I have been following with much appreciation the ongoing articles published by the Herald-Standard on the rampant and growing drug [heroin] plague afflicting our country. It is difficult to imagine how any reader would be unmoved by these articles. This is especially so regarding the most recent one published this past Monday. My interest in this problem of addiction is neither from a medical nor professional perspective. It is pastoral. Certainly I could make no claim to any scientific expertise or special knowledge of any sort on this topic. But after 40 years of pastoring churches I am much acquainted with the unspeakable degradation, devastation, and the dehumanizing results of drug addiction.
Please allow a personal note for the cause of my interest in this matter. Beginning at the age of 19 and after several weeks in a field hospital, I was hospitalized for nearly 13 months at Walter Reed hospital and eventually endured an amputation. During this time I became hooked on pain pills. The misery and struggle I experienced while trying to escape this addiction were overwhelming and without God’s mercy would most likely not have happened. Therein, I can only imagine the horror that those who are addicted to hard drugs must experience every day of their life.
When years later as I began my pastoral ministry, I again saw the deadly fruit of drug addiction. The very first funeral over which I officiated was for an 18 year old boy who had overdosed. Through the years, I have conducted the final services for numbers of others “murdered” by drugs. Moreover, I have seen firsthand the emotional, physical, and financial ruin that addiction always brings to not only the victims, but also, to their families. As stated above, I make no pretense of expertise nor ability as a possessor of special insight into drug addiction….but I do know of its legacy of slavery and death.
The “cost” of addiction cannot be fully calculated in dollars. Albeit, the overall financial burden to a single addicted individual, his/her family, and the taxpayer is often many tens of thousands of dollars. Still that expense pales in comparison with the accompanying human suffering, degradation, despair and other societal consequences. The magnitude of this problem is suggested by the fact that a consensus of experts estimate that one in 10 Americans is dependent on either drugs or alcohol or both. According to a report published in the New York Times, in 2015 over 33,000 Americans died as a result of opioid overdoses. We can only imagine the casualty count of the past year.
Even though addiction is more and more often being defined by medical personnel and policy makers as a “disease,” there are many who believe this is inaccurate. These feel that such designation is more befitting of a political policy statement rather than to a reasoned scientific or medical argument. Numbers of physicians and psychologists assert that an “addiction” does not meet the specified criteria or “measurable deviation from a physiologic or anatomical norm to be considered a disease.” A true disease always worsens if left untreated. Addiction is self-acquired and is not spread by personal contact or airborne contagion. Addiction is not contagious, hereditary, degenerative nor traumatically induced. Unlike with most disease, an addict’s treatment and cure amounts to doing little more than stopping a specific behavior.
This hesitancy to identify addiction as a true disease should in no way diminish the compelling need for compassion and treating those with addictions. Neither does this minimize the tragedy of addiction nor the absolute necessity for us to attempt to remedy the plight of those afflicted. That said, there seems to be little doubt that there has been a steady societal discounting of individual responsibility and an unwillingness to concede any personal blame for one’s bad choices. Until the mid-20th century, addictions to alcohol or drugs were considered character failures, moral weakness, foolish behavior, or a sure indication of spiritual debasement. The societal “treatment” of those times involved ridicule, shaming, and demands for more “will power” and, often times, incarceration.
It does seem apparent that much of the addiction tragedy is indeed a result of poor personal choices and comes in part from a willful and haughty disregard of every appeal and warning and the closing of the mind to the ample testimony and examples of the grave dangers inherent in any drug usage. But this is not always the case. The plight of those who, perhaps due to some protracted and unbearable physical or emotional pain, and who conversely assumed they were destitute of other help and so turned to drugs, ought to surely demand our compassion. And even though such harmful choices can neither be condoned nor justified, certainly they should elicit our sympathy.
Peer pressure may encourage those with but little self-esteem to be enticed with drugs or booze so that they may “fit in” with a group. We know that some who are fleeing some unresolved guilt feelings often seek refuge in self-medication. Also, international drug cartels and major gangs, and freelance dealers are all major contributors to this deadly plague. These pushers and predators with their insatiable greed for the vast sums to be made in blood money have all perfected their tactics, incitements, and skills for recruiting new customers and victims.
A final consideration. There is yet another aspect of this human tragedy that is ever ignored by the powers that be. Numbers of conservative biblical scholars have pointed out that among the four prevalent sins which will mark society in the final days before the return of Christ, one will be that of unparalleled drug usage [Cf. Revelation 9: 21]. The seven year period on earth identified by the Lord as the “Great Tribulation” will be a time of unparalleled trouble and evidently be a world dominated by Satan. There is no doubt in my mind that in these coming perilous days, and even now, that behind the scenes and taking advantage of our human frailty, and abetting the world’s insatiable desire for pleasure, and utilizing the inordinate greed for the enormous revenue which drug trafficking produces is none other than Satan himself. If this be so, then the ultimate deliverance from the slavery and death of drug addiction is to be found in Christ the Lord. “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” [John 8:32]