Too many ‘sober’ people still erroneously perceive drug addiction/addicts as simply being weak-willed and/or having committed a moral crime.
Yes, international and domestic merchants of the drug-abuse/addiction scourge must be targeted for long-overdue political action and criminal justice. But western pharmaceutical corporations have intentionally pushed their own very addictive and profitable opiate resulting in immense suffering and overdose death numbers yet got off relatively lightly and only through civil litigation.
Though sympathetic, I used to look down on those who had ‘allowed’ themselves to become heavily addicted. Yet I myself have suffered enough unrelenting PTSD symptoms to have known, enjoyed and appreciated the great release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC.
Typically societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on a self-medicating substance that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
More accurately: the greater the drug-induced euphoria or escape one attains from its use, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their sober reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while sober, the greater the need for escape from reality, thus the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.
Especially when the substance abuse is due to past formidable mental trauma, the lasting solitarily-suffered turmoil can readily make each day an ordeal unless the mind is medicated.
Meantime, neglecting and therefor failing people struggling with debilitating addiction should not be an acceptable or preferable political, economic or religious/morality option. But the more callous politics and politicians that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate and representatives’ opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts.