I’ve known people who have been addicted to some kind of street narcotic. They stopped when they got away from their bad relationship and improved their life.

It’s not about what will happen later, it’s about dealing with what is here and now, it’s a form of escapism. Not every case, mind you, but many.

Life sucks, and if you have/know/love people, and get the same in return, it sucks less. There’s a reason to keep going. People who end up addicted to harmful, hard, narcotics and other street drugs are generally in situations that they don’t know how to handle and just want to not feel the way they do now. Sometimes what they’re feeling is depression and hopelessness, or something similar. Imagine going from worried about everything, stressed out of your mind, depressed and suicidal, to complete careless bliss in minutes because you took a drug.

I’m not endorsing drug use, at all. Drugs (specifically street drugs) are not the answer. You’ll feel better while your life implodes and you won’t care that your spouse left or that you just lost your house, job and friends, because you’re so high that you can’t feel the sadness from these things happening. They’ll make you feel like a winner while you lose everything, and you’ll be blissfully ignorant of the truth. The drugs just fucked your life right up.

Bluntly, people are suffering through so much by the time they turn to drugs that they are looking for any relief for the constant pain and suffering they go through every moment of every day. They need help. They either get it from society/friends/family, or they get it from whatever drug they can score to help them get through it.

They then end up addicted and it begins a cycle of violence that is difficult to stop. They need help, friends, family, understanding, patience and time to get better, and often what they get is demeaned, kicked aside, thrown in jail, abandoned and disowned; all of which makes them go deeper into the gaping black hole of drug use.

I don’t have the answer to fix this situation. I never claimed I did, but I hope that someone reading this understands the psychology of addiction a little better after reading it. I am, by no means, a doctor or specialist. I’ve just observed the recovery first hand, and spoken to people who have gone through it. What I’ve said here is the culmination of the discussions I have had with people who have lived it. I’m certain there are other versions of this kind of story, leading to auction (and hopefully out of it). My take away is that drugs are not a cause, they’re an effect. The cause is sometimes mental health related, or it could just be shit luck. Either way, you don’t choose to get addicted to drugs, you feel like you need to take drugs to deal with life, and addiction just happens as a consequence of that. I firmly believe in social programs for welfare/income assistance (including UBI), and social programs for drug rehab. All of which should be provided as a societal benefit. If people can get the mental and financial help they need, when they need it, I believe we can prevent a lot of people from turning to drugs to deal with their problems. We can avoid people becoming homeless and incapable of benefiting society. Reducing crime, and reducing suffering universally throughout our society.

I also believe that there’s always going to be “junkie scum” that would rather take UBI to cover the bills while they rot away at home, in what quickly becomes a drug den. I believe the people who are actual junkie scum that would do that while having free access to resources to turn their life around, is pretty small. I think that the vast majority of people want to live a life they can be proud of, and will do so if given the chance.

The core problem is that they’re not given that chance. They go right from being under their parents wing to bring thrown face first in the dirt and told to pick themselves up “by their bootstraps” and figure it out, by people who hold more money than they’ll ever earn. We should be ashamed that drug use is as high as it is. To me, it indicates a massive gap in how much we actually care about our fellow humans. That somehow, if they can’t do anything that we find useful, when we find it useful for someone to do that, then they’re not worthy of living. That’s why it’s called “earning” a living, because if you don’t earn it, then you don’t deserve to live. IMO, that’s callous and cruel.

I was tossed to the rigors of society in my late teens, I won’t get into the circumstances, but I narrowly avoided getting into a situation where I would become an addict. I never realized, when I was in that situation, that I was literally a bad payday away from being homeless, jobless, junkie scum. Only for the love and support of a few, did I manage to get through the hardest of times and earn a living. Not everyone is so lucky.