About

Addicts: Before and After or Faces of Addiction is a series of exploitables that uses a series of before and after photographs of people with substance abuse issues. However, one of the photographs features someone who appears to have improved due to less dangerous addictions.

Origin

On February 25th, 2011, NBC News^[1] shared photographs from the documentary "From Drugs to Mugs," an educational film about drug addiction by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office (preview below, left).

The earliest known usage of the images as a meme was posted on the remote controlled race car message board RC Universe.^[2] That day, user Summit is Beast!!! posted an image using three images of abusers labeled "alcohol," "heroin," "cocaine" and the joke abuser "RC Addict" (shown below, right).

Spread

Over the next several days, variations of the format appeared on several message boards, including hondaacb1000r,^[3] svrider.com^[4] and passiongolfgti.com (example below, left).

On February 8th, FunnyJunk ^[5] user kevinator posted a version in which the mock addition reads "Vtec" (shown below, center).

On June 3rd, 2016, Facebook ^[6] user ShitMemes posted a version that adds "Weetbix." The post received more than 9,100 reactions, 2,300 comments and 600 shares (shown below, right).

On May 18th, 2018, an anonymous 9GAG ^[7] user posted a version in which all the faces are someone who seems to enjoy their addiction, except in the final pane, labeled "philosophy." The post received more than 15,000 points in one year (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References