My uncle was a daily heroin user most of his adulthood. I remember him telling me one of his only regrets is not finding heroin sooner, it was the only thing that made him happy. It brought (synthetic) joy into a life which a poor, short, confused, single man in rural ON never would have experienced otherwise. He spent the last couple years of his life shooting up in a cheap rural cottage, financially supported by the government and his extended family. He overdosed many times and died young of cancer, but I do wonder how his story would be interpreted by my more progressive colleagues who like to talk about addiction as if all we need to solve the problem are safe injection sites, less cops, and more lenient sentencing. He had the safest injection site imaginable and the incredibly lax Canadian drug laws; it seems like what he needed most was to be part of a society which didn't encourage and enable his choices. I think finding a woman who loved him, even if just for a fleeting moment, might have helped him too. More than anything, I wish my parents had kept going back and hadn't given up and listened to the advice the government workers gave, which was that some people are beyond help, and providing them with their fix and a place to shoot up is the best thing you can do.
Tim was my godfather and my favorite uncle growing up. He's the one who told me some people's brains like drugs so, so much more than others, and if I can, to stay away from them. I miss him all the time.
I think channels like Soft White Underbelly are great because they allow people to form opinions on complicated, human-centric topics without the political and social commentary that come when big corps try to enter the arena. Trust me, if Fox, CNN, Disney, or Buzzfeed were trying to tell Tim's story, you would essentially end up watching an advertisement for an American political party.