What You Really Don't Know About Recovery | The Fix: Indeed, the data on recovery reveal that many people don’t actually quit when their problem is at its worst because intense stress itself is a strong predictor of ongoing addiction and relapse. Hope and a sense of possibility—in other words, moments of renewal rather than fear—bring change at least as often, and possibly more frequently.
But sadly, the myth that by making the lives of addicts tougher we can push them to “hit bottom” pervades much of our treatment and drug policy. Since the assumption that addicts need tough love is so widespread in popular culture that we never examine its validity, we persist in treating addicts harshly—from cutting them out of our lives to locking them up in prison—while justifying this harshness as “help.”