To begin with, the Addiction Center website reveals that through there are "almost 21 million Americans with at least one addiction, only 10% of them receive treatment." The graphs above are based on a survey taken by 100 Highland Park residents of Los Angeles, California. As can be seen, there are nearly 80% of people who state that they themselves or a close friend/family member have struggled with drug and substance abuse. Moreover, there are interesting reasons stated by the people that reveal what had lead them into taking this unfortunate route. That is, the top three answers: mental health issues, using drugs as an escape or self-medication, and peer pressure/social influence. As shown from the last two graphs, a great majority of people don't ask for help. This, in turn, explains why so many people with this illness are left untreated.

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Why is it difficult for people to ask for help?

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The answer to that question, which serves as well as the basic problem of this issue, would be 

the stigma against people with addiction.

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As shown from the data above and from multiple sources online, there are a significant amount of cases that are not as simple as one would think. Young people who have drug/substance abuse that society finds as weak-willed, dangerous, careless, and lazy are people with stories of how they ended up where they are. It's important to understand that nobody wakes up one day and decides to be a drug addict. People don't resort to drugs just for the fun of it. Addiction develops from their upbringings, more specifically, from the people and the uncontrollable events that had happened in their lives that they had to deal and grow up with; whether it'd be from a history of trauma or lack of emotional support or family conflicts or financial stress or school pressure or peer pressure, these are people who need HELP but are too afraid to ask because of how society misunderstand and rejects them.

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