Almost Everyone Knows Someone Who’s Addicted
I’ve said this repeatedly since the drug crisis started. While in my addiction, drug use wasn’t as widespread as it is now. It was still one of those “not talked about” things that my family wanted to sweep under the carpet and prevent from being discovered as the embarrassment of having an addict in the family would be too much to bear. These days, it’s a whole different scene. Addiction is so prevalent in nearly every community across America, it’s no longer shocking for a family to be struggling with a loved one who’s addicted to drugs. As the crisis grew, addiction became almost commonplace where it went from an embarrassing situation that must be hidden to families all in support of each other in their daily struggles.
After a while, with addiction finally being talked about, no longer obscured from view, I came to realize that these days, almost everyone out there knows someone who’s an addict, a lot of whom are opioid addicts. A recent poll conducted by WBUR in Massachusetts showed 57 percent of adults in the state know someone who’s struggled with opioid abuse over the last year and they consider the issue a “crisis.”
The survey also showed that a lot of people in the state disagree with involuntarily committing people to treatment programs to handle their issues. The law is called “Section 35” and one of the last-ditch efforts some families resort to in an attempt to save the lives of their loved ones. Unfortunately, the controversy centers around whether or not you can enforce treatment on someone when they don’t want it themselves. But either way, it’s a sign of the times where we have laws in certain states than can adjudicate putting a drug addict into locked-down treatment against their will. My believe is that an addict can’t make logical decisions for themselves, so enforcing treatment is sometimes necessary to essentially make the decision for them.
Either way, we’ve societally progressed to a point where most people out there know someone struggling with substance abuse issues. Addiction is no longer a hidden family secret but rather, the opposite. Families have had to come together to help support each other through one of the hardest things any family will go through. Families often feel like they are the only people out there going through the horrors of dealing with an addict. Luckily, support groups have sprung up all over the country and even online to give help to some of the innocent victims of our nation’s drug crisis. Most of us addicts would have been long dead had it not been for the unrelenting support of our families who spent many sleepless nights worrying about our safety and pushed us into treatment to save us from ourselves. Because Lord knows, our own decision-making got us to the point where we were completely broken and shattered.
Sources Used:
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/05/16/wbur-poll-section-35-opioid-crisis
