companion, always by your side and ready to pick you up when you stumble.

As a doctor, I was trained to fix people. As an addict, I had to learn how to be human again. The hardest part was accepting that those two identities could exist in the same person — and that neither cancelled the other out.

What I’ve learned, both from medicine and from experience, is this: addiction is not a moral failure. It’s a condition, a consequence of being human. It can happen to anyone, regardless of intelligence, profession, or willpower. If there is going to be recovery — it starts with honesty — and holding up the shame that keeps people silent.

If there’s one thing I wish I’d said to my patients along the way, it’s this: you’re not bad, weak, or broken. You’re just trying to feel okay in a world that sometimes makes that impossible. And that’s something I am beginning to understand more deeply than I ever imagined.