From the Bottom of the Pyramid upwards: When Survival Itself is in Question

There is a moment in the darkness when hunger is no longer just a growling stomach—it is exhaustion so deep that movement feels impossible. When the cold isn’t just uncomfortable, but a creeping numbness that whispers you might not wake up if you sleep. When you are not only alone but unseen, as if the world has forgotten you exist.

For someone struggling with addiction, the bottom level of Maslow’s hierarchy—physiological needs—is a place of brutal reality. Hunger gnaws, illness festers untreated, sleep is snatched in unsafe corners where the sound of footsteps means danger, or paranoia keeps us terrified in our own heads. The streets are no place to heal, no place to feel human. A woman in a men’s shelter learns to keep her head down and sleep with one eye open. Others trade safety for favours, or betray themselves for drugs. A person suffering from bulimia or drug-induced malnutrition learns that their own body is a battleground, betraying them with weakness, trembling, and pain.

Suicidal thoughts settle like mist—thick, inescapable. Not a dramatic, cinematic despair, but a slow erosion of self. When the body is barely kept alive, the mind turns inward, whispering: Why keep going? This is not even yet the question of hope; it is the question of whether tomorrow is something you can afford to reach for.

The Next Level: Safety, a Concept Almost Forgotten

When every night is spent watching shadows for threats, every moment spent wondering where the next fix, the next meal, the next moment of rest will come from—safety is a word without meaning. There is no stability. No shelter that is truly yours, no health that is not fraying at the edges.

To even step up from this level is an act of defiance, an almost impossible rebellion against the forces that have kept you down. Safety requires trust in something beyond the moment, and when addiction has stolen every ounce of control from you, trust is not easily found.

It takes a flash of something—sometimes rage, sometimes exhaustion, sometimes a final, flickering hope. Someone looking you in the eye and seeing a person rather than a problem. A bed for the night where you can close your eyes without fear. A stranger handing you a meal without asking for anything in return. A brief conversation in a shop when you haven’t spoken to another human being for days. These small, almost imperceptible kindnesses can be the first cracks in the walls of hopelessness.

Belonging: Isolation as a Second Death

There is a loneliness in addiction that no amount of substances can numb. It is not just the absence of people but the absence of connection. The belief that even if you were to vanish, the world would not notice.

Recovery begins when this belief is challenged. When, against all expectations, someone calls you by your name and means it. When there is a circle of others who have been where you’ve been and who do not turn away in disgust. When laughter, real laughter, breaks through the weight of shame.

Belonging does not come easily to someone who has been cast out, or who has cast themselves out. It is fragile at first, like an injured animal unsure whether to trust the offered hand. But when it does come, it is one of the strongest forces in the world. It is the bridge between survival and healing.

The Glimpse from the Top: Why Keep Climbing?

To begin the journey up from the depths of survival, something from the very top of the pyramid—self-actualization, meaning, purpose—must reach down like a hand pulling someone from the edge.

This is why the smallest flash of light matters. The song that once meant something. The memory of a child’s laughter. The desperate, stubborn voice inside that says: Maybe I was meant for more than this.

It does not come in the form of grand revelations, but in the smallest moments: the first full meal in days, the first night of deep sleep, the first time in years someone says, I’m glad you’re here.

Hope is a fragile thing at first, easily lost. But once it takes root, it grows.

And it is that first root of hope that allows someone to take the first step up the pyramid—not because they are certain of success, but because, for the first time in a long time, they are willing to try.

It starts with that one step.