Heroin

I have always been blessed, beyond my capacity to understand, that I have been spared the cloud of addiction. When you are an addict, you are controlled by it and that control ruins your entire life. When you are sober, you always have the cloud because relapse can come at any time. It's easy to be sober, what's hard is staying sober.

Partly as a pharmacist and partly as somebody who is fascinated by addictions, the most important thing that I have learned is that there is no self medicating like crack, meth, heroin, alcohol or the like (which do include prescription drugs, benzos, opiates, etc). It's fast and quick and incredibly effective, far more than an SSRI like Prozac.

When I see or hear of an addict, that I ask myself is this: What pain were you treating? What could you not accept about yourself that you needed the drugs to accept yourself more? What's your story, you poor soul?

For those people who simply look at the addict and leave no room in your heart, mind and soul for the story, the world could do without you. I hope less and less of you exist. Judge not lest ye be judged. This is not to say that addicts are easily to love or understand, but a just superficial look only? No...not acceptable to me.

Even though I have no personal experience with withdrawals, sensitivities or cravings, what I can understand is the total lack of control drug addicts feel in their lives. I mean, they feel hopeless and worthless because they cannot control themselves. In that capacity to relate, I give them my compassion and hope.

Attached is the URL to a website which describes a very tragic story of the suicide of a heroin addict...

What especially breaks my heart is that a psalm, which brings me so much comfort, was twisted. How truly devastating that the soul and heart and mind were so shattered, so demonized, that there was no room for solace in God. Even the most faithful people, the strongest of believers, the most passionate of the saints, had moments of confusion, distance from God in the midst of their suffering, but this girl had it on a whole new level.

I pray in my heart that nobody would ever feel that distant from God.


http://www.1timothy4-13.com/files/chr_vik/king.html

THE following account appeared some time ago in Ann Landers column. It is a heartbreaker, entitled, "King Heroin Is My Shepherd, I Shall Always Want." These tragic words were part of a twisted rewording of the beloved 23rd Psalm, found in a car with the body of a 23-year old young woman, near Reidsville, N.C. Her death was ruled a suicide from a hookup with the car's exhaust pipe. The note read:

"King Heroin is my shepherd, I shall always want. He maketh me to lie down in the gutters."

"He leadeth me beside the troubled waters. He destroyeth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness."

"Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty and will fear no evil for thou, Heroin, art with me."

"Thy needle and thy capsule comfort me."

"Thou strippest the table of groceries in the presence of my family."

"Thou robbest my head of reason. My cup of sorrow runneth over."

"Surely heroin addiction shall stalk me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the damned forever."

Also found in the car with the dead woman was this message:

"Jail didn't cure me. Nor did hospitalization help me for long. The doctor told my family it would have been better, and indeed kinder, if the person who got me hooked on dope had taken a gun and blown my brains out. And I wish to God he had."