Most of us do not have to think twice about this question. WE KNOW! Our whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another-the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions nd death.