Quote: MetalloQuote: SamiusMy contempt for people with drug problems continues to grow. It's one of those few things that anger me very easily.
As the son of a former addict, it's a struggle.
Do I remember the damage my mother's addiction did to me, to our family, growing up? Does it hurt like hell? Absolutely. Do I still feel angry at her sometimes? You bet. In many ways, she robbed me of a healthy childhood.
But - do I also remember the work she put in to get clean, and how she actually succeeded? Do I remember how much better her life and mine have been since then, and how much my future brightened when she got clean for good? Every day. Every single day.
I know I get really heated about a lot of things - and I mean
heated - so maybe I'm the last person who should be talking about this, but no matter how angry I get at people, I always, always
always believe in second chances. Or third. Or fourth. Or, when it comes to this particular topic, however many it takes to get things right.
Addicts deserve compassion, not contempt. I know firsthand that contempt makes things a hundred times worse. No matter how much I struggle with my own anger, I know that it was compassion that finally allowed my mom to get clean, and I'll defend that to my dying breath.
They deserve no such thing, no matter how much you regard addiction as a horrible affliction. It's not that I don't wish they got clean or that I didn't regard them as human beings same as me. I have concern for them, but I do
not have compassion for them. They suffer, but they are
not victims.
One of my great-grandfathers was an alcoholic, and in my mind possibly one of the few examples of more respectable addicts that I know of, since neither I nor anyone else ever saw him drunk or aggressive in his old age. I do not have compassion for him though, I've heard too many stories of him trying to kill his own children with a shotgun in a drunken rage when he was younger.
One of my mother's cousins is an alcoholic, and he killed his own brother while drunk. He did his time and has since continued to distance himself from his family and kept drinking. Because of that I've never know him or his brother, and I do not have compassion for him.
My grandfather is an alcoholic, as was his father. I've known him come up with lies and excuses in order to get his daughters to fund his addiction more times than I've known him to call my mother while sober. Their compassion for him has only led him to try to manipulate them, and any and all promises to try to get help -sincere or otherwise- have ended in failure and disappointment despite any outside support that he received. He is my grandfather and I care about him, but I do not have compassion for him for what he has done to himself and to his children.
One of my cousins is a drug addict. He is younger than me so I remember him from his birth, and since he was a teenager he seems to have been on a continuous secret quest to try to get high off of any and all narcotic substances that he could get his hands on. He has been through more than several suicide attempts, all of them while drunk or high, and some of which would've been successful were it not for the completely coincidental and lucky interference of people who care about him. His own mother has saved his life more than twice now. He has access to any help he could possibly need to get by -all of it completely free-, but he doesn't want it. He makes promises to get clean, and the next day he is high again, spasming and nearly unconscious, being shipped off to a hospital.
He had a son born to him this year. He had told us that he would straighten himself out, and then tried to kill himself while the mother was still pregnant. They broke up afterwards, and no wonder. He didn't attend when the kid was christened and he gave up his rights to see his own child and to make decisions about his upbringing. He merely continues to lie to the faces of all the people who only want to save his damn life, and keeps getting ******* high. He is my cousin and obviously I care about him, but I do not, will not, and indeed could not
ever have compassion for him.
I would like it if any person with a drug problem got clean, but not because I don't think they deserve anything but contempt for their actions. No-one who ever swallowed an amphetamine pill had it grow wings and fly down their throat unbidden. No husband who ever got drunk and hit their wife had some devil grab them by their hands and make it happen. These people do it themselves, despite their altered state of mind. Such disregard of responsibility is simply infuriating.
Anyway, I'm sure you can see the point that I'm trying to make. I'll just stop now before my ranting turns completely incoherent.
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