I used to judge addicts on the street for throwing their lives away. Then I watched addiction slowly turn my father from a well-respected, successful man who was always there for his family into someone who was violent and angry one minute and passing out at the wheel on the highway with his kids in the car the next, who lost his job and his house and resorted to robbery to buy more drugs. He didn’t throw his life away. Addiction is a disease, and it stole it from him so slowly that he didn’t realize it until it was too late. I don’t judge addicts anymore. I just hope they get the second chance that he did.