I had a phone conversation with a friend recently. I hadn’t talked to him

since my youngest daughter was born. He came to visit about 8 months

ago and that was the last I’d seen of him. He told me that he was trying to

get legal custody of his niece because his sister is on drugs and isn’t a fit

mother. His niece is 10 yrs. old and lives with his parents right now. They

are getting older and I guess they would rather not have to raise a little

girl right now. He said if his sister gives up custody willingly, he’ll stand

a better chance of becoming her legal guardian. His sister probably sees

her daughter as a burden. He too has struggled with drugs in the past and

perhaps fears the worst for his sister. This isn’t the first I’ve heard of

such things. I used to know a girl who lost custody of her son because of

drugs and realistically, she should have lost her daughter too. It really

would have been better for her daughter. It’s sad when your children are

better off raised by strangers or family members because of what you’ve

become.  I have known many people with drug problems that I no longer

associate with. You can never bring a drug addict up, they will only bring

you down with them. In my experience, (your experience might differ)

those I’ve known with drug addictions have never fully recovered. By

that I mean, they will go to rehab and relapse shortly after and then go to

rehab again.  People have to really want to choose life over death

or rehab will not work.  I’ve had 2 friends die of drug overdoses

very young. One friend was shooting oxycontin. My other friend

mixed too many pills with too much alcohol, he was dumped in

someone’s front yard in the rain. The only people I think I’ve ever

been capable of hating are drug addicts that used to be friends. Of

course I know I should hate their weakness and not them, but when

you get on drugs like prescription pills, crack, meth, or worse, the

person you were dies and is replaced with a monster. I hate that monster.

My wife’s brother is a drug addict and an alcoholic. We no longer

acknowledge his existence. He is one of the worst I’ve ever seen

as far as the lengths he’ll go to and the people he’ll hurt to feed his

addiction. I worked with a guy who once admitted to getting a

$10,000 inheritance from his grandmother that he spent in less

than a month smoking crack.

I really can’t help those that I know with

drug problems. I’ve tried and failed. I have to let them live their lives

without me. With the exception of hallucinogenic drugs ( i.e. pot,

mushrooms, acid) when I was much younger, I don’t really have that

long of a drug history. I guess I knew it wasn’t going to be worth it

early on. My mom’s 2nd husband was an alcoholic and he had alcoholic

friends. I lived with them for about 2 years. I saw 1st hand how bad it

could get. My mom divorced him because she said she “got tired

of staring death in the face everyday.” I have often flirted with

alcoholism I suppose, to most people’s standards, but I have never lied,

cheated, stolen, taken food out of my family’s mouths to buy a six pack .

I do have every intention of keeping it under control, but we all start out

with good intentions, don’t we?

I have come to realize that we all need vices. We all need something,

anything to take away the horror of living. Life is hard and, at times,

downright brutal. Those I have known with addiction problems

didn’t start out as monsters. They needed that something, that anything

that would alleviate the pain of life momentarily and the moments

turned into days and the days began to blur. It could happen to any of us.

I sometimes worry about it happening to me. I believe I have an

addictive personality and I am a creature of habit, even when it doesn’t

make sense.

I miss the people I used to know who lost their lives and the people I no

longer talk to because they are dead in another way. I wish they

could have realized, just as I need to, that there really  are worse

things than being sober.