That’s right.
Drug addiction is not a disease that drug users get; rather, it’s behaviour that users do.
It is not directly driven by users’ circumstances; rather, indirectly driven by users’ reactions to circumstances.
In the first instance, drug addicts are fully in control of themselves—just like you and me; fully in control of whether they get ‘zonked’ on whatever, or just take enough to feel normal as some of them put it (that is, within the body’s new ‘set’ owing to the exogenous drugs that users are taking).
And it is in this space of awareness and clear thinking that an ongoing resolution to ‘the drug problem’…drug deaths, will be developed—that resolution being actually supporting problematic and addictive drug users to leave such behaviour behind—including the limbo of ‘treatment’ in which they are not quite the addicts that they were, but not quite non-addicts.
Which means that.. .
‘Treatment’ doesn’t have to be ‘the only game in town’—indeed, if it continues to dominate support practice, I see this as an obstacle to people actually leaving their errant drug use behind (and see Just ‘treatment’…; There there there…; Actually…;).
Catch a Grip…resolution of a predicament…not the care of a disease.
(And see Addiction and Recovery..; ‘Chronic and relapsing’..)
Catch a Grip 