A skinny homeless man stands on the corner of a busy street downtown, pleading with his eyes for any passing commuters to spare anything they can.
His stomach is grumbling and he can feel the too-thin coat on his back giving way to the approaching cold of the winter months. Hundreds of people pass and look away, reminding themselves that any money they could give would go to drugs or alcohol anyway. After a few hours of begging, the man has collected enough money to purchase something.
Although the man is in dire need of a meal, he dips behind an alley and waits to buy a bit of crack to hold him over until the cycle can repeat itself the next day. He is guilty, he is lonely, and he is ashamed. But nothing compares to the feeling of not having the one thing he needs most in this world.
A wife and mother is recovering from a major knee surgery that makes even bending her knees to get out of bed unbearable. She has work to do and can't be bothered to be on bedrest, but fortunately, her doctor has prescribed her a 50-pill pack of Percocet. She takes one pill every day, in the morning.
After a while, the pill loses effectivity, so one pill turns to two a day. Then three. Soon she starts to notice that the pill gives her a feeling of lightness. She is relaxed and doesn't stress about the annoying parts of her day-to-day life. Soon the pain has well subsided, and she doesn't need the pill anymore – but it makes her feel so much better. She'll finish the rest of the 50 pack and be done with it, she says – but once she does, she finds herself rushing back to her doctor for more.
A girl sits down the row from you in one of your college classes. She is shivering and runs back and forth from the bathroom back to her seat. You pay little attention, assuming she is hungover and leaving to throw up-but rather, this girl has just realized she is experiencing withdrawal symptoms from the one drug she truly believed she would only try that one time.
She sits in her seat, sweating and shivering at the same time, trying to anchor herself back to normalcy while simultaneously fighting to overwhelming urge to seek out just one last hit of heroin. She'll shoot up one last time and everything will be fine. A little while later, she has dropped out of school and is still making the same promise to herself.
What does a drug addict look like and who were they before they became addicted? They probably came from a troubled household. They likely caused a lot of problems in the short time they spent in school. They definitely had previous run-ins with the law. Not to mention their clearly apathetic personalities, considering they are giving up everything for a drug.
This ridiculous conventional image of drug addicts is a big part of an even bigger drug problem. More than society knows, we are contributing to the helplessness of these people by looking at them in disgust. We think they deserve what they're getting or had it coming.
But who tries a drug in the hopes of getting addicted to it? No one smokes their first cigarette looking forward to spending $5 every other day or more just to get their nicotine fix.
No one has their first drink of alcohol and expects to find themselves drinking 12 beers a night alone a while later.
No one takes their first doctor –prescribed OxyContin pill thinking they'll find themselves unable to go a day without one.
Why, then, do we turn our noses at the people who need our help the most? Drug addiction is a disease. It rewires your brain so that the only thing on your mind is your drugs. To think it's a simple choice of whether to attend to your responsibilities and moral obligations or get that drug is ignorant. The chemical urge to seek out the drug is stronger.
So what does an addict look like? They look like you and me.
