Why the Pain

By Manuel

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The following is something that I did NOT write. I’m working on Part 2 to my other column but found this in another group I belong that hit home with me a while back. I asked him if I could share it and he gave his assent, though not his last name.

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We live in a world that loves to point fingers at the addict.

We ask, “Why do you drink so much? Why can’t you stop? Why do you need the hit, the rush, the escape?”

But the real question isn’t why the addiction.

It’s:

Why the pain?

Addictive personalities, like mine, like yours, like so many beautiful, wounded souls, aren’t just chasing pleasure or rebellion.

We are searching for relief.

For numbness.

For a break from the storm that never seems to end inside us.

Drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, gambling, endless scrolling…

They aren’t the problem.

They’re the answer we found to a pain that felt too big, too lonely, too shameful to carry alone.

They are the medicine and the poison, the comfort and the curse.

Not because we’re weak, but because somewhere along the way,

we were left alone with our suffering, unseen, unheard, unsoothed.

The world asks why we can’t stop.

But the deeper question is:

Who held us when we needed comfort?

Who listened when we were screaming inside?

Who taught us that our pain mattered, that our wounds could be healed, that love could replace the ache?

The negative consequences, broken bodies, broken relationships, broken dreams, are just the symptoms.

The real wound lives underneath:

the trauma, the rage, the loneliness, the abandonment, the need to be rescued from ourselves.

So, let’s STOP asking why we fall.

Let’s START asking what pushed us in the first place?

Let’s dare to love the wounded child,

to hold the trembling hands,

to forgive the desperate ways we tried to survive.

Let’s become the safe place we never had.

Let’s heal the pain, not just punish the escape.

Only then can the addiction loosen its grip,

only then can the pain finally become something Holy,

a sign that we are alive, that we can still feel, that we are worthy of healing.