Drug addict, junkie, crack head, coke whore, druggie, doper, pill popper, dope fiend, stoner, tweaker, bag bitch.
Crazy, psycho, bat shit crazy, cuckoo, fucked up, cray-cray, dodgy, lunatic, demented, nutty, loony, demented, off his rocker, mad, unhinged, loco.
These are phrases we use to refer to those suffering from mental illness and substance use disorder.
I’ve even heard people who’ve been affected by either or both refer to someone else with the disease with these phrases.
I’ve heard it from doctors referring to patients they’ve treated.
I’ve heard it from mental health professionals.
I’ve heard it from those in the criminal justice system.
You can’t humiliate someone out of addiction or mental illness. You can’t shame someone who already feels so much shame already.
Would you call someone with cancer a bowling ball head? Would you call someone with heart disease a ticking time bomb? Would you call someone with diabetes an insulin addict?
We’ve spent thousands of years evolving and yet we still use words as blunt force objects of destruction.
So if that’s you, cut it out you bottom-feeding, sludge-sniffing, baboon-loving, lilly-livered potty mouth. You probably didn’t expect that from your emotionally naked, bat-shit crazy, blonde-headed blogger.
But you get my point. I hope.
Personally, I don’t think “drug addict” is that bad; it just means someone who suffers from addiction. No judgment there. I think “drug abuser” is more problematic; we know that “abuse” here just means misuse, but it still carries the connotation of being abusive in the sense of child abuse, physical abuse or sexual abuse. There’s even a study about people who read two documents about the same person, who is referred to as “abusing drugs” in one and “suffering from a substance use disorder” in the other, and people who read about the subject “abusing drugs” are more likely to blame the subject for their addiction, believe they made the choice to “abuse drugs” and call for more punitive measures.
Words are one of the ways how we communicate through each other. We all suffer with some conflict or infliction in our lives. Tearing, shredding, ripping, slicing, dicing, and slashing with an untamed tongue will cause disaster or destruction for the other person(s)/people and themselves. Love/Charity is the answer.
I love the tearing, shredding, ripping, slicing comment Michael. Made me laugh
I often think of me being called a bat shit crazy blonde as a “title” rather than name calling. But I get your point. I earned my title. Some of these poor victims of name calling are just called names as a result of a disease. Not the same, I know.
This is awesome…