But we can avoid these feelings-at least for the moment--by using drugs. We can do drugs and almost instantly feel "high." We can forget about life for a while. We can experience pleasure, excitement, power, courage, thrills, joy, enchantment, and a sense of connection with other people and the world around us.Of course, in the long run drugs become less and less effective at bringing these benefits. Over time, the drugs themselves start causing suffering. Soon, we find we're using drugs to relieve the misery that drugs themselves have caused. This is known as the "vicious cycle of addiction."

It goes something like this: Life doesn't feel too good. Bang! Try this drug or that drug, and things feel better. Come down off the drug, and things feel worse, just a little worse than they did before you took the drug in the first place. No matter. Bang! Use the drug and feel good again. Gradually, your biochemistry changes. Your brain learns that it doesn't have to keep producing the chemicals that make you feel good. These chemicals keep appearing without the brain having to do any work. That's why each time you try to get off the drugs, you feel a little worse than the time before. It becomes harder and harder for you to get off the drugs because you feel so bad whenever you try to stop.

And it all started with suffering, with your inability to accept suffering as an intimate part of life. You can break a drug habit anywhere along the way, or never start with drugs at all, simply by accepting life's suffering and facing the suffering head-on. This doesn't mean that you will live a sad, miserable, and tormented life. There are plenty of ways you can face your suffering and then cope with it. In fact, once you learn these ways and begin using some of them, you'll feel as if your spirit has been renewed. Of course, it's your choice.      If you choose drugs to cope with life's suffering, you choose a buy-now-pay-later method. It works in the moment, but it just postpones the suffering. And by postponing it, it builds up, so that when you finally do face it, the suffering is immense. The detoxification from drugs might take a week or two, but the long-term withdrawal, the period of time when your biochemistry (and thus your physical and mental health) returns to normal, can take years. Luckily, during this time, you gradually feel a little bit better, day by day. What can you do to get help? You have many options. First, let's consider an in-patient rehabilitation facility.