There is an adult part of you that wants to grow. There is a child part of you that just wants to survive. Addiction is a survival strategy. It allows the terrified child part of self to replace unbearable states of mind with new states that are euphoric near the beginning of drug use, and merely numb when the addiction has really taken hold and tolerance has increased. Because of trauma, the child part of self remains frightened, helpless, and in chronic emotional pain. It has very little experience of being consistently loved, and it is struggling to remain unaware that the parents it depended on were not good-enough parents. Maybe they were good people, but they were not good-enough parents—otherwise there would be no trauma, and therefore no addiction necessary to cope with it.

The reason why growth into genuine adulthood is so utterly scary for the child part of self, is that growing up requires admitting two things: first, the parents of your childhood were not good-enough to meet your needs, and second, your childhood is over, so the good-enough childhood is never going to happen, after all. Relentless hope for a better childhood is the reason some people won’t grow up. On the other hand, this relentless hope is mixed with despair, because they’ve been waiting so long, and striving so hard, without the good stuff ever coming along. Unhappy kids strive to excel, since that might please their parents enough to turn them into reliable, encouraging, affectionate, safe parents. Unhappy kids strive to rebel, since that might rouse their parents’ interest in them. Unhappy kids strive to be self-destructive, since that might elicit their parents’ loving care. Unhappy kids strive to be good-enough parents to their own parents, since that might teach their parents how to do it. Unhappy kids will try damn near anything they can think of as they strive to get what they need from the people who are responsible for their very existence. When little or none of it works, the result is despair. But because the despair is still mixed with unrealistic and relentless hope, they cannot avail themselves of the one good thing that despair has to offer: release from the exhausting misery of relentless hope.