Well, here's the conundrum: I have never used anything illegal. I use alcohol, but certainly don't abuse it. I may abuse nicotine and for sure, I am addicted. But I can not relate to hard drug use, like cocaine, heroin, whatever. So, yeah, my comments in the Amy Winehouse thread were definitely out of ignorance, but still, to this day, I can not honestly say that I can relate to drug addicts. Feel sorry, sure. It sucks flushing your life down the toilet, whether it be through drugs or any other means. But how can you expect me to still see the problem from their perspective?
Funk said it, people that haven't used that still speak on the subject ignorantly piss him off. And that one can not know the feeling of addiction unless they themselves have been a user. So in any other situation where you do not know the person is going through, you can not put yourself in their shoes (accurately, at least), what do you do? Keep your opinions to yourself? Fine. But then isn't this documentary not solely about people misunderstanding the "true" problem at hand, but also not really talking about it to begin with?
So that puts an inexperienced person, such as myself, in a real bad position. If I say nothing, I am still (by definition of many people sympathizing with addicts) part of the problem. But then I can't say anything either because I have no experience, and what I say WILL be shunned as being from someone that doesn't understand what an addict is going through.
What do I say, "oh, that's a real bad situation to be in." No shit, Sherlock. "I can't imagine the pain they're going through. I can't imagine myself in their situation." Ok....
That's small talk. Bullshit banter that is, and should be, insulting to the addicts. I care about the problem enough to have an opinion on it, but at the same time people are telling me that I can't understand what it means to be an addict/abuser without actually having been one, and if I say nothing people mistake it for apathy. It's a lose-lose.
So maybe this is some unique issue that can only really be solved for addicts, by addicts. Because they're truly the only ones that know what's going on with the system and where it's failing. Doctors and scientists can sit there and tell you the physiological and pharmacological pathways at play here, but they haven't experienced addiction for themselves, right? So who steps up and fixes this issue? The doctors that are already prescribing methadone as a means of "treatment" or the ex-addicts that don't have the science (probably) but do have the experience?