Identity, shame, and belonging
People do not only fall into addiction because they are in pain, they also fall into addiction because they want to belong, to feel powerful, to feel respected, and to stop feeling like an outsider. Addiction is often a social solution before it is a personal disaster. It offers membership. It offers an identity. It offers confidence. It offers a role in a group. In South Africa, where inequality, image pressure, and social judgement are intense, substances can become a shortcut to status and belonging, especially for people who already feel ashamed of who they are or where they come from.
Shame is one of the strongest drivers of addiction because shame creates a feeling of being fundamentally wrong. When someone feels wrong, they look for a way to become someone else, someone looser, braver, louder, more social, less anxious, less haunted. Substances can deliver that temporarily. The person then starts believing the substance is not just a habit, it is part of their identity, and quitting can feel like losing a personality, losing a friend group, losing confidence, and losing the mask that made life manageable.
The confidence lie
Many people use because they feel socially anxious or emotionally flat. Alcohol can make people talk. It can make them flirt. It can make them feel bold. It can make them feel like they are finally interesting. Stimulants can make them feel sharp and unstoppable. Cannabis can make them feel relaxed and unbothered. The person begins associating being social with being intoxicated.
Over time, they stop trusting their sober self. They think, sober me is boring, awkward, tense, judged. They also fear that if they stop using, people will not like them. This fear becomes self fulfilling, because addiction often attracts relationships built around using, not around genuine connection. When the person tries to stop, they realise many friendships were just shared intoxication. That realisation hurts, and pain can trigger relapse.
Masculinity and performance pressure
In many South African contexts, men are still trained to perform toughness. Feelings are weakness. Vulnerability is dangerous. Therapy is mocked. The result is that many men use substances as an acceptable way to manage emotion without talking. Alcohol becomes a socially approved release. A man can cry when drunk without admitting he is struggling. A man can rage when drunk and blame the alcohol. A man can be affectionate when drunk and pretend it was nothing the next day.
This pattern is toxic, because it links emotional expression to intoxication and keeps real coping skills undeveloped. The man becomes dependent on alcohol for emotional access. Partners and children then experience a household where the person is either shut down sober or volatile intoxicated, and intimacy becomes unstable.
The group is the trigger and also the trap
Peer pressure does not end after school. Adults still feel it, but it is subtler. It comes in jokes, don’t be boring, have one, it’s been a week, you deserve it. If someone feels lonely or insecure, refusing can feel like rejection. So they join in. Then the group becomes their safe place, and using becomes the entry fee.
This is why quitting is socially hard. The person is not only leaving a substance, they are leaving a community. If they do not build a new community quickly, loneliness becomes a relapse trigger. This is also why rehab and aftercare that includes group work can be powerful, because it replaces one community with another, and it replaces identity built around using with identity built around honesty and growth.
Shame after trauma
Shame is not only social. It can be internal, a person who blames themselves for what happened to them, a person who blames themselves for abuse, a person who blames themselves for unemployment, a person who blames themselves for being depressed, a person who blames themselves for not being the parent they wanted to be. Shame makes people avoid help because help requires exposure. Substances allow the person to avoid exposure while still changing how they feel.
Addiction then creates more shame, lying, stealing, cheating, aggression, broken promises. The person becomes trapped in a shame cycle where they use to escape shame, then feel more shame because they used. Families often try to shame them into stopping, and that usually backfires because shame is already the fuel. You cannot extinguish a fire with petrol.
The double life
When addiction is tied to identity, people defend it aggressively. They say, this is who I am. They say, you are trying to control me. They say, you are judging me. They turn it into a freedom argument, because freedom language sounds noble. In reality, addiction is not freedom. It is compulsion. The person does not choose when they use anymore, they choose how they justify it.
Families get pulled into these debates and lose the point. The point is behaviour, consequences, honesty, and safety. Identity arguments keep the person stuck because they make quitting feel like personal death. Treatment has to help the person build a new identity that they actually respect, an identity that is not reliant on chemicals to function.
Rebuild self respect, replace belonging, and learn to face shame without escape
People fall into addiction when substances solve belonging and identity problems. They get out when they build self respect and connection without substances. That means therapy that targets shame, self worth, and emotional regulation. It means learning how to socialise sober, which is a skill, not a personality trait. It means building new friendships and routines. It means honest accountability, because accountability restores dignity, and dignity reduces shame.
Families can help by refusing to participate in the mask. Stop accepting excuses. Stop rewarding charm after chaos. Stop being impressed by promises. Support actions. Support treatment attendance. Support boundaries. If the person loses old friendships because they stop using, that loss is painful but necessary, because a life built around intoxication is not a life, it is a loop.
To belong, to feel powerful, and to escape shame
Addiction often begins as a social solution and an identity solution. It offers confidence, membership, and escape from self disgust. The cost is that the person eventually loses real belonging and real self respect. The way out is not humiliation. The way out is building a life where the person does not need a mask to be around people, and does not need a chemical to tolerate their own mind. That is what treatment is supposed to do when it is done properly, it does not just remove a substance, it helps rebuild a person who can live without hiding.