I grew up in a small neighborhood where kids grew up pretty fast. It seemed as though when we hit high school, something switched in my friends’ minds that going to dinner and seeing a movie just wasn’t fun anymore. We began drinking and partying at an age that was much too young for any of us to handle. When our parents were out, away, or even going to bed early, we’d sneak in booze and liquor, partying until late hours—hindering our childhood and rushing into adulthood far too soon for us to handle.
I could handle the drinking. I was never a huge drinker, so I didn’t feel as though it was hurting anyone to have a few beers on a Friday night or drink a mixed solo cup at a party. But, when kids started bringing drugs into the picture—I took a step back. I wasn’t ready to experiment with drugs the way that my friends were, and I wasn’t ready to let it tear me apart.
I have two older sisters, and they’d warned me about drug use at such a young age. They told me scary stories of their friends, losing their lives and their innocence to experimenting with things they couldn’t handle. So, I stayed away, I chose to stay away. My friends chose to partake in the experience. They chose to step through a door that they had no idea was going to be locked shut on them for years to come.
I’ve heard so many stories in the media about drug use, how it’s a choice to use drugs so often that you overdose on them. That every time you use drugs, you’re making a choice to put them in your body. That if you overdose, you chose to die. Every time a celebrity death comes up that is drug related, I brace myself for the comments that will come through social media, how selfish it is and how stupid they are to have chosen such a life.
I used to think that taking drugs every day was a choice. When I was young and my sisters told me about using drugs, they told me I had a choice—a choice that would affect my life for years to come. I agreed, that trying drugs, and beginning to take them—it’s a choice. It’s a choice to succumb to peer pressure and other pressures of society telling you to do so. It’s a choice to decide if your SO uses drugs, you should, too. It’s a choice to try a stronger drug, once the other drugs have lost their strength.
But, once you become addicted to drugs, it is no longer a choice for you—it becomes a disease.
Being an addict is a disease. It’s one that should be recognized as a health condition and treated as such. I never thought this way until I saw friends—close, family friends of mine—battle addiction with drugs for years. I watched friends I grew up with go to rehab multiple times. I saw friends of mine die from overdoses. I saw friends in abusive relationships with addicts. It was hard to escape the epidemic that was taking over my town and neighboring towns—everyone was sick.
The way that people look at addicts disturbs me. They look at them as though they’re disgusting, they’re pathetic, they’re a burden on society. But, they don’t look at people with other illnesses the same. People who develop diabetes from poor diets, they made a choice to eat the way they did. They didn’t choose to develop the disease, but they chose what to eat. Those who are diagnosed with cancer due to smoking—they did not choose to develop cancer, but they chose to smoke. However, if you find out someone is sick with cancer, or diabetes and heart disease—we don’t look down on them as though they are horrible, disgusting people in society.
There is a stigma that is associated with addiction. People look at addicts as though they are trash. But, I’ve come to learn that they are not trash, they’re not horrible, they’re not disgusting. They are sick.
They are sick with a disease that needs curing. They are sick with an illness they cannot shake. Instead of looking at these people as though they are horrible and disgusting, be kind. Understand that—like a person with cancer—they, too, are terrified to lose their life. They are fighting every day to stay alive. They didn’t choose to be an addict.
But, just as any other sick individual, they are fighting to stay alive.
