The Chains of Denial: When Addiction Masquerades as Woke Rebellion.

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I'd like to view addiction as a disease. Well, it first starts as a choice to be an addict, but then this choice progresses to a disease. Worse still, despite their abnormal behaviour, these addicts do not even know nor do they accept that they are suffering or slaves to their addiction.

Looking back to my younger years up to my present, I do not think I have ever suffered from any form of addiction. Probably because I know what is best for me, or life just has a very brutal way of making me realize what's best for me.

Back then in Uni, I remember starting out with alcohol (black bullet), and how my friends I had gone out with had to carry me back to the hostel. For days I wasn't myself as I was hit with a bad migraine. Hence, immediately after I had experienced that, I decided no more alcohol especially knowing that if I keep at it due to peer pressure I become an addict.

Quiet unfortunately not everyone is like me, as not everyone listens to their body. You know one really sad tale about these addicts is that their unruly behaviour is now being tagged "woke," when in the real sense, these are youths/young adults whose influenced actions scream for help.

Currently in my country, a whole lot of the young population known as the Gen Z are known/seen to be battling one form of addiction or another, either knowingly or unknowingly.

In fact, just recently, a young actress was called out by her husband over her abuse of drugs. The man cited a lot of instances where the girl acted out of character, and when he tries to caution her verbally to act right, she goes on a rampage and starts destroying his properties.

Sometimes her destructive nature leads to him being physical with her, and for quite a while, it has been an issue. So the last straw that broke the camel's back was that their child was sick and needed to be taken to the hospital.

While the man had expected her to join them, she declined, stating that she needed to go clubbing with her friends. The man objected, given the situation with their child's health, and the next thing the actress got upset and went straight to the Ferrari packed in the compound and broke it.

Out of annoyance, the man slapped her hard, and she fell to the floor. While she stayed there sobbing, the husband went ahead and took their child to the hospital.

While he was away, she called her brother, who was later on accused by the husband of being her drug dealer, and told him all that had happened. The brother quickly came, and the whole thing escalated to a big fight between the actress, her friends in the house, her brother, and the husband's security aides, as he's a senator.

As the ugly incident took place and was brought to social media live, the man was at the hospital tending to their child. The actress did eventually leave the marriage, and it was a week-long drag of name calling between her and the senator on social media.

Now this is where the issue lies: while the man insisted that she needs help by continuing with rehab, she cursed back, stating she's perfectly fine, but then looking at her actions and how she handled the whole thing with her brother, she was obviously not fine because no sane person would act the way that they did.

Not like I support the man for hitting her but given the videos I saw of them online, and how he was complaining to her mother about her unruly behaviour and outright disrespect towards him, I am forced to even see him as the victim because in that video, it was the actress closing his mouth and preventing him from speaking.

You see, one influence of hard substance intake is undue boldness, which the society has now seen as a Gen Z thing. Reading through the comment section, I saw most people defend her as being young; some said it's a Gen Z nature, as that's how their Gen Z relatives act.

I couldn't help but differ because I have a Gen Z at home in the likes of my kid sister. Heck, even one of my best girls is a Gen Z, the same age as the actress they are tagging "just a child," and she behaves nothing like the actress, not even upon provocation. Notably even my kid sister, who is way younger, seemed more put together with a higher sense of conflict resolution.

Given my experiences with these two young women in my life, it becomes clear how deeply substance abuse has infiltrated most homes in Nigeria. Worse still, the society is currently turning a blind eye to this madness. Like I said to my friend, in the coming years, we will have a lot of mad people roaming the streets if cares not taken.