I hate to be such a blogging downer today, it is just that the area I live in has such a problem with addiction, meth and heroin mostly. I bear witness to the damage, to the harm being done every single day. Neglected and abandoned kids whose parents are using, young people now living out on the street chasing the dragon themselves. Homeless tourism where you become a haven for professional users, so they all flock here, too.
I’m also nearly powerless to do anything about it. I pray a lot. I try to love on people when I see them, because I have learned that you have to say it right now. Tomorrow they may be gone.
Of course if you’ve ever tried to love on an addict, you’ll understand they aren’t really good at receiving it. Not only are they emotionally anesthetized, they need to continue to feel unloved and rejected on some level in order to continue to justify their self harm.
We enable this rubbish, we fuel the problem with our bleeding hearts, all talking about how abused people are, how discriminated against, how nobody cares about them, how mean the world is. Addicts just eat those lies right up. When your circumstances are allegedly everybody else’s fault, you can use substances with impunity. Or you think you can anyway. Impunity actually means “freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.”
Death is a rather “injurious consequence.” Addiction kills. It steals lives, young lives so full of hope and potential.
A big part of my frustration comes from those bleeding hearts who care so, so much……..about their own virtue signaling. They like to mask the truth in social justice words like “homelessness” and “mentally ill,” as if addicts are simply marginalized victims, in their situation through no fault of their own.
It’s actually a whole lot easier to say, we have a “housing crisis” than to say we have a meth and heroin epidemic. We have broken families, abused children, and generational curses. We have a drug culture promoting heavy alcohol use (and now marijuana) as healthy and beneficial, good for the economy even. We have political policies that make everything worse. We have a culture that rejects faith, that distrusts the church, that perceives Christianity as oppressive, mean-spirited, full hypocrisy. We have indoctrination that has now separated a few generations from the things in the world that work together to create emotional and spiritual stability. Resilience.
It’s tough getting older here in the 9th circuit of hell because now I can remember things like a little boy once playing in my sprinkler one summer, all sun-kissed and happy. Or a baby girl picking berries, full of expectation, just about ready to embrace life on her own.
They didn’t make it. Neither of those kids survived the heroin and meth epidemic. I had to standby helpless and watch them die. It hurts, it’s painful. It is such a waste of so much life, so much potential. It’s just heartbreaking.
I sometimes say, trying to love an addict is like going through surgery without anesthesia. Addicts tend to forget and to not feel their own pain. The rest of us get to live and experience your story fully sober, and to feel what you cannot.
I get frustrated watching the community put up walls, watching local government so self-righteous about what they think they know, they don’t even listen. I get frustrated with the denial, the invisibility of this problem, the way the truth is always hidden behind vague innuendos and buzzwords, words about “homelessness” and the “mentally ill,” and “marginalized people.”
We aren’t a community that doesn’t care, we are a community that doesn’t know how to tough love people to good health, how to say no, a community that doesn’t seem to understand that our adoration of individualism is actually not a loving thing at all.
But mostly, I just get tired of watching addicts die.
authorstephanieparkermckean said:
Amen. I am so with you on that. God bless you.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thanks. 🙂
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The V Pub said:
A brilliant rant, IB. We’ve victimized so much, and with that so much accountability of the individual has been lost. It’s ok to use tough love. I’m sure that the survivors agree, too.
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insanitybytes22 said:
I hear you, Rob. Somebody once told me “pity robs people of their power, while empathy empowers them.” This culture of perpetual victimization is actually pity. I helps to keep so many people stuck in a trap.
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soakedduck said:
I too am saddened when our addicted neighbors die. But I am flat angry when I listen to the news coming out of Seattle about another tax to solve “homelessness.” I deal with a lot of “homeless” people. Not once have I ever dealt with one who was “just jobless.” I am tempted to say all of them have or had a drug problem. Mental health can be tossed in there too, but whether the M.H. problem came before or after the drugs I cannot say. I thing I do know is that if the wheels fell off my life’s cart I would not be homeless. I bet I could find a dozen friends and family who could take me in. Why would they do that? Because they love me. Maybe, just maybe the problem is a society that has trouble giving and receiving love. Some parents pour love out on the addict children, only for the children to abuse their love. So I am suggesting that the reason there are “homeless” people is because there is a shortage of the knowledge of God’s unconditional love flowing through the hearts and hands of all people. BTW loved your post!
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insanitybytes22 said:
Uhg, the head tax, a tax on our very heads! This stuff has just gotten crazy.
