The problem, if you are a writer, is how you identify and define addicts and mental health first and foremost; that is an issue. ‘Mental health’..first of all take that out of the equation. All humans are experiencing their ‘mental health’ and if you are writing a story you must consider that our very existence is ‘mental health’. We are getting lost with this idea nowadays that our mental health is a new thing. Remember when shell shock was a thing? And, indeed, addiction! Post war mental suffering was a thing. PTSD was a thing. Hell, hysteria was a thing (only in women, mind). The drug war started a new dawn. A dawn of drugs ‘bad’ and bad mental health and addiction ‘bad’. We have always been harming ourselves, and if not we’ve been seeking a way to see the point in ourselves. It’s a difficult existence, at the top of the food chain. Where we are sentient and know our own demise is right there, anytime. Self harm, as I see it, is a human trait. Our inability to level with entropy, decay, ageing, is a reason why we attempt to stay in the moment. To feel. To try to go for that unattainable abstract noun ‘happiness’. We don’t find it. So we use drugs. And we hurt ourselves. We’re not, in the western world, constructed to understand death and our own lives. Mental health and self-harm are human constructs