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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

I hate drugs.

I hate drugs. Hate them. About a week ago, early morning, walking down a city street with several other people, I encountered a woman moving unsteadily, as if reaching out for a car door. Approaching her, I couldn't guess her age because her bruised eyes and all the swelling disguised her features. Her body language seemed to simultaneously warn and summon. Inside each of all of us on that sunny street as we watched, I'm sure we made the same quick assessment: crackhead, druggie, something like that. Despite these whispered inner thoughts, our actions spoke quite loudly: we all walked away.   

I hate drugs. What they do to users makes me feel angry and selfish and small and powerless. But mostly afraid. I get it though. I understand dopamine. I know addiction is deeply complicated. I also know it's complete bullshit when people say marijuana is harmless. Ditto the bullshit that it's not a gateway drug. Gateway. It implies an access, something invitational, a moving forward, to advance. Well, that gateway led my cousin to a variety of other drugs, alcohol addiction, a major car accident that left him a quadriplegic and eventually to his early death. And countless others. We all know someone.

Now Cory Monteith. I feel sad for him and for his family, for all my fellow Canadians who claimed him and projected onto him our ideals. Despite it all, he truly was a talent. But there's something more I want to know, something at the core of this entire conversation:

Who was his drug dealer? Where is the piece of shit coward who supplied him? 

To the drug dealers out there,  

I can feel for you. I know you have faced difficulties. I know there’s an empty hole in you, the very same hole there is in all of us, but you fill it with money and drugs and all the sad outcomes associated with drugs while the rest of us fill it with family and friends and careers and God and food and carpentry and music and maybe even a little too much Facebook. But that doesn't excuse you.

Still though, I can feel for you. I think most people understand that there is a troubled young person at the core of you, a child so buried in shame and recrimination now that you may not even recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. Maybe you weren't loved enough. Maybe you weren't smiled at, touched, hugged. Maybe something horrible happened to you. It’s sad. But that’s no excuse either.

Or maybe you’re just trying to survive. Maybe you’re in debt so deep you just can’t get out. But your money obsessed manipulation drives your behavior like a bus that picks up passengers, drops them off in the middle of nowhere and then drives over them while their families watch them suffer, even die, unable save them. I really don’t know. Again, no excuse.    

Plus I imagine you've been lying to yourself for so long now you cannot see the truth anymore. And thus you probably think you don’t need help. That’s because you’re delusional. I know it’s difficult for you to think clearly. Your drug-addled mind has is garbled. It’s a fact. Google it. Still, no excuse.

Think of the person you love most in your life. Is it your Mom? Your Dad? Your Grandma? Your Girlfriend? Your little sister? Maybe it’s even the person you just supplied drugs too. Now think about what’s more important to you: that person you love with all your heart or the drugs? I know you probably don’t want to face the truth but it’s the drugs. It is. That’s sad. Here’s a news flash though: that person you love knows that too. They know that you would choose the drugs over them in a second. If they really meant something to you then you wouldn't do what you do.

That’s why I feel for you. You’re lost. And only you can save yourself. If there is any shred of decency still within you then change your life. Now. Or live in a box with bars. Or die. The statistics prove it. And in the meantime, you should know that everyone is watching you. Mothers and fathers are watching. Sister and brothers. Even children are watching. They watch and they listen and they provide information and sometimes their efforts happen soon enough, before it’s too late. And I thank them and I thank them and I thank them. And sometimes they don’t. But none of this matters to you I guess, unless it interferes with moving your stock. Someday though, somehow, you will get what you deserve. And then there really will be no more excuses.

3 comments:

CLR said...

Wow. Just wow. So much truth in this. Bravo for saying what needs to be said.

Molly said...

Well said. I'm just terrified by addiction - to anything - I think addiction is the most dangerous threat to us all. And the ultimate marketing tool for dealers. For shame.

Vinny C said...

Like you, I know someone who lost her life to addiction. I didn't know her very long, but we would have been close. Family, even, since she was very closely related to my wife. Now, that'll never happen.

I somewhat share your sympathy for drug dealers who are simply lost souls, who come from an environment that makes that lifestyle a viable option. The ones I can't abide, though, are the death dealers who simply don't care about human life and see what they do as nothing more than "business". True, their thinking is warped too, but the way those types take a sort of twisted pride in their success at destroying lives irks me to the core.

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