[giantrobot]

If someone is addicted to drugs they don't get to just stop doing drugs without a lot of work on their part and usually a lot of outside help. If someone has addiction issues you can't just give them a job offer and assume all their problems are solved. No matter how thankful or earnest they are in moments of sobriety their addiction tends to have an overwhelming hold over their behavior.

Addiction is not just an idle habit you kick with some perseverance and self control.

[heterodoxxed]

Exactly.

"I tried to help some cancer patients by giving them jobs and the occasional free meal, but a lot of them just ended up dying of cancer anyways."

The day America stops treating addiction as an individual moral failing and starts treating it as a lifelong disease and a collective social failing is the day we finally start to address these issues.

[runawaybottle]

Correction:

They day we start dealing with it is the day when your kids are addicted. Until then, it’s not our problem.

I’m not sure which drug it’s going to be. Maybe Adderral or Vyvanse being gateway into higher dose amphetamines, or something, but it’s gonna have to be a common drug amongst most of the kids before we take addiction seriously.

[giantrobot]

Even when it's people's kids they as often as not don't take their addiction seriously. With families there's a lot of enabling and co-dependence that occurs. That's in addition to the views that addition is some moral failing or idle habit.

I think issues around not taking addiction seriously or not understanding it are facets of us collectively not taking mental health seriously.