Little Turtle any addiction to valium is not on you ,and for the record it sounds more like it was a dependence , because a true addict couldnt have a bottle in the closet without taking it. I was married to a woman with an addiction ,I put a solid steel door with three keyed deadbolt locks on to a closet ,so she went through a wall to get to the drugs,a true addict cant be in the proximty of the substance without getting to it and taking it until theres none left.

For many, many years mental illness of any kind was stigmatising, and now there is a shortage of qualified people to help people , the focus slowly has shifted on to acceptance of our collective mental health ,but the mental health system has been a favorite budget to slash among politicians , when we closed the failing expensive "asylum" state hospital systems in favor of something cheaper and more effective community based care it was fully funded for a few years ,and then they started cutting the funding to waste money on things that have no real benefit to society , leaving today's community mental health support system needing life support , there are places in this country that people need to travel 4 or 5 hours to get to a P doc or T .

So you may not have done all the work you "could" have but few people do or later in life issues pop up and we think i should have resolved this back whenever , you are human ,if every human lived up to there "potential" we would have conquered things that still plague our potential , the "shoulda woulda coulda" thinking is self defeating ,when see someone and are in therapy we work on the issues that are holding us back at that time ,the stuff we can address ,since none of has a crystal ball to ask "what do i do now to affect later" its not in the cards we are dealt to see or plan for the future, look at saving for retirement everyone is gonna do it and need it at some point yet most people don't actually start to do it until there 40's?

Humans have lots of potential and if we could get everyone to there full potential safely, we would run out of things to do on this planet and would be out in the stars exploring . But factor in genetics , child abuse, rape, incest, murder and the ever growing nastiness list of defeating ourselves its no wonder why we have issues to work on , dont hold yourself to a higher standard than you would have one of your patients.