This tread is in response to a question why knowing the root cause of why I abuse things is necessary. I will write in my own terms of my own recovery. I hope this will help some. For 40 years I abused, people, places and things. I ended in some pretty dangerous places, doing life risking things. When I started a path of recovery I learned many things. One thing I didn't learn was why I abuse. Why I needed something to make me feel better. Recently within the last four years I realized that I was covering up a secret that held since I was 10. I was sexually abused by older brothers and a neighbor. The shame and lack of understanding and the emotional immaturity lead me to seek things and people that would make that trauma go away. It haunted me for years, I am now 50. Once I began to see that was the reason why I abuse, my life, my recovery began to take hold. It was necessary to see how that trauma affected my life. Now I am unable to change that, but I am able to change how it makes me feel and behave. A friend, whose is a sailor, told me in order to know where you are going in an ocean, you must first find out where you are. I needed to know where I was in order to get where I needed to go. I had to accept what happened when I was 10. I had to let it go. The past is meant to learn from and not to be lived in. Freedom from that age has helped me recovery. I have learned not to be or play the victim anymore. I have put to bed a ghost that has haunted my whole life. People use for a reason. I was told early on that an alcoholic just doesn't appear in a bar with a drink in hand. There is a root cause for every addiction. Finding what that is, accepting it and letting it go is essential to anyone who desires to recovery from the disease of addiction.