I refuse to use the label addict to be applied to me. I have suffered from severe addictions in my life with periods of uncontrolled use but I am not an addict who has zero self control over substances. I control my use. I view the 'no control' explanation as a cop out. It absolves people of the responsibility and reality that they made the choices to use drugs and in almost all situations nobody forced them to consume the substances. In my experience just as I made the choices to use, I also made the choice to quit. That proves it is a choice. So the addict label doesn't sit well with me because I believe in owning the fact that it was your actions that resulted in those consequences and I view it as pretty childish to pretend otherwise.
Because of this, I'm pretty open about my use, especially as I'm currently still using. I am very honest about my use in general though and if anyone but my parents asks if I'm high they'll get the truthful answer. Hell, I'll tell them exactly when I used and how much too. I'll tell them anything they want to know. I'm painfully honest about this and it's the actual reason why my many in real life friends totally tolerate having a mate who regularly injects meth on a routine basis in their life. Doesn't much bother them.
In the past, I was always doing a lot of outpatient rehab, particularly in 2017-2019. 3 days a week 2.5 hours a day. So naturally, there needed to be an explanation for my time being occupied constantly. I elected to tell people. I'd break the ice by revealing I had a drug problem, then based on that response I'd ease my way into disclosing the IV meth and heroin use. One partner actually fucked me over and spilled the information to her best mate, and at my lacrosse party night I was drinking a beer and the friend asked 'should you be drinking that?' and I was like 'hang on, why are you asking me that question' so the next day I confronted my then partner and asked why her friend would question me like that and she admitted she told them because she 'couldnt handle the information herself'. She had literally requested I open up more to her or she would break it off not one week before I told her. So I asked her if she had told the friend any other personal and sensitive information about myself. She reluctantly admitted she also disclosed me being trans. I furiously told her that I was immensely pissed off and didn't want to speak to her for a week because she had literally made my first impression to her best friend as being a tranny meth and heroin junky. Fucking wonderful.
Another time I didn't actually disclose it very early, but realised it would become necessary due to being on maintenance therapy every day and needing to collect that from the chemist each morning. So eventually she would ask for some explanation as to why I always needed to go there. Also, she told me at one stage that her dad died of a heroin overdose so I felt an obligation to allow her to break it off if they was an issue.
To be frank, if I was abstinent and very comfortably so I wouldn't tell a partner about my previous substance use. Because I don't use the addict label I don't view addiction as something which permanently follows me around. After 5ish years of abstinence I'd be done and recovered, I'd still need to be vigilant but lord I would not still be obsessing over this and making it my main personality trait. They don't need to know I had a prior substance use disorder, maybe I just find the taste of alcohol unpleasant, maybe I had alcoholic parents and don't drink. Even if they don't like 'addicts' they wouldn't be dating one because the addiction wouldn't exist. It was a temporary thing.