People couldn’t tell them apart. Cory and Devon were identical twins who did everything together. When they were little, their mother dressed them alike. People thought it was adorable.

“They’re exactly the same,” they would say. “I can’t tell which is which!”

This was pretty much how things went for Cory and Devon through the early years of their lives. They were inseparable even into their early teen years. They played together, they studied together, and they always seemed to understand what the other was thinking and feeling.

But what people didn’t understand was that the two weren’t exactly the same. Devon was the more outgoing of the two. He seemed to be the more comfortable in his own skin. He got over things quickly and didn’t hold grudges.

At first glance, Cory seemed pretty similar. But once you got to know the two, it became possible to see that Cory was a little quieter, a little more introspective, and a little shyer with people. He struggled more with self-esteem than did his brother.

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After 15 years of drug addiction, Daryl was ready for a change. He’d had enough of being broke, and being unable to keep a job or pay his bills. He was tired of being barely tolerated by friends and loved ones. He didn’t like what he had turned into.

But Daryl had many conditions before he would embark on a program of recovery. He would only consider a course of action that fit with his preconceived ideas. After all, he knew exactly what he had to do to recover. There was nothing he needed to hear from anyone.

This attitude was the single greatest reason why Daryl went year after year without being able to get a handle on his addiction. He would quit for a few days, or even a few weeks, but he always relapsed. When people told him what he was doing wrong – or just not doing anything – he always had a reason why he shouldn’t listen to them.

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Jason understood from a very early age that he had to fend for himself. The more he was away from home the better, he figured. And he got no argument from his mother, who was too busy with her own struggles against alcoholism.

One of his friends got him to try sniffing glue one day, and he liked it. He liked it because it took him out of himself. He didn`t have to experience the painful emotions that his lack of home life had created. He just had to be numb.

Jason spent most of his time in a part of town known for having whatever you wanted, no questions asked. He soon moved beyond glue to smoking pot, and popping whatever pill he could get his hands on. As long as he was stoned out of his mind, he thought he was happy.

At 14, Jason was drinking every day, all day. He stopped going to school without telling his mother. He went home only sporadically to grab something to eat or to take some money from his mother`s purse. He could do this rather easily because his mother spent so much time drunk and unconscious.

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People couldn’t tell them apart. Cory and Devon were identical twins who did everything together. When they were little, their mother dressed them alike. People thought it was adorable.

“They’re exactly the same,” they would say. “I can’t tell which is which!”

This was pretty much how things went for Cory and Devon through the early years of their lives. They were inseparable even into their early teen years. They played together, they studied together, and they always seemed to understand what the other was thinking and feeling.

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“They’re all losers,” Darius thought as he told his father how he felt about going to Alcoholics Anonymous to deal with a booze and drug problem. “I’m nothing like them.”

That’s how he felt, and it wasn’t easy to dislodge a belief in Darius’s head once it had settled in there. He had a huge ego, and he used it as a cover for an equally large feeling of fear and insecurity. Fear ruled his life, but he didn’t realize it.

Darius was so lacking in self awareness that he’d even talk about not wanting to take the bus because he didn’t like having to be close to the type of person who had to take a bus. Clearly, he put himself in a higher social class.

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Rita was a determined atheist. One could almost call her defiant on the subject. She didn’t believe in God and she was damn proud to say so.

Through most of her life, no one tried to confront her about her beliefs because they believed – quite rightly – that she was entitled to them. But she herself had to question her assumptions when addiction brought her to her knees.

She walked into her first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of 39. She had been drinking heavily and using all sorts of drugs for more than two decades. As her already-out-of-control life got worse, she decided that she had to do something.

Friends and colleagues told her for years that AA was the answer to getting her life back on track. But she resisted for a whole series of reasons. First she claimed that she didn’t really have a problem. She wasn’t shooting up in an alley, she wasn’t blacking out from drinking binges. So things weren’t that bad, she thought.

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Nicolas was not used to doing things other people’s way. He had grown up believing that he knew better than anyone about how he should live his life.

Even then he fell completely into the grips of a devastating drug addiction, he didn’t change this perspective. To him, all his problems were someone else’s fault. He was the victim. If only they would co-operate, everything would be fine.

The first time Nicolas walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he did so because he had been ordered to by a judge. He had no interest in being there, and he certainly didn’t think he had a problem with chemical dependence. He went to the meetings to keep the court happy while he continued to live his life in the exact same way he had been.

Nicolas had been drinking and using all kinds of drugs since he was barely into his teens. He had left home at 16, and from that point on, he had resorted to crime to live and to feed his habit. He got away with a lot of crimes, but he also got caught more than a few times. This led to several stretches in youth detention facilities.

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It was Monday night, and a local night spot was quiet. But that didn’t stop Arnold from being ready to party. For him, drinking and doing drugs was a seven day a week lifestyle.

The night began as they all did for Arnold. He’d have a beer. He’d take his time, not looking anything like the alcoholic that he really was. Then he had a second beer. This one went down more quickly, and the personality change began.

Arnold bought everyone at the bar a drink and ordered his third. He was becoming more animated and more talkative. Then came the fourth drink. Then the fifth. Then he was no longer drinking beer but whisky instead.

It was only a matter of time when Arnold would want that first line. After the first one, he was off to the races.

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There has long been a debate among professionals about how addiction – and alcoholism in particular – is affected by one’s family history.

Some credit early childhood trauma with planting the seed of addiction. Others believe there is a genetic component, linking alcoholism to the history of one’s parents.

Vancouver physician Gabor Maté addressed the subject in his acclaimed book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. With extensive first-hand experience with addicts on Vancouver’s east side, Maté looks at the subject of addiction from many different sides. He looks at the social aspect, the biological one, and the neurological side of the disease.

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The image most people have of a heroin addict is of a street person injected the drug in a back alley. That’s what Annette always pictured as she grew up in a comfortable suburban neighbourhood.

She never imagined that one day she would learn firsthand what it’s really like to be a “junkie.”But she did learn, and she almost paid for the lesson with her life. As it was, she lost just about everything she had.

Annette grew up in an upper middle class home. Her family was stable and reliable. Her father was a Provincial Court judge and her mother was a paediatrician. Annette never wanted for anything. At least nothing material, anyway.

Her parents had no preparation for the problems they would face as their daughter grew into adolescence. They had no experience dealing with anything like drug addiction.

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