A few days ago I read an egregious article from a girl saying that we should stop treating drug addicts like they have a disease simply because they made the choice to do drugs. She went on to say that addicts complain and play the victim card even though they made the choice to take drugs, whereas cancer sufferers and people with "actual diseases" didn't choose to get sick. Therefore, she is claiming that drug addicts do not deserve support or care for a disease that they brought on themselves.

As someone who lost a brother to a heroin overdose a few months ago, I have one thing to say to this author directly: you're painfully ignorant.

I left your article not only feeling infuriated, but disgusted at both your level of apparent rage toward drug addicts and your unreasonable callousness. I find such a lack of compassion despicable, and the article affected me so much that I needed to write a down my immediate thoughts and feelings.

First of all, addiction is a disease. A plethora of research has shown that addiction is multi-factorial, meaning that it is the result of both inherited and environmental factors. Diabetes, depression, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and the leading cause of death in America, heart disease, are all multi-factorial diseases that are the result of inherited mutations of the genes, as well as mutations from environmental factors such as UV radiation or carcinogens. So no, addiction should be treated like all of these other diseases.

Also, the article spoke of how addicts need to "own up to it." That was where I just about lost my damn mind. Addicts own up to it every. Single. Day. When addicts wake up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror, none of them are happy with what they see. Once the high has faded, all that is left is a shell of a person who knows all of the wrongs that they have committed, all of the people that they have hurt and all of the mistakes that were made, yet they know that they can't go back in time and change anything. They can't go back and not pick up that needle. They can't go back and stop themselves from stealing. They can't go back and stop themselves from making their families cry. They pick the needle, or the bud or whatever, to numb away the pain of the trouble that the drugs have brought them.

Addicts "own up to it" to their families, their friends and their counselors. They own up to it to their parole officers, to their counselors at rehab and to their groups at NA meetings. Addicts are never not owning up to it. The drugs may have damaged their brains and made it nearly impossible to break the chain of addiction, but the drugs have not taken away their basic human decency. Just because they own up to it doesn't mean that their addiction goes right away.

Addiction is hard and it isn't something that can be solved with a 28-day trip to rehab. My brother went through it more than once and it didn't save his life. There is a staggering inequality in addiction support from state-to- state and even from county-to-county. Drug addiction is an epidemic and it is becoming an even greater problem because there are people out there writing articles demeaning addicts and making them hate themselves even more. Addicts cannot change the irreparable damage done to their brains, but they can receive proper care and support in hopes of leading them in the right direction. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee.

"The Manipulator", or the addict, that as was mentioned in the original article, is not the problem. Drugs are the problem. They are too readily available on the streets and there are not proper systems in place to take care of those suffering from addiction because our country had failed to acknowledge the issue at hand. We need to stop throwing addicts in jail, stop telling them a trip to a luxury rehab facility in Florida will solve everything and stop telling them that they are criminals who "deserve what's coming to them" because they "chose to do drugs."

Yes, my brother chose to pick up a needle and stick it in his arm, but he did not choose to have his lifeless, overdosed body be found by his mother, father and younger sister. He did not choose to have these family members be the one to lift his body off of the bed and have his chest pounded ferociously by his weeping mother with his sister watching from behind. Jamie did not choose to be left in a quiet hospital room with my mother, with the monitors on silent, to have the nurses rush in without my mother even knowing that he was gone. Jamie did not choose any of these things. Drugs chose them for him and he did not deserve to die at 26.

One stupid choice does not mean that someone has to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives without any support, whether medical or social. If we are going to go down the path of saying that something can't be a disease if it was caused by someone's choice, then we can't consider cancer caused by cigarette smoke or tanning beds as a disease because those people knew the risks, so they should have to deal with the consequences just like those addicts. It is all dangerous thinking and it is harmful to society. The thought process here is too grotesquely devoid of any real human compassion.

By telling those suffering from addiction that they chose it and are less deserving of medical care and general support than cancer sufferers, you put the lives of millions of people at risk. You make those who already hate themselves for making a stupid decision once hate themselves even more. Also, if God forbid the drugs have altered their minds enough, words of callous and blame are only going to drive sufferers to make an irrational decision. An irrational decision that would cost them their lives.

I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I have and I do not want any more lives to be taken away by drugs. If you are reading my article and you have a loved one struggling, know that I was where you stand and you must love that person with all that you can, while you can. If you are reading and you are struggling with addiction, do not give up hope because while the help available to you might suck and people may say terrible things about you, you can beat the addiction with the love and support of friends and family.

Drug addiction is a disease, and with encouragement and active dialogue, we, as a country, can come together to defeat the epidemic once and for all. I'm sure that there are too many people out there like my brother Jamie, and I just hope that we can get to them before their stories end like his did.