抄録
This study aimed to identify the components of difficulties in living as perceived by people with drug, alcohol, or gambling use disorder. The study participants were 14 individuals with a 10-year or longer history of alcohol, drug, or gambling addiction who were working at a recovery support facility. The research method was a qualitative descriptive analysis with data collection using semi-constructed interviews. The underlying component of the participants’ difficulties in living was “soil where love was not nurtured”. They expressed that they always felt like they were living with an “excessive fear of abandonment”. Therefore, because of “the desire for self-expression
created from a false self”, he had “despair that all the vitality of life was taken away” by “his own feelings that he had been suppressing”. He accepted “invitations from people he could not refuse” and used the addictive substances he used at that time as “a coping behavior to alleviate his unbearable suffering”. However, on the other hand, “fear, anguish, and concern about the future” caused him to repeat the vicious cycle of substance
dependence as a “coping behavior to alleviate unbearable anguish”.
