““I was told that even if I had years of sobriety, I would always be an addict, and I believed it. Since my identity was that of an addict, didn’t that mean abstinence from drugs was contrary to my identity and doing drugs was in alignment with it? This confused me because if I believed this philosophy, it meant I would never heal from my disease; I would only go into remission. It also meant that the harder I tried to abstain from drugs, the more I was fighting against who I really was.””
![“[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make…” quote by Jay-Z](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/983/jay-z-713_addict_t-he-truth-is-that-drug-addicts-have-a-d_131312.jpg)
