Escapes

When reality sucks and we don't want to deal with it we all have our little escapes, a way to get away from reality. My escape is my writing, when I write I get caught up in my make believe world were anything can happen and I'm able to whatever I want.
But that's just me, I know some people's escape is reading or running or meditation or painting or whatever. Not all escapes however are goos, sometimes people go through those parts of life where things get a little bumpy and they just completely escape and get so caught up in their escape that they don't care about reality anymore.
I got to thinking, what is it that makes us, humans, create such a stressful life that we end up completely hiding from it. We are in charge of our lives, we create our own happiness and stresses (sure other people can try to create them for you but you shouldn't let them actually do it). So why choose to create such a stressful life that in the end we run from it. What does it say about us as a species that we choose to run away from our issues.
There are some times when we do face them, but this is after we've spent some time with out escape. Are we the only species that does this?
Think about it....