Dependence on Soft Drugs

You reach for it again. Not because you have to — at least that's what you tell yourself. But because it makes the evening lighter. Because the edges of the day go softer. Because the noise in your head goes quiet for a few hours. Cannabis, certain pills, whatever your substance is — it works. Short-term. It dampens, it loosens, it shifts. And that is exactly the problem: it shifts. Nothing gets resolved. Everything just gets wrapped in a fog that lifts the next morning and reveals the same landscape as before.

Medicine speaks of psychological dependence, of altered reward systems in the brain, of tolerance development and withdrawal symptoms. All of that is real. But the question BodySignal asks goes deeper: why do you need a substance to get through your own life? What is so unbearable about the sober encounter with yourself that you regularly avoid it?