I look not for sympathy, but for people that can relate. I am sober now and have been since the end of April after treatment and intensive AA. i am currently in a sober living house. for the record, the term "dope" to me is not crack, rx pills, weed or anything except for one thing-heroin.
I feel a special need to address the person that called me an idiot for trying drugs. it is a common problem in society (i do it frequently) to assume everyone else is like you are. you do not have alcoholism anything that's caused you to try drugs i guess. other people, sir, are not as fortunate.
i have alcoholism of the gravest degree. when i put a drug in my body, any drug, all my reservations and limits are immediately evaporated. when i tried weed, i quickly tried everything else. When i was 16 I tried weed. a few months later, coke. a few months later morphine, crack, and meth. i tried and used to some degree amphetamines, benzos, prescription opiates, lsd, mescaline, mdma, mda, mushrooms, nitrous, dmt, 2ci, dob, pretty much everything but pcp as well. at 18 i stole pills from a friends mom and was ostracized (justly) by almost all of my friends. the rest went to college. my best friend ever moved away and got sober. i had a full on case of alcoholism, no friends, and graduation money-heroin fixed everything in my life initially, then created problems i never dreamed would happen to me. the rest is pretty predictable but insane. it all happened more quickly for me than most. multiple overdoses, arrests, massive shoplifting and robbery schemes, hospital visits, stolen checks, drug dealing, etc. after 15 months of that, at 19, i went to the seminal treatment center in terms of giving one tools to stay sober-Discovery Place. I turned 20 in august-sober. I saw Phish 5 times this summer and and seeing them 7 more times this year....sober.now, if i were to do anything, including getting drunk, i experience something called the phenomenon of craving. this takes place in me by not being content until I have heroin, no other drug will satiate this craving. i either have to get help from my sober friends and stick it out until it abates from my ACTION to get rid of it, or I have to feed it with heroin.
To those who don't understand: i guess be grateful you don't have to work really hard to not ruin your life with chemicals. but i could never have been the person i am today, learned these things about how to be a decent human being this quickly and thoroughly, if i hadn't used and decided to do something about it. so i am grateful. that's real talk. your scorn for the addicted, if you want to get rigorously honest, is most likely your way of dealing with either resentment towards an addict in your past, or a concerted attempt on your part to legitimize your existence by lambasting the existence of another, and therefore, aggrandizing your ego. hate to break it to you, but people have problems. nobody's problems make them an idiot.