So You Think It’s Cool to Do Drugs?

If they don’t die immediately, their life can be a miserable existence, existing each day, because we can’t refer to the life of an addicted person as living, but existing each day searching for their next score.

The euphoria is short-lived and the depression is immediate. Some drug addicted people will purposely overdose because they can’t tolerate the person they have become. They become disgusted with themselves for not being able to slake the unquenchable thirst they have for the drug or drugs.

Addiction is a brain disease

This is not fair to the addicted person because they have a disease. Yes, drug addiction is a brain disease. One look at a CAT scan of a so-called normal person and a drug addicted person will show you the glaring differences.

There is much research being done by NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) and other organizations, trying to find ways to reprogram the brain back to a more normal state. In the mean time approximately 250,000 Americans are dying each year from this disease.

More research needs to be done in this regard. We need to help the addicted person. Jail is not the answer. Rehabs just plain don’t work. We must also spend more of our dollars on helping the mentally ill because quite often drug abuse and mental illness go hand in hand.

The drug addicted person has no more control over their disease than the cancer patient or diabetic does. Yet the person suffering from the disease of drug addiction is condemned and looked at askance. They didn’t start out to be addicted to drugs. They set out to feel better, to quash their emotional pain. Yes, some kids start doing drugs just for the fun of it. But a lot of them begin down this deadly path out of a desire to self-medicate.

Drugs will consume their entire existence. The person will no longer have control. The drugs will be in total control. The very drug that first made them feel better has now stripped them of any good feelings and they don’t know how to extricate themselves from the mess they got themselves into. Drug addicted people need our compassion.

It is easy to sit back and say well they brought it on themselves or if they had been raised better this wouldn’t happen. Most addicted people begin experimenting with drugs when they’re children. Children make mistakes! Unfortunately this mistake can follow them throughout their lives…and death.

The book I Am Your Disease (The Many Faces of Addiction) available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble details the lives of 40 people who have lost a child to drugs. The stories are brutally honest and heartbreaking. When a person does drugs, they are not the only ones affected. Their entire family and circle of friends are dragged into the quagmire and everyone suffers.

Be Smart – Don’t Start!