My feeling when it comes to addiction is that it becomes a comforting or at least comfortable thing. When we feel stress, we tend to act irrationally, in a way

My feeling when it comes to addiction is that it becomes a comforting or at least comfortable thing. When we feel stress, we tend to act irrationally, in a way that comforts us or puts us into a more comfortable situation. If someone is irritating you, you yell at them, not because yelling initially comforts you, but because when you yell at them, maybe they go away. That behavior though starts to change your perception, and soon just yelling at people on its own starts to make you feel more comfortable. Even if yelling at people doesn't make them go away or reduce your stress, you're not acting rationally, your brain is basically taking the shortcut to what it has learned long ago will make it go away. Drug addiction works similarly, except especially with something like heroin, it gets special teeth. You stop, and not only does stress trigger your compulsion to seek that comfort, even if you're not otherwise feeling stress, you now start to feel pain, or fear feeling pain from withdrawal symptoms. The article talks about changing environments, and I absolutely agree, but I think a big thing that's overlooked is that these people have been taken out of one of the most horrible warzones, and brought back home. There's a big relief of stress from that. Adding back the fact that you're no longer around the people who used, the places you got your drugs, and the things that made you think about wanting to do it definitely helps. But if you come back to a more or less safe and stable life from being in a hellish situation, you would be less driven to take it up again. On the other hand, had they transferred you to a different unit in Afghanistan instead of sending you home, even if you lost all of those environmental cues, I bet you would see more relapse just because you're in a highly stressful situation. Congratulations on getting clean. I agree there's no excuse, but I also don't think you need to worry about whether there is an excuse. Stressful situations like you had to endure do make it more likely. It happened to you. It's a cycle that is hard to break. You got help and managed to break it. The fact that you became addicted isn't a failing, it's just an incident. It's more like you can say "I saw that side of the world, and I have to be careful to stay away from it." instead of being naive and thinking it couldn't happen to you. It's a part of your life now. It's not good or bad, but you've seen a part of how our mind works that some other people haven't, and maybe hope they never have to.