Well, yeah.
Of course it's a serious issue. There are effects of substance use that reach beyond the individual who is using. Impact is not just on family and friends, but often complete strangers. Substance use breeds crime, often violent crime. Muggings, carjackings, assaults, DUIs, all kindsa stuff.
I don't hold with the disease model of alcoholism/drug use. I see a lot of alcoholics. Identifying it as a disease over which the individual has no control makes it
easier to use ... abdicating personal responsibility never helped anybody, IMNSHO.
For many years, when I had an actual desk, rather than sitting where ever there's a seat available, I had a photocopied paragraph pinned to my bulletin board. If you care to find the original to get the quote exactly right, it was from the Endnotes of Philip K. Dick's "Through a Scanner Darkly."
As best as I can remember, it goes:
Quote:
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Drug use is not a disease, it is a decision, not unlike the decision to step in front of a moving car. As Villein said, "Save the cash, and let the credit go," but that is a mistake, if the cash is a penny, and the credit a whole lifetime.
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I see a lot of drug addicted people. I see a lot of alcoholics. Every single day. Often the same individual over and over again. I remember when I first started seeing them, and they looked kinda normal, and I see them now, totally used up.
I've seen some successes. I've seen the successes fail, and strive to succeed again, or more often, to spiral lower and lower, giving their lives to their drug of choice.
Somewhere online there are photo series of the same person over a period of months and years ... mugshots, taken by a Sheriff's Department somewhere, that illustrate the ravages of drugs over time. Sometimes over a short time (just a couple of months).
I strongly suggest searching these pictures out. They tell the story far better than the many anecdotes that I can relate.