Substances

Thinking about Substance

I’ll keep this brief too, since there are plenty of good articles in social and print media. Repeating known facts, theses, axioms, stories, and hypotheses would serve no purpose — I take them as given and widely accepted.

Everything published on these topics helps. Even if it seems offbeat or embarrassing. Even if a video or post only reaches one person — or “just” entertains. It doesn’t matter. The point is to create attention, spark necessary social change, and keep shining a light on the issue.

Again and again!

I take different paths myself: using art as a carrier of information to express certain situations or content. To assess dependency and pave the way to the self-awareness needed for real diagnosis, we must first raise awareness of the diagnosis problem itself.

Until thorough anamnesis or lab tests are done, the rough rule is:

“Three out of six,” quantity-independent, over a year. Or: too much, too often, in too short a time — though that’s always relative.

The known items are:

Craving:
A strong, often irresistible desire or urge to consume the substance.
Loss of Control:
Difficulty controlling the amount or duration of substance use, often with the onset and cessation of use.
Development of Tolerance:
The need to consume increasingly larger amounts of the substance to achieve the same effect.
Symptoms of Withdrawal:
Physical or psychological symptoms that occur when substance use is reduced or stopped (for example: tremors, sweating, anxiety).
Neglecting other interests:
Restricting one's life to substance use, neglecting other activities and interests.
Continued consumption despite harmful consequences:
The continuation of substance use despite the recognition of negative effects on physical, mental, or social health.

bottled world

The real challenge in diagnosis isn’t the known criteria, but the difficulty of objectively capturing subjective experiences. This includes anamnesis via questionnaires with discrete scales.

Different “consumption stages” further complicate pinning things down precisely. That’s when “not-so-bad” subjective thresholds get defined.

The only truly concrete limits appear in the end stage: full physical and psychological dependency on certain substances, with constant motor control loss ranging from comatose episodes to poisoning.

At that point, it can no longer be denied even in a hospital setting and counts as empirically proven — blood tests and organ screenings become unavoidable, revealing the full extent of prior abuse.

What I want to make clear here: Even from these considerations alone, there are countless ways to deny or displace dependency. This harms not only the dependent person but also worsens the situation for co-dependents and others affected.

They perceive what they see as an objective fact from their subjective viewpoint and respond with justified feedback — which often creates negative backlash for the dependent person, leading straight to conflict.

Fundamentally, multiple worlds with deeply different perceptions collide.

Another way to suppress dependency and escalate things for everyone involved: Mathematically, there are at least 20 ways to diagnose it under these minimum assumptions.

Highly efficient dependents stretch this to 56 or even 120 through denial mechanisms, cleverly woven “truth networks,” and staged performances. Manipulating within the given timeline multiplies the possibilities exponentially.

Frustratingly, only the dependents themselves can truly resolve this.

Unfortunately, it’s rare clear moments — when the ego yields to the self — that prompt seeking help.

Medicine can only offer short-term relief: detoxification and, if needed, retrospective cause analysis via cognitive behavioral therapy or brief conditioning measures.

Support for self-help — especially for family members, who are primarily affected too — isn’t always planned or consistently available.

Long-term care with hands-on support would be ideal globally and should be a clear goal of responsible political action.