Why Do Drug Addicts Steal?

Very often the breaking point in relationship with a drug addict comes when they steal from you. We will often tolerate abuse, but when it comes to stealing money or goods – that is a different matter.

To understand why drug addicts steal is to understand addiction. You have something that they need, and they feel entitled to take it from you.

If you think that conscience should get in their way, in that thinking you are mistaken. When someone owes you something, are you not entitled to simply take it?

A good enough child environment provides a mother and a father. Nature and the rules of marriage prescribe it. Many have followed their own set of rules about relationship and child rearing. For many children early experience of the world contains much anxiety, fear and feelings of loss and abandonment.

Addicts help themselves to what they can find to help feed their addiction. Most addicts have a sense of being owed something by the world, feelings of envy towards those who “have” it, and feel an entitlement to take it. Perhaps it is just deep down a need for unconditional love that addiction sublimates.

Many children who have been raised in poverty and squalor choose not to become drug addicted. They choose instead, to the best of their ability, with self respect and esteem, to make a life for themselves. Many children, despite already having the money and possessions that others crave for, choose drug addiction as a way of life.

The development of self respect and a sense of “worthiness” will depend upon a child being influenced by both a nurturing “mother” environment and influences which gradually take the child away from the “mother ship” to a more adventurous way of life. For healthy emotional development a child must move away from dependence on and the support of “mother”, into autonomy, independence and maturity.

A child that is immature emotionally, and lacking strong “father” figures in their life, will cling to the breast when under stress, instead of exploring alternative pathways. That is why some people seek the comfort and delirium of drug use when under stress, and why others seek better long term alternatives.

It is often because kids feel inadequate or rebellious in general against their “mother” that they are attracted to the drug culture. Often they feel that despite being “loved”, it is just a show or pretence. They don’t feel loved or recognized for who they really are. Stealing from those who care inflicts pain on both parties – but at least the child gets attention.

Drug addicts steal because they have not been brought to any level of pride in their own achievements. They see no problem with robbing the “mother” if it will get them money to buy the drugs that give them feelings of personal power – and of course, they feel entitled.

When an addict gets to the point of stealing, then you both need to get addict help. Help needs to come from a source outside the “family” group, and one of the best interventions to bring a child on to healthy emotional development can be from a holistic detox and rehab center which provides holistic counseling.

Lucky the child that gets a second chance to do what most toddlers do – to scramble away from mother, and climb to the top of the tree and then look down to a worried mother and say “hey Mum, look at ME!”