Happy Halloween! I hope you have fun things planned today, or have been doing other fun, Halloween-related things leading up to this. Just the decorations alone are kind of fun, right?

I also hope that you don’t think that you’re too old for such activities. It seems there’s always someone out there who tries to stop such fun, someone who says that adults are much too old to be enjoying Halloween. There’s at least one of those types of people for every situation.

Don’t let those people bring you down. Judgmental people are everywhere and their judgments speak more to their own lives than the people they judge. You still see such judgmental people judge all sorts of things, including substance use disorder and the people struggling with such abuse.

According to judgmental people, substance use disorderrs lack the strength and morals to refuse drugs and alcohol. They are weak and deserve criticism, even punishment.

Luckily, we know that those pronouncements are wrong, wrong, wrong. Substance use disorder isn’t a moral failing. It’s a disease. It’s a complex disease with both physical and mental components.

But since it’s a disease, substance use disorder is also treatable. People today can seek all sorts of medical and therapeutic approaches to help treat alcohol abuse or drug addiction. Dedicated professionals are developing new ways to fight this disease.

There’s a good chance that you or someone you know has received such successful treatment. Their recovery should be proof that while substance use disorder is awful, people have fought it successfully and lived to tell their stories.

If we stigmatize and criticize substance use disorderrs, they might be reluctant to discuss their problems and seek treatment. As with many situations, talking about a substance use disorder problem is a good first step to solving it. Stigmatization is never a good idea. We can’t let the judgmental people win.