“We need to talk about what drives people to take drugs,” the famed trauma researcher Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has said. “People who feel good about themselves don’t do things that endanger their bodies…. Traumatized people feel agitated, restless, tight in the chest. You hate the way you feel. You take drugs in order to stabilize your body.” That is the desperation—the need to regulate one’s body and mind, to escape unbearable distress or unrest. As shown in the pages of this book, it activates all addictions, substance-related or not.
