Guest Post: Treatment Network

*Please read thoroughly. I rarely take guest posts, but I believe whole-heartedly with what this article states. “Addiction is a disease, dependency is not a choice.”

This article is written by Camille Mitchell for http://treatmentnetwork.com/

Myths about Addiction

The “War on Drugs” has been raging for over 40 years. Yet, one in twelve American’s is still addicted. Many of them are your friends and family. You know them. In a phrase, “the system has failed.” Prevention measures are largely ineffective. Treatment efforts have failed to meet expectations. The numbers are staggering in terms of price and victims. We sit and wonder why our health care costs are skyrocketing but just have to look across the room at a son or daughter that contributes to the billions spent every year on medical cures for addicts. The American taxpayer shoulders these costs because these addicts cannot pay the bill for themselves. They are a pervasive social burden that comes with a price tag. The number $600 billion is bandied about as the combined costs of medical, economic, criminal, and social costs that are borne by “the system” every year. How many schools would that build in rural Appalachia for a population that is undereducated and underprivileged? How much national debt would that retire so we do not burden our future generations with our bad judgment and poor decision-making?

We have been making too many excuses for too long and investing money in theories and processes that do not work. The money drain has to be stopped and the social problem has to be cleaned up. The prisons of this country are filled with drug addicts that are slapped on the wrist and returned to society to continue to be addicts. We build more jails, create more judges, and build more courthouses to accommodate our social failures every year. We fail because we do not understand. We fail because we choose to lock away the problem with the hope that the few months or years they are out of the mainstream will cure them. Yet, they still get their drugs while they are incarcerated and we return them to society with the same problem as when they went in but fit for society because we “rehabilitated” them. Hogwash.

Only bad children use drugs … then why do 80% of our children use drugs at one time or another? We invoke social morality to soothe our egos and alienate our won children in the process. Health and safety is the social issue, not good and bad.

Stress, inability to cope and trauma are the root causes of drug use. Yet, our social focus is on “Just Say No”. You prevent drug use by your daughter by dealing with her ability to handle the social pressures of life. It is possible to prevent drug use. It is impossible to stop drug use for those that are hell bent on doing it. The difference between the two is like night and day.

Addiction is a disease. It is chronic and progressive. Dependence is real, not a choice. Children who become addicted are not weak and without morals. They are ill. They need help.

We need to wake up and smell the roses. If we insist on throwing money at the problem to solve it, then we had better find a lot more money. The problem will not be solved by spending money on the things we do now. Attack the causes of the problem, not the symptoms.

~ by Camille Mitchell

Guest post by http://treatmentnetwork.com/

I Think I Was Never Born

I think I was never born.
My hands are a man’s whose body
escaped Vietnam, but whose
soul was eaten by a war.
I watch these hands dip
a rag in bleach to scrub away
a face of imperfections,
a face that is not mine,
but a man’s who was scalded
by the hot palms of a red-headed woman
who watched her husband
tie off his neck and give it to his son,

and now my daughter is not mine,
and her smile is not her own,
but of a woman who would have
drowned me in her breasts
had I been born,

and I watch her with
eyes that seem to be my own, but
crinkle like the skin of
a man who shrunk himself enough
to fit inside a bottle of Rum
and swim for forty years,

and I was not born, but I remember seeing
these hands wrapped around me,
and this face smiling,
and this blue eyes crinkling,

and all of these dying before
I could have been born.

I Was Born To A Gray World

I was born to a gray world.
Void of sunlight.
Barricaded by ice.
Hunters have come for me. I watched them
gobble up
sisters, a brother,
and the woman who birthed me.

I stayed, under rocks, under dirt,
for sixteen years. I washed myself
in sin,
couldn’t come clean.
Stained with nights that smothered me
in the devils
chest hairs.

My hair grew to the length of
a woman. Sweeping me
out from
the dirt, standing me on
one foot,
then two.

Then, my breasts grew,
not much larger,
but wiser!

For some time, I lived out
dull
nightmares.
Screaming in sleep.
Silent during the dull day.
Grinding coffee beans
with quiet grips of rage.

I sliced each strand of woman from
my head,
became a man. I cut tears out of my arms
till I forgot how to
cry,
smashed my head heavy till
I forgot
everything else…

except that the world is gray.

My hair has grown back out
to the size of a woman
and my breasts haven’t grown
anything but heavy,
in a heavy body,
in a heavy gray body.