For the past year, I worked as a barely paid volunteer for NFL Legend Isiah Robertson - which meant for the past six months I got a place to stay in a wood frame house filled with "recovering addicts", a whopping $50 a week spending money and all the food that $150 in food stamps and visits to food pantries would provide. Prior to that I was the 24/7 supervisor of one of Isiah's House of Isaiah residential treatment centers in Mabank, Texas.
Besides serving as facility supervisor an nutrition consultant (just like in other areas of health, mental health and addiction recovery are greatly enhanced by proper nutrition and greatly retarded by the lack thereof), I also helped with grantwriting and helped put together programs and websites for Isiah, himself a recovered addict:
I know very well the pain, heartache and struggle of addiction - the toll it takes on young lives (and old ones too), families and communities. And I know how very hard it is to break the dependence on painkillers and other drugs and how truly powerless those who are caught up in that dark web become.
Another former addict turned counselor, Thomas Hollywood Henderson, former Dallas Cowboy great, once said "The first time someone uses drugs, Shame on them! After that first time, pity them!"
Whether by bad decisions or by happenstance, those who enter into the darkness of addiction are victims more than anything else. And it serves no one nor our society to make them into criminals.