I agree-addiction certainly is a choice-as a workers comp casemanager, I’ve seen way too many clients end up with addiction to pain meds and antidepressants as a secondary issue to their work related injury-one that causes the insurance carrier to cough up big bucks for rehab, lessens the client’s future employability, etc.
Most clients are never told/warned of the danger of addiction related to their meds-it can be difficult for an injured/depressed person to make an informed choice whether to use a drug versus more conservative therapy without the appropriate factual information.
The major reason addiction-to drugs, food, alcohol, etc-is now called a disease instead of a choice is to force insurance carriers to pay for rehab to treat these supposed diseases-they do not have to pay for choices-and to enrich the ambulance chaser disability attorneys who get the client undeserved SSDI income for their faux “disease/disability”...
Some may flame me as a cynic, but that is okay-after nearly 30 years of working with comp clients, I’ve had plenty of experience with clients abusing and addicted to substances...
You are on target.
And what did you ever recover from?
“Most clients are never told/warned of the danger of addiction related to their meds”
to me, that’s the real problem ... Oxy is a VERY useful drug for post-operative pain, but VERY dangerous ... way too easy to addict ... I’ve never yet had a doc explain to me how easy it is to addict to Oxy and how careful one needs to be to take the drug for only X number of days and no more ...