Substance use and addiction are frequently explained through individualised frameworks that emphasise personal choice, risk-taking behaviour, or awareness of drug-related harms. While these perspectives remain influential, they often overlook the emotional, social, and structural contexts within which substance use emerges. This study explored how adults with lived experience of addiction made sense of the emotional, social, and structural experiences that shaped their pathways into substance use and addiction in Ireland.

Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five adults aged 18–50 who had experienced addiction and were engaged in recovery. Data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis within a phenomenological framework.

Five key findings emerged. First, emotional suffering was present across all participant narratives and was described through experiences of trauma, grief, loneliness, emotional distress, family conflict, and psychological struggles. Second, substance use was frequently understood as providing temporary relief, escape, emotional regulation, confidence, or protection during periods of vulnerability. Third, recognition, belonging, and identity emerged as important influences on substance use pathways, particularly where participants felt misunderstood, excluded, invisible, or disconnected from family, school, or community environments. Fourth, participants described repeated interactions with educational, social, health, and criminal justice systems prior to addiction escalation, highlighting missed opportunities for earlier intervention and support. Finally, school exclusion, homelessness, institutionalisation, stigma, and social marginalisation featured prominently within participants’ accounts and shaped how addiction was experienced and understood.

These findings challenge explanations that position addiction primarily as a consequence of individual deviance, poor decision-making, or insufficient awareness of risk. They also extend existing research by highlighting recognition as an important but underexplored dimension of addiction pathways and by demonstrating how emotional suffering often remained insufficiently recognised across multiple systems until it became visible through addiction, homelessness, offending, imprisonment, or crisis.

The findings support more relational, recognition-based, trauma-focused, and preventative approaches across education, health, and social policy. They further suggest that addiction should be understood within broader emotional, social, and structural contexts rather than solely through individualised explanations.