– my Kids and their Addictions –

“To be concerned is so much more constructive than to be worried.”

“Every time we make a real decision,
we find out who we really are,
because we make use of our own priorities and values.”

“The problem is not that there are problems.
The problem is expecting otherwise
and thinking that having problems is a problem.”

“Kindness is more important than wisdom,
and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Anxiety and depression are tolerable if we don’t get
anxious and depressed about being anxious and depressed.”

“Sometimes we must make a serious effort to be frivolous.”

“To understand children,
we must have some memory of how we felt as children.”

These quotes by Theodore Isaac Rubin psychiatrist and author

Jessie is smoking tik. That was a shock. I’m sticking with her and supporting her, trying not to lose contact with her. Reading up a lot. I decided to talk, not keep quiet. The first five people I told, four came up with immediate solutions and advice. The fifth listened, empathised, offered an ear and said, “Good Luck, It’s A Long Haul.” He’s a medical specialist doc living with a drug addict child for around forty years.

I remind myself: Jess is addicted to tik AND very addicted to her boyfriend – completely under his sway; Jess takes herself to him – he does not drag her there – although she sometimes says he keeps her there, sometimes when she SAYS she wants to come home; sometimes, though, she admits she decided not to come home despite telling me she was coming; Nothing is clear, though. The truth is a serious casualty of the addiction – there is a lot of lying, a lot of blaming, a lot of confusion and uncertainty;

Both of them, and others who live with them, suffer from paranoia and hallucinations visual and aural, so when they see and hear things it’s not at all clear if they saw it in real life or in hallucination – most of what each of them say they’ve heard is aimed ‘against them,’ so paranoia would explain that; and again, the lying . . . ; Jess is aware that nasty things said against her are possibly real, possibly imagined.

Then I also remind myself that Jess has a wonderful time with him and his family when all is well; Mom, Aunt, Uncle, brothers, a sister. They sing and dance and laugh and get drunk and get high and have a wonderful time and she loves them and is loved by them; Especially the ladies there – Sihle’s sister, Mother and Aunt – treat her very well; So the lows are horrible, but the highs beat the boredom she feels at home.

And I remind myself of that socially acceptable substance right on top of this list. The acceptable one. The one I grew up with.

And I remind myself of the criminal disgrace of the failed, yet ongoing “War on Drugs.” And of how the only places who have reduced drug use and drug crimes are countries that have ended the lie of a “war on drugs” and significantly decriminalised drug use, instead helping drug users with their lives. Who see drug use as a disease, to be treated by healthcare workers, not as a ‘bad choice’ to be stamped out by policemen who are not trained in anything other than arrests and throwing users in jail. They are not equipped to do the very difficult task of talking to users who are high. They’re incentivised to make arrests, so they ‘raid’ and arrest. In the process, all thoughts of a police service go out the window. Instead of assisting their citizens, as they swore to do when they qualified as police officers, the system sets them against them.

An example of unintended consequences and misguided laws: Codeine is freely available in South Africa, you can buy it almost anywhere. We have a fairly low annual prevalence rate of opiate use at 0.3%. In the United States where all opiates are strictly regulated, the prevalence rate is almost double, at 0.57%.

Tolerate drug use!? Legalise all drugs!? What MANIACS would do that!? Well, be a lawmaker. Be honest with yourself and decide which of the drugs you would make illegal if you were making the decisions. Of course, you’re an honest person and you want what’s best for your people, right? To make it easy, let’s say you can only make ONE drug illegal. Which one on the HARMS CAUSED BY DRUGS list below would you choose? Start at the top and count down and choose the one you would ban (even though banning never works). You’d ban the top one, right? The one that causes most harm?

~~~oo0oo~~~

“God save us from the people
who want to do what’s best for us.”

“There’s a certain class of people who will do you in and
then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.”

~~~oo0oo~~~

As for addicts – they have their own challenges:

“You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created.
They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.”

“Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between
being cautious and being dead.”

“Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything
that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.”

These quotes by private investigator Kinsey Millhone, female protagonist in author Sue Grafton‘s novels.

~~~oo0oo~~~

We’ll get there, guys.

~~~oo0oo~~~

~~~oo0oo~~~

I strive for kindness AND wisdom, so on 6 July I passed my course on Addiction and Recovery, so now I’m an expert! Can a complete cure be far off!? Stanford University’s Psychiatric Dept had a six week online course and I just got my results. Learnt a lot and very gratified that expert opinion and the evidence points AWAY from the destructive ‘War On Drugs’ and harsh law enforcement.

TREATING the disease of addiction is the way forward, working with the addicts – each one an individual.

~~~oo0oo~~~