Expressive Art Therapies for Treating People With Misuses of Alcohol, Licit, and Illicit Drugs in COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

To the Editor: In the midst of COVID-19, so many activities in most countries worldwide are still carried out from home. People in many countries experience burnout, anxiety, stress, and depression; because they can only spend their time from home for 24 hours a day. As a result, many of them are looking for ways to get rid of their boredom at home by drinking alcohol and/or using licit and illicit drugs. Furthermore, many of them are experiencing addiction to become addicts. If this is allowed to continue, it can interfere with their daily activities, that is, they become no longer productive as a human. Based on a study conducted by Åkerlind and Hörnquist, and Horigian and colleagues, it is explained that someone who is an alcohol and/or licit and illicit drugs addicts is someone who experiences loneliness and feels abandoned from the real world. Substance abuse addicts feel that when using it, they can feel what they really want to get in the real world, including the extraordinary feeling of happiness, which they have never felt before or the joy that they always crave in this life. Even though all of that is “the happiness trap.”