Everyone knows the stigma attached to addicts; the stigma that they're just "low life junkies" who can't get a job, can't buy their own house, can't fend for themselves. People think that addicts have control over their disease, and I say disease because that's what addiction is. It's a disease. No matter what you think about addicts, they're suffering from a disease.
The word addiction comes from the Latin root Addīctus. This word literally means bound or enslaved by—to devote, to surrender, to condemn. Do you really think addicts wake up every day and think to themselves, "I'm gonna go get high, so I can mess up my life even more than it already is"? No. Addicts are enslaved by their drug(s) of choice. They've surrendered to these drugs, entirely. The drugs became their safety net because they felt like they couldn't find joy or feel a rush of happiness any other way. Before you attach a stigma to a drug addict, get to know the person for who they really are, not who their addiction caused them to become.
Some addicts hide it better than others. Not all addicts are on the corner of Kensington and Somerset looking for their next fix of heroin. There are addicts all around. Some might be sitting next to you in your high-rise office building cubicle. It could be the head honcho of the company who always performs well and the reason that he does is because he's pushing Xanax which enables him to be cool, calm, and collected no matter what type of stress arises. There are people in the world addicted to drugs from all sorts of backgrounds, from all lifestyles, from all races, for a sh*t ton of different reason, how can you stigmatize them all into one category?
Next, I'll touch on the stigma attached to NA, or Narcotics Anonymous. If you know someone, or you yourself have been admitted into a rehab or treatment facility, social workers usually recommend attending AA meetings as a part of recovery. I'm not sure why this is the case, but if you're in treatment for a problem with drugs, don't attend AA meetings just because that was recommended for you. NA has this stigma attached to it that all the people in there are going to try and get you to relapse. Another stigma is that the men in the meetings "prey after newcomers" and it's considered their "13th step" of recovery. This is all bullshit. There are people in the NA rooms with 10+ years clean. Addicts go to NA to work on their recovery because their lives became unmanageable due to their disease of addiction. The fact that people recommend AA over NA because of what they've heard or read about belittles NA member's efforts to recover and help another addict in need and it's fu*ked up.
Not all addicts are bad people. They shouldn't be labeled or defined by their past history of drug use or situations that occurred in their lives because of their drug use. If they care enough about themselves to walk into an NA meeting and ask for help, they have some type of hope and willingness to want to change and their efforts should be acknowledged.
