I fully understand that this site is dedicated to writing, reading, and the tools used for reading and writing.  However, I was an addictions counselor for 10 years, or so, and taught college classes for 5 years training people to become addiction counselors.  This has made it practically impossible not to include an article, and the video below on each and every site I own regardless of its primary objective.
         I spend a lot of time people I respect on my favorite online channels, TV channels, as well as newspapers, books, and pamphlets failing to do proper fact checking regarding addiction.  Here is a video that explains the neuroscience of addiction in a way we all can understand.
         Please take the time to view this video, so that you, your family, and friends might start to understand the nature of addiction, and the conduct by addicts that makes it so easy for use to suspend reason in favor of emotional thinking.  Remember that anyone can become addicted to a substance.  Nancy Reagan, who was saying 'Just say NO', was all the while incapable of say NO to stimulants.  It didn't speak to Nancy's character.  Drugs were yelling from her midbrain to her front lobe and absconded with her free will regarding these substances, and related issues.  Addicts are just as good and bad as the rest of us.  The difference is that addicts have lost self-determination is areas that are obvious and essential.