I have a friend that has chosen the pursuit of crack cocaine all the way down. The job went a few months ago and yet the dedication to crack cocaine continues.

I have a friend that has chosen the pursuit of crack cocaine all the way down. The job went a few months ago and yet the dedication to crack cocaine continues. Note how the crack cocaine is the drug here, after an unknown time on normal cocaine the nose got so bad that crack was the only way. Next there will be the mix with heroin, if this has not started yet. Then payment - said friend is blessed with a vagina so along with everything else this will be rented out for crack cocaine. Coupled with this costs go up. As the addiction continues more crack cocaine is needed to get to baseline normal. Along the way all friends and family get reamed out. Borrowed money is not returned. Then every line of credit is used, e.g. payday loans. Moving in to a lover's pad means no rent and food doesn't matter by then. There are jobs in the black economy for instance babysitting, for your dealer, for crack cocaine as payment, what could go wrong? I have desperately tried to change the outcome for my friend but know I have as much luck with that as praying for my mum's arthritis to get better. I enabled too, I did lend her money to move flat share before I knew of the problem. My friend does come from a background of poor single parenting and that gives rise to the so called addictive personality. All it took was to meet the allegedly cool crowd and get partying. It was great at the start but the price was addiction. This is how a typical drug junkie should be - childhood narcissistic harm due to a lack of love. But we have not got that in America with the pill epidemic, that was a culture of greedy over prescribing by doctors. It has been a stupid epidemic, creating drug addicts. These people just get caught up in it like my friend and end up doing things they would never do just to pay for this descent into hell. It is just a matter of time. My friend had a good job with great prospects, a lovely flat, a car, many things. Everything is gone. Paving the streets with gold would not have changed things. Making the drugs free would speed up the decline but I think this stuff is a lot cheaper than beer in a restaurant for your minimum next hit requirements. Begging can cover that, eventually. It is easy to blame social economic matters but that is to miss the mark. The opioid crisis is a really bad deal and I believe that the numbers in the article are acceptable guesses as to the harm done.