Is Addiction Just a Slow Form of Suicide?

The Thing We Don’t Say Out Loud

Photo by Amritanshu Sikdar on Unsplash

Trigger Warning: Topics such as suicide and substance abuse are discussed below.

Sometimes, addiction feels like a slow way of leaving.

We don’t talk about it in those words. We call it a bad habit, a crutch, a coping mechanism. We make light of it. I’m just blowing off steam, I’ll quit when I’m ready, It’s not that serious.

But beneath all the justifications, there’s something more unsettling.

When you wake up every morning promising yourself you’ll stop but you don’t. When you feel the guilt and do it anyway. When you know exactly how it’s eroding you, and you still reach for it again.

It starts to look a lot like self-destruction by tiny increments.

A death wish that moves slow enough you can still show up to work. Slow enough you can keep pretending you’re okay.

Many of us are quietly flirting with our own erasure. Not in dramatic, headline-making ways. But in the way we let ourselves decay, one choice at a time.

If any addiction looks like slow suicide in plain sight, it’s smoking.

There’s nothing subtle about it. In Australia, you can’t pretend you don’t know what you’re doing.