How Many Drug Deaths Are Too Many?

My mother has a saying, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” I cannot tell you how many times those few words have run through my mind when I have been faced life’s issues. The reality is, life is tough, and if we have been taught right from wrong and strive to do it, life is good, for the most part.
Unfortunately, many of our young people have not been taught what is right, and many who have been taught, choose to go the other way. There are so many on the wrong path right now that we have an epidemic, killing our youth and young adults like a plague.
In the Oct. 2 issue of the Herald we ran a front-page article on heroin use in Cape May County, on the appalling fact that 20 people have died from it here this year. Michael DeLeon of Steered Straight said, “If we don’t start screaming right now, the problem is going to get a lot worse.”
Lower Cape May Regional High School Superintendent Chris Kobik says we should not look to the schools, “The school can’t change the problem.”
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Humans need to believe in
themselves; seagulls don’t.
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A common theme repeated throughout the night was the need for better treatment facilities. But Pat Devaney, director of Cape May County Human Services offered that “Once the kids go to treatment, they have nothing when they come out. They need to believe in themselves; they need to have hope; they need to experience life, not high, and know that there is some kind of value in what they are.”
What is clear from this well-attended meeting, and the one hosted several weeks before by Freeholder Kristine Gabor, is that people have reached the limits of human ability to alter this extremely destructive behavior. Devaney referred to the addicts’ need for hope and believing in oneself.
Life IS tough, it is not a bowl of cherries, and each individual must decide if he/she wants to make something good out of it or not. Without a goal and a plan to achieve it, people drift.
It is worth standing back and observing that a seagull doesn’t have this problem. He awakens in the morning with a simple objective: find food. Unlike so many in our society, the gull doesn’t have the option of sitting around bored.
So what is the difference? Why do humans need to believe in themselves and need to have hope, and the seagull doesn’t? Because gulls and humans are totally different types of beings. The gull just does what he needs to do without considering how he feels about it; the human doesn’t function that way.
What must the difference be? Could it possibly be that humans are a higher order being than gulls? Could it be that gulls are not spiritual beings, and people are? If we believe that humans are different from gulls, that we in fact have a spirit that has to be satisfied, why then do we fail to seek spiritual answers to the addiction problem? Then why were there no spiritual leaders participating in this quest for answers which are so clearly beyond our understanding?
It is too bad that the charming, gracious black-sheep nephew of John F. Kennedy and former addict, Christopher Kennedy Lawford, wasn’t there to share his experience. He is a best-selling author and addiction-recovery expert. He would have offered meaningful hope. Quoting the Post-Trib (Chicago Sun-Times), Christopher said, “Like most addicts, I only liked advice if I agreed with it,” regarding his failed recovery efforts, until he eventually experienced a life-saving “moment of grace.” His three tenets of life since being in recovery have been “trust God, serve others, and clean house.”
Pastor Jesse McClain, formerly of Court House Methodist, was with a church in Florida which had such a successful addiction-recovery program that the local government took it over. Unfortunately the spiritual side of recovery was eliminated and the program failed. I know many former addicts, and all the ones I know credit God for their recovery. It is long past time to turn to our spiritual experts.
From The Bible, Psalm 102 (MSG)
A Prayer of One Whose Life Is Falling to Pieces, and Who Lets God Know Just How Bad It Is
God, listen! Listen to my prayer, listen to the pain in my cries.
Don’t turn your back on me just when I need you so desperately.
Pay attention! This is a cry for help! And hurry—this can’t wait!
“Oh, don’t,” I prayed, “please don’t let me die.”