You are definitely not too sensitive on this issue in my opinion. many addicts start out believing that they're not hurting anyone but themselves if they use. I thought that way for years. It just isn't true. Many people are hurt by addiction, most notably those who love us most.
When I was a kid in school, there were always some kids who were deemed weird or anti-social or maladjusted or whatever. Or sometimes you knew a kid who was basically "normal" for years, and then for no apparent reason, when they got to junior high or high school, they would go right off the rails.
I didn't really wonder why - I don't think I really thought about it much at all. It was later, as an older kid or adult, that I would occasionally reconnect with one of the 'weird' kids, and it turned out so many of them had a fucked up home life they'd had to deal with, usually to do with a something-aholic or mentally ill parent. The ancillary damage from having that kind of thing at home affects
every child in that situation, and many are affected profoundly. There is not a better reason to rehabilitate oneself than that, I would think; though I understand to someone far gone into addiction or mental illness, nothing external is a good reason to stop or change anything.
I used to tell my kids over and over to cut the misfits some slack, those kids may not have been as lucky with what kind of parents they had, etc. I think it had some effect, maybe they were a little more tolerant than if they'd just gone along with the crowd. But I know they won't really understand until they are older and have a little more perspective.
