Addiction affects people of all walks of life in America. From the youth to the elderly, whether you are a man, a woman, or gay, rich or poor, educated or not, there are different forms of addiction that plague addicts and dominates their lives. Addiction often pertains to vices – smoking, alcohol, prohibited/recreational drugs and even to medicines such as painkillers – but most prominent of all is drugs, leaving people unable to function normally in its absence but more so when they are high.

The lives of these addicts are crippled and devoid of opportunities to start anew. But in as much as we loathe addiction, there are fewer stigmas surrounding it, but it is still there. Help is now available if they only learn to acknowledge that they need help in the first place.

“You know, man, I’m in this place where part of me hesitates to tell my story because of concerns about reputation and my business and all that, but at the same time, this is just who I am. It’s who I am to want to help people. That’s what this is about. Addiction doesn’t have the stigma that it had ten years ago, but it still has a stigma. A lot of people think that it’s a moral failure, and it might be that with some people, I don’t know. That was part of it for me.