Reply #49: Unless a Gun Was Held to Your Head... [View All]

...no one forced you to pop that first pill...

...or smoke that first cigarette...

...or drink that first shot...

...or snort that first line...

...or inject that first (whatever they call whatever the hell heroin comes in)...

It is all a matter of personal choice and personal responsibility.

I have known addicts who did not go to a clinic. They had an addiction, whether it was cigarettes, booze or coke (the powdery kind, not the battery acid-flavored cola), and each of them quit by merely NOT taking another puff, drink or snort. It was hard. They suffered. But they persevered.

As painful as it is for anyone to admit, especially to himself, addiction is a choice, and failure to curb that addiction is a mental weakness, not physical. It is a choice to continue taking a drug, or quitting it and putting up with the short-term (but admittedly painful) physical distress associated with withdrawal.

I just get irked when people try to put drug addiction on the same pedestal of pain as a real disease.

Evil Kumquat

PS. I hate and apologize for how sanctimonious these posts sound. God knows I am far from the perfect model of self-restraint (as my fearful bathroom scale would attest), and none of which I speak is based on my own personal demons, but rather observations made of my friends and acquaintances, as well as various media sources and my own feelings on personal responsibility.

PPS. Screw Ford! (in case anyone forgot what the OP was all about)