Addiction

"Everything goes back to this: If addiction is a disease, there's a system that we know to rely on: the medical model. You go to the doctor when you're sick. But if addiction is about morals and choices, then it's a completely different universe. This goes back forever: Addicts look like bad people; they’re the criminals. Most crimes in America are related to drugs and alcohol. There’s a whole treatment system that built up over the years based on this model that people need to be chastised."—David Sheff (link)

"Somebody with cancer, you’re treated for a month. They evaluate, do you need more time? Maybe you need to stay another month. After two months, you’re doing better, you go home, keep seeing your doctor. Then it hits again. You go back into the hospital and insurance is there; it has to be. With addiction, that doesn’t happen."—David Sheff (link)

"He said "I cannot believe what I did. I was at someone's house. I opened up the medicine cabinet, and there was a bottle of Vicodin. I took one. I thought to myself, just one."—which for addicts is the first thing they say to themselves and us—"and soon the bottle was gone. I woke up this morning and realized if I don't do something, I am going to be back on the streets within a week." So he got on the phone and called the treatment center in Minnesota. He was on a plane that day. To me, it's possible to look back on this and say the treatments were a failure: here he was sober for such a long time and he relapsed. But to me, it's the opposite: It shows the treatments had helped him so much that he was able to recognize he was in a free fall and that it was very dangerous."—David Sheff (link)