Unfortunately, drug addicts and drug overdoses have become a very common thing to see happen to people from all over, and from all different backgrounds. You see homeless people overdose on heroin or you see doctors become addicted to the opioids they prescribe to patients. But either way, everyone has an opinion.
I believe drug addiction is not a choice and I believe its a disorder, but before me or you could even begin to judge someone for what they go through, we need to take a walk in their shoes. Before you scold someone for becoming too addicted to drugs and potentially throwing their life away, you need to understand exactly what that person goes through on a day to day basis. Before you get to judge someone's drug abuse, you need to be affected by it. Before you get to make assumptions about what drug addiction is you need to watch someone you love go through it, or lose someone you lose to drug abuse.
No one chooses to become addicted to a substance that is so demanding and so dangerous, and a person who does is sick. Think about your own path of thinking... Would you ever want to become a heroin addict or become so dependent on oxycontin in order to have a semi-functioning day? Well a person who is sick, a person who does that has an addictive personality and a disorder in their brain telling them that no matter what they have, a family, a future, a good job, its never going to be good enough if you don't also have the drugs. That doesn't seem like a choice to me, no one chooses to throw their whole life away and devote it to drugs. No one wants that for themselves.
Watching someone I love have to go through the vicious cycles of drug addiction has been one of the hardest things I will go through. Watching him fail numerous times but always keep trying will be the reason I empathize. Watching people in my life lose their loved ones to drug overdose will always be heart aching but always the reason I empathize. And until you feel that pain, until you feel that disappointment that turns into empathy and until you see that behind every drug addict and drug overdose is a broken person who has no idea who this monster is that took over their body and made them need to stick that needle in their arm or swallow that pill, you don't get to scold anyone.
So I am going to say, I'm going to say it loud and I'm going to say it proud... drug addiction is not a choice. Being a drug addict does not make you a bad or weak a person. It makes you broken, and it makes you vulnerable. It means you need help, but what's broken can also become fixed. Drug addicts are not bad people, they're struggling just like the rest of us but unfortunately for them, their struggles revolve around a huge controversy. So just be kind, have some empathy. You truly never know the full story until you've lived it.
