MY STORY: I put myself in an addict’s shoes by giving up my ‘vice’ for a week and learnt a lot

Sanca's Kick Your Habit campaign encourages everyone to break the cycle

July 2, 2026

Tamlyn Cramer 2 minutes read

Breaking cycles and leaving bad habits behind is never easy.

And when the cycle is one of abuse – substance abuse – and the habit is cocaine, heroin or alcohol, for example, the hold of addiction is chronic, the side-effects can be fatal, and the fight becomes a lifelong one.

Every year, Sanca runs its Kick Your Habit campaign, encouraging everyone to participate by ditching one habit, or even just something you love, for seven days.

It can be anything, from sugar to shopping, gossiping to laziness, the idea is to go without something you love, or something that’s a habit for one week.

The campaign coincides with Sanca Week and culminates with the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

This year I decided to participate by dropping sugar for the seven days.

I inadvertently dropped caffeine as well because the last time I tried tea without sugar, I was put off tea for a decade!

The headaches, ‘brain fog’, irritability and general feeling of fatigue were nothing compared with how much I just wanted my morning cup of tea.

Everyone knows what physical withdrawal symptoms they’re in for when giving up a substance, but it’s the constant desire to break the abstinence and get ‘just one fix’ that’s the difficult part.

And for someone who’s addicted to hard drugs, alcohol or nicotine, that ‘just one fix’ will set them back on the path of substance abuse and the destructive behaviour that comes with it.

I was struck by several revelations during the week.

Firstly, I could take as many painkillers as I needed to get rid of my headaches. An addict can’t do this for fear of replacing one unhealthy addiction with another.

Secondly, I have the support of my spouse. He was gifted a box of Ferrero Rocher and put it away so he could share it with me at the end of the week rather than eating it on the couch next to me.

Not all addicts have family support, and often the friends they keep are not interested in supporting their attempts to get clean.

Finally, and this is perhaps the most important, I went without my ‘vice’ for seven days, knowing that I could reward myself with a cup of tea and a chocolate or a nice, sweet biscuit or cupcake at the end of the seventh day.

Substance abusers don’t have that luxury.

When their desire to get their fix overwhelms their abstinence – which I’m sure is most prevalent in the early days but never truly goes away – they cannot tell themselves, just x number of days to go.

Theirs is a lifetime of overcoming the desire to go back to their vice.

When we see someone caught up in a cycle of binge drinking, or stealing their family’s heirlooms to sell for drug money, we cannot simply turn away in judgemental disgust, and think they must ‘just quit’.

It’s not that easy or simple.

If we put ourselves in an addict’s shoes for just one week by giving up a habit or something we love, we’ll quickly see how difficult it is to not get sucked straight back into it.

We’ve all got our vices, it’s just that some of us have ‘socially acceptable’ ones like addictions to tea, coffee or sugar.

Not everyone is that lucky.For information, advice and help on substance abuse, contact Sanca Zululand on 035 7723290.

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