The point on stigma is a hard one. On one hand, I see your point. There's a lot of merit in allowing various mental and emotional illnesses to be treated as il

The point on stigma is a hard one. On one hand, I see your point. There's a lot of merit in allowing various mental and emotional illnesses to be treated as illnesses rather than moral failings. On the other, this seems orthogonal to the AA/NA approach. "I am an addict. I am no different from other addicts." Own the problem. Make it your primary mission. Many members give "recovering addict" a very central place in their identity. Do you think it's better to encourage addicts embrace the label or allow them to wear it lightly? Also, regarding the "drug culture." I don't know much about the heroin culture but the prescription painkiller culture seems to be very different. Recreational users seem to treat it like a party drug. A lot of addicts seem to treat it like medicine. There's an obvious compulsiveness to it, but it's not incompatible with a normal life the way heroine seems to be. I don't know if it's mostly stigma and culture or properties of the actual substance, but using heroin and going to work and then picking up the kids seems like a total contradiction. I know as a smoker that smoking and exorcise (and healthy eating) feel incompatible. If you do this self destructive thing 10-20 time a day, going into a gym or playing soccer seems ridiculous. This is something that changed over the last generation. In the 50s, you could see professional athletes take smoke breaks between training sessions. But now, with the current cultural treatment of cigarettes, relapsing on smoking usually means relapsing on exercise too. Again, I think there's a contradiction between AA/NA approach and another approach. One is to encourage the oxy culture in heroin. Shooting heroin doesn't mean your whole life is derelict. The NA/AA approach is the other way, oxy addicts need to see that they're addicts just like the bum with a needle in his arm. Thoughts?