Anecdote time
A sibling of mine is addicted to heroin and has been for almost nine years now. She lost all motivation, became very unhealthy, prone to unpredictable mood swings, lost all passion and personality, began stealing from all of us to support her addiction, lied all the time, surrounded herself with tons of shady, sleazy people, used and abused everyone in her life who was sympathetic and genuinely tried to help her... she's thirty and now wears fake teeth because her real ones were so rotten. She was beautiful, people told her all the time that she should be a model. And now she's just like this shell of who she used to be, in every way. She's been arrested multiple times, was living under house arrest with an ankle bracelet at one point, she cannot hold down a job and when things go wrong in her life, it's always someone else's fault, she refuses to admit how this addiction has been detrimental.
It's a sickness and I know that the addiction takes control of you and heroin is one of the hardest drugs to beat. Two years ago while I was in the shower, she stole my debit card and took out $100. I had no idea and just assumed I misplaced the card. When I was at work I just had this suspicion that something happened, I needed to check my bank account. I went on my online account and sure enough, there was the proof. My family has not had contact with her since. It was a difficult decision, but after nearly a decade of trying, we feel there's nothing more we can do, and we need to live our lives. Just having a drug addict in the family is financially draining, mentally draining, emotionally draining, it can even be physically taxing, the way the stress manifests itself throughout your body. And that's not even BEING an addict, that's just being close to one. I do want her to get healthy but the trust has been so broken, she will not be in my life anymore.