Can you trust a recovered drug addict?

Recovered drug addicts are always at risk of relapsing

Question: Can you trust a recovered drug addict?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, you cannot trust a recovered drug addict
Argument: Recovered drug addicts are always at risk of relapsing

Even after a drug addict has recovered, the capacity for addiction does not leave them. No matter how long someone has been recovered from their addiction, the possibility of relapse exists.

The argument

Recovered drug addicts can never fully be trusted because even after a drug addict has recovered, the capacity for addiction does not leave them. No matter how long someone has been recovered from their addiction, the possibility of relapse exists. Between 40% and 60% of recovered addicts eventually relapse, and if relapse occurs, then addicts will quickly resort to deception in order to feed their habit. Whether it is due to embarrassment, wanting to hide the addiction, or a desire to acquire money for drugs, addicts inevitably resort to lying. Even if addicts actually want to kick the addiction, their minds are twisted by the addiction in a way that causes them to distrust others, and that, in turn, makes them act deceptively toward others. Just as practicing any skill will cause improvements, once a drug addict begins lying, they get better and better at it. Lying creates more and more complex defense mechanisms which make it easier to continue lying.

Premises

[P1]Recovered drug addicts retain the capacity for addiction and face a 40–60% chance of relapse at any point. [P2] When addicts relapse, they inevitably resort to deception to hide their addiction or obtain drugs. [P3] The longer addicts engage in deception, the more skilled they become at lying, deepening the untrustworthiness. [C] Therefore, you cannot trust a recovered drug addict, because the ever-present risk of relapse brings with it an ingrained pattern of deception.

Counter-arguments

Since only 40% to 60% of recovered drug addicts relapse, it doesn't make sense to treat all recovered drug addicts as untrustworthy. That would unjustly condemn about half of the population recovered drug addicts who are potentially trustworthy. Additionally, treating recovered drug addicts as if they are untrustworthy will likely encourage some of them to relapse due to their isolation and the negative emotions directed at them.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A relapse rate is a population figure over a period, not a standing probability attaching to a particular person, and it falls substantially with sustained abstinence. Applied the way the premise applies it, the same reasoning would make anyone with a chronic relapsing condition permanently untrustworthy. [Rejecting P2] 'Inevitably' is doing the work and is unsupported. Recovery programmes are built around disclosure, and many people report a lapse to family, sponsors or clinicians — the premise treats behaviour characteristic of active addiction as a fixed trait of the person. [Rejecting P3] The escalation story assumes the relapse and the deception in order to establish them. It also works against the argument's own aim: treating people in recovery as liars isolates them, and isolation is among the better-established risk factors for relapse.