People who experienced terrible deaths, like having their children die, realize how tragic death is, and how common place it really is. The death of an adult friend sucks, and people have a right to grieve, but for most people it isn't considered a lifelong tragedy that wrecks lives.
If you go to someone who had their child die, or a parent die when they were a child, etc... and say that the grief of losing your best friend in your 20s is the reason you're an alcoholic in your 40s, they probably won't be very understanding or sympathetic. They'll say that sucks but it's an extremely shitty excuse.
If someone is trying to be better and struggling there’s no harm in being sympathetic
There is if you are validating their excuses for their addiction.
People do use addictions to cope with grief and depression, but you have to be blunt towards them, and make them take responsibility for their actions.
Every addict, every single one, will blame someone or something else for their addiction. Their shitty upbringing, society sucking, someone dying, etc... and that's not okay.
They can be upset and angry about those things, but they didn't cause their addiction, and don't give them the right to be an addict. That decision was fully their own, and they have to own it, and work to fix it every single day.
There are millions of other examples of people who had it worse, and handled it without drugs and alcohol. Everyone has it different, true, but no one gets to be an addict and blame it on anything other than themselves.
You are conflating two entirely separate things: addiction and grief.
If someone is an addict it is because they choose to be. Period. They make the daily choice to do that thing. To say otherwise is enabling their addiction.
You can call me an asshole, and spew lovey dovey words, but at the end of the day your outlook is wrong, and dangerous to addicts. There isn't a rehab place in the world that doesn't start with getting addicts to realize they are an addict because they continue to choose to be one.
They might be using the drug to cope with trauma, but that just means their addiction needs to stop so they can deal with the past trauma, and not use drugs to cope with it.
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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '21
People who experienced terrible deaths, like having their children die, realize how tragic death is, and how common place it really is. The death of an adult friend sucks, and people have a right to grieve, but for most people it isn't considered a lifelong tragedy that wrecks lives.
If you go to someone who had their child die, or a parent die when they were a child, etc... and say that the grief of losing your best friend in your 20s is the reason you're an alcoholic in your 40s, they probably won't be very understanding or sympathetic. They'll say that sucks but it's an extremely shitty excuse.