The Wrong Approach to Heroin Addiction

We are taking the wrong approach on the heroin solution. As our Government begins to become aware of the heroin epidemic that has swept America our heroin solution is all wrong. This disease continues to kill precious lives and imprison innocent humans and we still haven’t gotten the solution OR the problem right. Right now our government addresses addiction as the problem and sobriety as the solution. As with any disease you’ll come across, the side effects are more daunting and damaging than the original cause. The cause is the drugs but the problem isn’t addiction. The problem is the internal, mental, and physical ailments that face our loved ones in each sober moment the addict faces. To send a recovering addict to a halfway house or a sober house or prison is like putting a bandaid on a wound. An addict doesn’t need to be sequestered and put among other people that they are now categorized as in society. You go to prison you are a bad person who can’t contribute to society. You go to a halfway house you are an addict who needs help by being isolated.

I’d like to call out the weaknesses of this point before I move on because I want you to realize that I’m not naive to a few things. One, the addict has to want to get sober on their own. Two, each situation is different and this can’t be applied to every situation. Sometimes there are bad people that do drugs. But n0t all drug addicts are bad people and that is my point. In fact- most people I know struggling with addiction had an amazing life and were extremely kind in a sober state of mind.

In order to change the heroin epidemic our solution needs to be less black and white- we can’t just expect an addict to get sober and move on. We need to look into the day to day struggles that an addict faces from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed and even what they dream about. Have you ever thought about what an addict must feel like when they are sober? Have you ever had a dream where you do something awful and you wake up and can’t believe that you’d ever think that way? What if you woke up and it was reality? That is what an addict feels like when they become sober.

The physical health issues and mental health issues that arise from addiction are way worse than the struggle of staying sober. Even with the pounding impulse to use, nothing is worse than feeling like a dirty, worthless failure to the ones you love and cherish most. And to think you feel like it is out of your control is unbearable. Every time I talk to my dad he doesn’t wallow in the fear of using again. He cries and begs to escape himself. To hear your best friend, your parent, and your idol tell you everyday he wants to kill himself to escape the pain is way worse than hearing that he craves a high. Because it’s no longer the high he wants. He just wants to not feel the pain he is the cause of. He sees himself as a monster and although I don’t view him as a monster, society tells him he’s a monster. Society tells him he can go to a sober house, but he’ll never have a job, he’ll never be able to vote, he’ll never live the American dream that he moved here for, from the Soviet Union. 

So do we really want to fix the problem and stand by our loved ones? Do we want to put in the time to give a bit of sympathy? Or do we want to continue to tell ourselves that if every heroin addict was sober there wouldn’t be an epidemic anymore?

Below is a video I made on what an addict is dealing with, how to build relationships with a loved one that is an addict, and how our health and the addicts health can both be at a stable place.