You’re doing it wrong. How often have you heard that or said that? There’s a right way, a method, there are steps to follow. Then someone (maybe you) just blunders through and does it the wrong way. Think about anything in life that requires process or taking steps in an orderly fashion. Dealing with a government office or even buying groceries. There’s an order to it. But for every process, there is always a person doing it differently. You may have a specialized degree and training in a field and land a certain job and find yourself working with a person who started in a completely different area and ended up in the same place by accident. Different paths lead to the same place. Disease is no different. Addiction is no different. People smoke for 50 years and we’re not surprised when they get lung cancer, but they sit in oncologists’ waiting rooms with lung cancer patients who never smoked. A.A. meetings are full of people who had horrible childhoods and people who had idyllic ones. Thinking that there’s only one way, one path to do anything can frustrate us. Even worse, it can make us miss vital cues that we need to recognize something like addiction. Don’t think that an answer can’t be C because it was not preceded by A and B. He can’t be a heroin addict. He has a college degree and a good job. Look at what’s right in front of you. No matter how he got here, he’s an addict. Which path are you on? Is it time to admit that you’re not the person who can walk away, that you need help with drugs or alcohol? Or is it someone you love—take a good look at what they’re doing and see where they are now. Don’t ignore a problem because ‘it can’t be that.’ They’re doing it wrong. It can’t be you because you’re not like them, like those people. Maybe you are. Maybe you just arrived on a different path, by doing it wrong. However you got where you are, you can get help. Lakeview Health can help. Call our intake counselors at 866.704.7692 and talk to someone who knows where you are and how to get out.