And ya know what? Heroin addicts covered in track marks, tweakers that can’t fight the compulsion bto pick at their skin, crackheads with yellow and missing teeth, etc. are all still human beings with complex emotional and mental lives and an entire life’s worth of experiences you know nothing about, and they deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect you’d give any other fucking person you meet.
I’m so sick of this attitude that the only drug addicts/users that deserve respect or that anyone can relate to are the ones who don’t look like stereotypical addicts, the ones that are able to hide it, maintain the illusion of normality to the outside world. I have been that skinny, sick looking tweaker, covered in scabs and track marks, sleeping on a bench outside a laundry mat. And all it takes is one shitty enough week or series of weeks to land any other drug user in the same damn place. With bad enough luck or a shitty enough living situation it’s really easy for that week to spiral into years, until you wake up one day to realize the damage is irreversible and hiding in plain sight is no longer an option.
The way addicts are treated when they are really bad off and have serious, obvious health problems, is really fuckin sad to me, cause that is when they (we) need human compassion and understanding the most.
germansingergirl
izzy806
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
