The Tragedy of Addiction – More Tears to Shed

For a supremely happy person, I have been crying a lot lately. That’s because I have a very tough assignment. I am writing an article about the heroin epidemic.

Last week, I spoke to a recovering addict who broke my heart when she described the pain, suffering and stigma she has endured.

“I come from a nice family,” she told me. “There aren’t any addicts or alcoholics in my family. I never in my wildest dreams imagined I could ever be an addict.” But after a traumatic, near-death accident involving her young daughter plunged her into depression and despair, a doctor prescribed an anti-anxiety drug, which led to painkillers, which eventually led to heroin.

I also had coffee with a young man who was just having a “bad day,” he said, when he tried heroin for the first time. He didn’t think it was a big deal. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

“It grabs you that fast,” he said, recalling that after taking it just a few times, he was addicted.

“It has nothing to do with willpower,” he said.

No one ever wants to be a junkie.

Today, I met a mother whose 24-year old son died of a heroin overdose. Her eyes filled with tears as she shared her heartrending story. She is in the process of adopting her grandson, who is too young to know or understand the tragedy of his father’s life.

Her story, and every story, ripped apart my heart, made me cry, and left me wondering why we are still fighting this battle against drugs.

When I was a girl, I remember when Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs” to combat the hippy drug culture and escalating addiction problems of Vietnam Veterans returning from the war in Southeast Asia. As a young adult, I remember meteoric rise of the Colombian drug cartels and the crack epidemic of the Eighties.

At a press conference in Pittsburgh today, the DEA, US Attorney, local politicians, a doctor, and representative of the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America, outlined a new strategy to break the cycle of drug trafficking, violence and abuse. According to these experts, there are 23 million active or recovering addicts in the United States today. Multiply that by families and friends whose lives have been affected, impacted or devastated, and it’s clear that this epidemic is of historic and tragic proportions.

All of this felt very distant and remote from my daily existence until I sat down and talked to recovering addicts and hugged an addict’s mom. When I did that, there was no judgment, politics, or discrimination, only compassion and empathy.

I still have to write that article and I know I have more tears to shed.