Thank you for your kind words and for understanding. It’s reassuring knowing I am not the only one seeing some of these things as they really are.
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craftysurf said:
I wouldn’t be too hasty to assume the circumstances. Many times in the Bible, Jesus healed people with “demons,” but he couldn’t necessarily turn a hardened heart at the core of a person. The demons aren’t little goblins, they’re attacks on our Spirit, which can certainly lead to the hardening of our heart. An attack on the Spirit can be as bad as a heart attack since our mind and body are painfully attached as one for now.
But once the attack (or demon) on the Spirit has been cured by faith in Christ, the heart is no longer hardened and is open to new teachings.
Just sayin’ 🤷♀️🤙
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insanitybytes22 said:
Amen, Crafty. I believe that, I’ve seen it. There is hope for people. I often say, “Lord, we’re going to need a whole lot more pigs. We got a legion of demons and we’re going to need a whole bunch more pigs.” I think He heard me too, because I soon found pigs everywhere. The cops even showed up in the middle of the night trying to give me a pig, one they were quite certain was mine. 🙂
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craftysurf said:
That’s quite ironic and funny
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Doug (FPS/DougLite.com) said:
I can absolutely understand your expression here, IB. I’ve not walked the proverbial mile in your shoes to fully comprehend how your own life experiences have made you feel this compassion toward addicted folks.
But I respond only to your last sentence when I suggest… I get tired of watching any fellow human beings die unnatural deaths.
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Salvageable said:
The problem is indeed heartbreaking. I have seen people at different stages of that terrible journey as well; the downtown where I work has a homeless population, and I have no way of determining what percentages are due to mental illnesses, substance abuse, sheer stubbornness, or factors beyond their control. I’ve known families of users who wanted to help and couldn’t. We do what we can, and we leave the rest in God’s hands. J.
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dpatrickcollins said:
Thank you and prayers in your direction and your family’s direction 🙂
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Tricia said:
It’s a horrible epidemic and I’m sorry it’s hitting you so hard today. Our political leaders have absolutely failed us in this area with stupid programs like Housing First which give people free housing with no rules governing behavior and an assumption, like you said, that people just all of a sudden wake up addicts.
There are some deep psychosis involved requiring multiple pronged solutions. The government however just uses situations like this to exploit money for more programs, more bureaucracy, higher taxes creating difficulty in actually creating jobs and affordable housing. It disgusts me to no end.
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SLIMJIM said:
Man this is a very passionate post; sad, sobering and moving.
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gmgoetz said:
I’m with you totally IB. I clicked “like” on your post, under duress, because I hate the thought and knowledge of so many getting more addicted to harder drugs, and hearing of the death of so many addicts, yet I always appreciate how you take on hard topics and challenges.
There are a number from the Drop In where I previously volunteered who are no longer with us. In our area recently, there are getting to be a number of drug deaths in the suburbs, as many at least as on the streets in the core. At this point of this year, there is a much greater number of drug related deaths than at this time last year, sad to say..
And I can only see things getting worse.
Sometime this summer, our government is legalizing marijuana. (A definite tax grab, as they have put us so far in debt). Most, if not all addicts whom I have spoken with, and attempted to help over the years, told me they started with marijuana for pleasure, and it escalated, so we know what to expect.
Another “genius” move of our government, (next election in 17 months), is to place the safe needle project in prisons, despite the prison guards objections. There goes any rehab hopes for those who are addicted.
Back to our region, there are also safe injection sites opening up in various communities, to protect the users. What about the non-users, and the safety of the community.
I guess that is it for now IB. Except I think we now have dealers on our street, 3 houses away. We are praying, and debating on informing police, but don’t know what that will do, because the officers have so many restrictions on them by the courts.
That is it for sure. Thanks for the open door for a rant also. 😀
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thanks for ranting with me, George. I’m sorry to hear the chaos may be encroaching on your neighborhood.
Don’t follow this as advice because it was quite crazy, but perhaps it will make you laugh. I had some success solving the problem by standing on a bucket on my front porch and preaching like the prophets of old at 3 AM every morning. At the time it honestly never occurred to me how annoying evangelism could actually be. I was handing out the book of John to people walking by and yelling, “God loves you.” I don’t think I rescued any souls, but always having to dodge a crazy woman seemed to put a damper on commerce.
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gmgoetz said:
Thanks for the smile IB. I haven’t heard Holy Spirit tell me to do that yet. But, that idea of handing out tracts or N.T. may trigger something here.
Not at 3a.m. though. 😀
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