There are many addictions other than tobacco and drugs. Addiction to cell phones and social media has been growing at an alarming rate with many traffic accidents, some resulting in death, attributed to this recent phenomena. Food addiction has been growing, also, and we are treating young children for related diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. We have addiction to gambling, which is growing with the recent growth in casinos. Our sheriff told me a while ago that the robberies at the local Hotspots or video poker rooms were being done by drug addicts and gamblers who had lost their paychecks at the Hotspot and robbed the next one to have money for groceries when they got home.
Addictions are related to obsessive compulsive disorder and many look the same. A person’s inability to control their behavior and actions due to a chemical or mental reaction causes us to repeat the same thing over and over. A woman nearly walked into the side of my car while texting on her cell phone and not paying attention to where she was walking. She lived, but many addictions can lead to disaster. Smoking will eventually get you after years of tobacco use, but an overdose will not bother you while alcohol will get you somewhat quicker if not intercepted. An overdose will kill you, but usually you would pass out before you reached the lethal limit. Gambling will not kill you, but will take everything you own and leave you broke or to a life of crime to pay your debts.
Heroin will cause you to become addicted with the first dose, and an overdose will kill you as we see each day now. Interdiction with Narcan will save you, but the cost is high and it does not stop or alter the addiction. There have been cases where the same person has been revived several times in the same day with Narcan. This works when there is someone near to get help. Most of these saved addicts would be dead without the help of someone else and a health care person or a policeman. The addiction will last for the rest of the addict’s life even with rehab and a return to a sober life. As with alcohol, heroin addiction does not go away and we see people returning to the drug after years of sober living.
The main action taken for addiction has been to treat it after a person is addicted. There are nicotine patches, gum and drugs for the smoker, AA for the alcoholic, methadone for the heroin addict but very few rehab centers. Most of these are private and very costly, making them unavailable to most. We are seeing some attention being paid to this problem by churches and local governments. The state mental hospitals were dismantled years ago with no replacements built, so help from this area is extremely limited. A heroin addict’s chances to get “clean” is very small, and without Narcan their life will likely be very short. The most needed thing is prevention, and there is very little being done in this area. The police are arresting drug pushers every day, but there is always someone to take their place. Sentencing guidelines have been reduced and the Obama Administration turned many of the dealers out of jail because he said their sentences were too long as they were not violent criminals. I disagree with his logic because the person that sold or gave my friend’s daughter her lethal dose was as much a killer as if they had used a gun. The Congress will not take the action to close the boarders where most of the drugs come in and refuses to do something for the citizens of this country that could really help many of them.
We will never stop this problem, as well as many other problems in this country, until we stop rationalizing everything that is unpleasant. Calling drug addiction a disease and not a mental failure or blaming the gun in a shooting are examples. We tried to stop auto fatalities by blaming the car manufacturers and even have been successful in suing them for accidents that were truly the fault of the driver. It has brought us much safer cars, but we are still driving while texting or drunk and driving off the road or head on into another car. Responsibility has been rationalized as belonging to something other than the perpetrator. The drug addict may have a disease but they had something else wrong or they would not have taken the first hit. We have to attack that cause and, through education and interdiction at the border, stop the flow of drugs.
Long prison terms and putting a few addicts in jail might help. Feeling sorry for someone who refused to take responsibility for themself and tried drugs with no thought of what would happen to them, other than getting a disease that the public would have to take care of, has to stop. We have to call the mental deficiencies that cause this what it is and start to require our children and others to be responsible for themselves. Monitoring and limiting their use of social media, computer internet and television should be the job of every parent. Responsibility has to be taught, and blaming something or someone else for a failure has to stop. We must refuse to accept excuses. How about flunking them when they cannot read in the third grade. That may be a start.
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