"The enigma of self-destruction".
All my life I've been closely surrounded by victims of addiction. I'm not talking about distant statistics or headline cases: I'm talking about familiar faces, stories I've watched slowly fall apart, people I loved who, at some point, stopped being themselves. It's a topic that has never been indifferent to me and that has always seemed enigmatic, because it holds a paradox that's hard to accept: how someone can, fully aware, keep destroying their own life.
To understand that paradox, you have to start with the biological substrate. Addiction is not a moral defect or a simple lack of willpower; it's a chronic disorder of the brain's reward circuit. But here's the tragic twist: that same circuit, subjected to repeated stimulation, adapts. Dopamine receptors are downregulated, and the person needs more and more of the substance to feel the same effect (tolerance). At the same time, the regions responsible for impulse control—the prefrontal cortex—lose effectiveness in their inhibitory function. The result is a person whose reward system has been hijacked and whose executive brake is weakened. They no longer choose freely: their brain demands it.
And here's what confuses me the most. Many addicted people know what's happening to them. They see the damage in their relationships, their health, their finances. And yet they continue. Why? Because addiction doesn't erase awareness, but it does subordinate it. Studies on cognitive biases in addiction show that attention automatically focuses on the substance, and the person develops what's called craving: a compulsive desire that overrides reason. The prefrontal cortex, already weakened, fails to counteract the urgency of the reward circuit. It's a battle between two systems, and in consolidated addiction, one of them has a structural advantage.
Addiction is not a conscious choice to destroy oneself, but a progressive loss of the ability to choose while awareness remains there, watching. And perhaps the most painful part is this: it's not that the person doesn't know; it's that their brain has learned to prioritize the substance above everything else, including their own life.
If one thing is clear to me after so many years of closely observing this suffering, it's that scientific understanding doesn't excuse responsibility, but it does transform the way we accompany others.
Addiction isn't fought with willpower alone; it's fought with information, with evidence-based treatment, and above all, with empathy toward those fighting a battle that takes place, literally, inside their own heads.
