Today, as I’ve traveled along the path of gratitude on my way to the Happy LIFE, I’ve been thinking about how grateful I am that I’ve never succumbed to addiction in a way that landed me in jail. If you could be convicted for being overweight as proof positive of a food addiction, I’d be in the slammer for sure. How lucky am I that my circumstances never put me at sufficient risk to discover that a substance other than food (or cigarettes, back in the day) has the same nearly irrepressible sway over my better judgment? And, I really do think the difference between me and many of the people who find themselves on the skids comes down to the luck of the draw, mainly in the form of being born to parents who were fortunate and functional enough to provide decent nutrition, appropriate clothing, a stable home along with a focus on education, hard work, common decency, love and affection. All of those things also likely came together to provide me with robust physical health and at least a semblance of mental health.
My generation was lucky, too, at least when it came to the relative danger of the illegal “drugs du jour” and I can’t help but be grateful for that as well. Back then, the drug scourge consisted primarily of marijuana, powder cocaine, heroin, LSD and a few pharmaceuticals. As much devastation as that era of street drugs caused compared to the 21st century’s underground pharmacopeia, today’s law enforcement, penal and social systems might consider those the “good ol’ days.” An old friend, who is an addiction counselor, told me years ago that he thought cocaine had the most destructive power when it came ripping someone’s potential apart – until crack came along with an exponential increase in its ability to tear up lives. Then, along came meth, which upped the ante and raised crack by another factor of ten. My generation may have faced a barrage of potential addictions that were largely unknown and unfathomable to our parents but this generation is faced with addictions of mass destruction that are largely unknown to us.
Between addiction and mental illness, I learned today, we have the root cause of the incarceration of 60% of women, and 30% of men, in our state’s jails. However, slowly but surely, “drug courts” are being established to prevent our jails from being filled with the addicted and mentally ill at the expense of our ability to incarcerate violent criminals. Cutting to the chase, our judicial and social agencies are working collaboratively to help non-violent offenders who are able and willing to help themselves – but only those who request access to the services it provides after they’ve served their sentences. Violent criminals, no matter what their mental health or addiction issues, need not apply.
These drug courts provide the support to get addicts off illicit drugs and get the mentally ill on licit ones. As strongly as I believe we, as a society, are over (and often unnecessarily) medicating heartache (and a host of other temporary, adaptive responses), I believe just as strongly that some people have chemical imbalances in their neurochemistry and need to be and stay on some high-powered psychoactive meds. The alternative is for them to be in and out of jail, eventually losing their ability to secure either work or housing, at which point they end up back in jail where they are more expensive to house than if they were out in the world, living in subsidized housing and working as productively as possible.
So, today, I’m grateful to live in a time and place where our community leaders are working to find a more compassionate – and cost effective – way to support people who find themselves where, but for the grace of God (and lack of exposure), might have gone I (or you). If the butterfly had flapped its wings differently, who’s to say I (or you) wouldn’t have ended up trying to keep body and soul (and an addiction) together by committing crimes like shop lifting, writing bad checks, theft and so on – all the things that people who are living on the edge might do to keep from falling over.
I greatly admire the people who’ve found their way back after falling over the edge. And I’m very grateful to the people who’ve shown the compassion to help them do it.
Positively happy 