Syringes and teddy bears

Tonight I was talking to a friend who works in a hospital about drug addicts.

I was saying how they might be the one population I could find myself unable to work with. Schizophrenia makes more inherent sense to me than drug addictions- perhaps because I saw there as being an element of choice in drug addiction. No matter how hard I try, I can't fully understand the motivation to drive away those you love and to live in absolute squalor for a substance. And I thought, no matter how hard I tried, I would begrudge them on some level as a result.

She then told me how the same people who literally had overgrown sores containing syringes also clung desperately to teddy bears who had probably been the only other constant in their lives.

And now I'm wondering how I could believe there to be an element of choice in any of it.