Drugs...
The thing I never really understood about addictive chemical pain medicators (Oxycodone, Fentanyl, Hydromorphone, etc.) is that they start by relieving the pressing pain of the moment – broken bones – but it never ends there. As the weeks and months pass while you depend on them, the more they start to offer pain relief for more than what they were prescribed.
All of a sudden, other pain doesn’t hurt anymore. Emotional pain. Spiritual pain. Historical pain. Pain you didn’t even know you remembered. It’s gone.
But then the prescriptions run out, and the broken bones may have healed, but every memory, every hurt, every abuse, every fracture of brokenness in your soul is all the more present and more menacing than they have ever been before.
Secret addictions to these drugs destroy lives. The consequences of their destruction cannot be understated. From the homeless men I’ve walked alongside in Toronto, whose lives were snuffed out by the demonic possession of whatever street version of Fetanyl was on the streets that week, to lawyers and doctors and clergy who slowly watched everything unravel because they couldn’t maintain a growing need to medicate.
Addiction is not about crime or drugs. It’s about why we turn to them.
It’s time to change the programme.