Understanding Addicts

Addiction Misunderstood

Drug addiction may be one of the most misunderstood diseases.  It is more often characterized as a moral defect then anything else.  There seems to even be a kind of subculture of people who want to seem politically correct, but given anonymity will often express that underneath it all, they feel it is a choice to use drugs. There in lies the question.  In  the article titled How the World See's an Addict, Sharron Palmer says:

The heroin-related death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the subsequent social media and blog comments outpouring has opened my eyes to the way people really view addiction. It is—more often than not—entirely misunderstood. Some fortunate people never have to live through the experience of being an addict. Some people never have to know what it feels like to love an addict, though I’d guess those numbers are small, because we are everywhere.  

We are your children, your spouses, your friends, the people who serve you dinner at your favorite restaurant, your doctor, your neighbor, the actors in your favorite films, the musicians who perform your favorite songs, and so on. Some of us are quite obvious, and others are well-hidden, suffering the ugly effects of this disease alone on their bathroom floor, shaking violently, soaked in tears, and overflowing with shame.  Read more here...

I Don't Want to Use Anymore

When you speak to a person who is truly fighting their addiction, you realize that they really and truly do not want to use drugs. They just can't stop.  There is a no more powerful way to express this sentiment then from the personal words of a person in this predicament.

Martha, a graduate of Providence Women's Recovery, when speaking about being in addiction states that:

My addiction had completely taken over my life. I ended up in a homeless shelter with absolutely nothing. No contact with my family, no contact with my kids. To say that I was at rock bottom is stating a fact that I didn’t think I would ever end up there. When I was at my lowest, when I was sitting in that homeless shelter, I felt like there was no hope left. That I was just going to fade away to nothing.  Read More of Martha's Story...  

Watch Martha's Testimonial

The final thought in this short article is this: Don't judge anyone.  It's that simple.  No one can understand what it's been like in another person's life.  Even if you have a similar circumstance, we all exist in the paradigm of our own experience.

Related Article: Addiction Articles