Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know what kind of havok a gambling addiction can cause, and it's no joke. It's powerful enough (for some people, at least) that a comparison to addictive drugs generally is apt, yet the traps are everywhere and usually legal. Exploiting the psychological weakness that underpins gambling addiction is something sought after and optimized for outside of overt gambling, like modern video game mechanics, social media, c…
You have to see real crack addiction in action. It’s not over-hyped at all. It’s just that not everyone gets addicted to it. People get hung up on physical addiction, but the mental obsession is the real destroyer. Most folks aren’t wired for that kind of obsession. They can get physically addicted to opiates, quit, and never go back. I’ve seen exactly that. I’ve also seen folks become so obsessed with pot, that it m…
But my criticism of the 'crack is scary' meme isn't coming from personal experience, really. From what I've read and from what I understand of the chemistry, and having lived through the era where crack was all over the news, and where possession of the drug got the harshest sentences... I do believe it was relatively over-hyped, and that a big part of what made crack scary is that it was something poor black people in cities did.