Likewise, the recovering addict must stay busy. Many mainstream Christian recovery programs (and a great one is the Celebrate Recovery group found within local mainstream Christian Churches) have a somewhat different view of this, but I believe you can merge your Christian beliefs with the idea of staying busy. It is necessary - “idle hands,” and all that.
So, I have constantly asked myself through the years, “why does anyone try that first drug, having a multitude of information out there?” They do for the same reason I did, I suppose. No one believes they could ever become addicted to it. They see homeless pictures of cocaine addicts on the side of the road with their noses half rotted off and that's so unlike them that they firmly believe they could never be there. They do not see the guy who first tried cocaine, realize he is from the same social class as they are, with the same likes, clothing preference, upbringing, and that he even watched the Smurfs on Saturday mornings, the same as them. All they see is an impossibility that further fuels their belief that they will never become addicted. Especially not like that. It is like showing them tombstones of drivers who were speeding in sports cars and telling them that they, too, could die behind the wheel. They see someone else did, but they do not believe they could be under ground and lifeless.
Drug Addiction Doesn't Discriminate
I came from a good childhood. I went to private schools, and not because I was kicked out of public schools, either. I came from a background that was not littered with bad impressions or bad relatives or black sheep of the family going to jail. It was stable, good, loving, and fair. Though there are childhoods showing “at risk” cases who go on to use drugs, mine was not anywhere close to being similar to any of the statistical probabilities. It can happen to anyone.
That Thing Wants to Kill You
Addictions are deadly. There are so many ways to die, as well: emotional death, mental death, a love for life dies, hopes die, and dreams die. Just because a person cannot fathom a tombstone in their future does not mean an addiction will not kill them. Further, sometimes an addiction will kill them and leave them alive physically. That Thing waits in the background to whisper reminders of the pain of an addiction in the user's ear even after It lulls them into an addiction, and even when they are high. It happened to me. It will happen to others. It could also happen to you.
Be smart. Take what may be your last or even only chance to choose a completely different future for yourself and for your family. The future you should choose is yours for the planning, but I guarantee that if you choose a similar future to the one I chose, you will find yourself trying to meet the challenge of surviving though your own inability to choose anything other than a living hell over and over again. Hopefully, you will survive long enough to realize that my guarantee could have been believed.
Take the proof of experience from an addicted life. Hug your kids again. Hug them again. Hold onto them for their sake and for your own sake. Know and believe in your very soul that there is never enough good feeling and peaceful escape that will ever even come close to the many prices and losses you will definitely encounter when being unable to escape the screaming whispers of drug addiction.
