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Imagine you are suffering day in and day out in crushing poverty, that you see nothing but crime and hopelessness all around you, that your friends and family h

Imagine you are suffering day in and day out in crushing poverty, that you see nothing but crime and hopelessness all around you, that your friends and family have been killed or are rotting away in jail, that you are looked down upon, spat upon, and despised, that you see no hope of bettering or escaping your situation. Then imagine you've taken something that infinitely transforms your world and makes you feel amazing to such a degree that's absolutely unimaginable to someone who hasn't tried some of these substances ("better than sex" is an extreme understatement). All your pain is gone, all your misery forgotten, amazing vistas open before you, all is good. After that brief stay in paradise, you come crashing down and back in to your miserable life. Everything is as before, your passion is back, only you now know it's possible for you to get back to that exalted state, to escape that prison of a life you've been living in, even if for a moment. Is it evidence of a disease for someone who's gone through this to desperately want to experience that escape again? To be free and feel great? Is the cause of such a desire -- the misery, the poverty, the hopelessness, the fantastic way these substances make you feel and the escape they offer -- can all that be justly summed up in the word "disease", or is there something else going on?

d1l 3y ago
This is a fantasy, a romance. It very little resembles the reality I've seen. Many addicts I've known and seen come from stable environments and it isbecause of their incessant drug use that they end up poor, homeless and degraded. Of course some addicts definitely start in "crushing poverty" but many do not. It affects people from every background, every social strata. If your hypothesis were correct than the housing and support programs would work. They don't.
- unix_fan 3y ago
  I come from a developing country, and I agree. very often, the people consuming drugs come from a stable socioeconomic background from middle to upper class. When my family and I lived in a poor neighborhood, we didn’t notice anyone with an addiction problem, Perhaps one well-known case, at most. Once we started to move into wealthier, neighborhoods, however, it became far more visible.

d1l 3y ago

This is a fantasy, a romance. It very little resembles the reality I've seen. Many addicts I've known and seen come from stable environments and it isbecause of their incessant drug use that they end up poor, homeless and degraded. Of course some addicts definitely start in "crushing poverty" but many do not. It affects people from every background, every social strata. If your hypothesis were correct than the housing and support programs would work. They don't.

unix_fan 3y ago
I come from a developing country, and I agree. very often, the people consuming drugs come from a stable socioeconomic background from middle to upper class. When my family and I lived in a poor neighborhood, we didn’t notice anyone with an addiction problem, Perhaps one well-known case, at most. Once we started to move into wealthier, neighborhoods, however, it became far more visible.