If you are asking these questions you’ve taken the first step towards recovery. The first question “Do I have a problem?” is often given as the starting point leading to the second question of “Am I ready for recovery?”.
Common questions to gauge if you have a problem include:
Is my use of drugs (or alcohol) affecting my work/school performance?
Is my use affecting my family?
Has my use resulted in legal trouble?
Has my use affected my health?
However, answering yes to these questions and having an awareness of the problem, doesn’t necessarily mean someone is also ready for recovery. There are plenty of people that can easily answer yes to all of the above questions and realize the extent of what drugs are doing to them but not be ready for recovery. On the other hand, there are people who answer no to all the questions but are ready to quit.
With regards to readiness for recovery, it really all boils down to if an individual feels like their use is a problem. If you asked the question “Do I have a problem?” the answer is almost certainly yes even if your use is not causing outward problems in your life. No matter what the answers to the above questions are, no matter how much your family and friends may feel like you need to quit, successful recovery is far more achievable when the individual is ready.
This very issue often arises with celebrities. More often than not external factors contribute to an individual's desire to quit using. Running out of money due to lost jobs from drug use and realizing that this cycle will continue with more use, can be a highly motivating factor for wanting to quit. Celebrities often don’t face this same pressure, I remember watching a documentary where one of Kurt Cobain’s (the lead singer of Nirvana) friends described why he would never be able to get clean. Basically he didn’t feel like he had to, he had enough money and fame that his use wasn’t a risk to ability to provide for himself, and although many people around him were ready for him to quit using heroin, he was not.
Maybe the above list of questions will help an individual realize the extent of their problem but what if you’re substance use isn’t causing overt problems. Does that mean you don’t have a problem and you should just continue using? No.
The lack of obvious external factors telling you to quit does not mean that you don’t have a problem. The above list of questions can be somewhat dangerous in that respect- it can create the impression that you don’t have a problem with drugs/alcohol if you haven’t experienced significant trouble in other aspects of your life due to your use.
The truth is when you feel like your substance use is holding you back, then it’s a problem. This issue is being discussed frequently with alcohol use. As sober living receives more press, many individuals who don’t meet the conventional definition of having a problem decide to stop using a substance to improve their lives. They will often say their acquaintances and friends asked why they are quitting because they don’t seem to have a problem. If you think your life would be better without drugs/alcohol then yes they are a problem.
Maybe your work life and home life are perfectly fine but you’ve realized that you’ve come to depend on drugs/alcohol for relaxation or fun. Maybe you’ve come to realize that through continued use you are not able to be fully present at times you’d like to be or fully engaged and productive. Maybe you’ve come to realize that even though everything in your life is fine you now have a physical dependance on a substance. These are signs that the substance is a problem for you and it’s time to quit.
I would argue instead of asking if drugs/alcohol are a problem we should rephrase the question as: Is my drug/alcohol use holding me back? The answer to this question is very often yes. The next question is then:
Am I ready to quit?
If the answer to this is yes then you are ready for recovery.