Comment by phatskat

100%

Drugs are an alluring and easy avenue for people who have a difficult time fitting into their social expectations and dealing with pressures. Obviously this isn’t where it starts, but treatment is so difficult and the punitive effects are so harsh that it creates a system that’s incredibly difficult to get out of…so why would you?

This isn’t always the case, of course, but my own anecdote:

My best friend in high school got hooked on heroin - not sure exactly what started him on it or why, but I could tell that he knew he didn’t want to be in that place, and that he as genuinely trying to get clean but the resources were limited and often harsh.

He did get clean for a while and applied for a job at Walmart - this kid was stupid smart, we’d do EE and programming projects all the time and I always felt like he was miles ahead of my understanding of technology - but this was what he had available because of his history.

The Walmart drug test popped for the drugs he was using _to get clean_ and they denied his application. Went home, relapsed, got found dead by his mother. It’s awful.