And no one thinks.
No one flinches until they wake up one day and find how their impossibilities became possible.
Of course.
No one believes this happens to someone like them. “Not me!” and yet, we find that our impossibilities and became all too real.
I admit it –
The city has changed over the years.
The landscapes are not the same and the people are different as well. And still, I have the same old memories and the remnants of proof, such as the leaning junkies falling slightly and dangling near the clinic by 35th street.
So much has changed.
But not the game.
The players may be different. Perhaps the gamble has upped the ante, to say the least.
And then again, people have been dying for centuries.
Somehow, now that social media is around with both the useful news and numbers which attribute to an incredible form of misinformation, the fact remains:
We have been dying by crutch related deaths for longer than Google or the search engines have been around.
We have been dying for centuries and dying for decades and dying for years from one self-inflicted death or another.
I understand that people fail to notice this, but there was life before WIFI and there was life before cell phones and there was life before the internet
We are an odd species.
We contribute to our own insanity
Take for example, the rabbit or the little squirrel who lives and runs with a healthy fear of, say, dying from some kind of unnatural source. They run away from death . . .
We are supposedly the superior of all species.
Or at least. This is what I have been told.
I think about the common little rodent or the little field mouse who learned to sneak into homes or buildings and apartments. I think about their efforts to eat and survive and yes, perhaps they don’t know any better.
But they know better enough to run and hide when danger comes.
They know where to retreat to and they know where it’s safe.
And as tiny or as simple and as small-minded as the mouse may be, mice know to run and find safety and also, as soon as they are safe, the little rodent does not hold on to the intrusion or overthink their retreat.
They do not get blinded by their ego
They do not cling to insults.
No.
They go back to their little mouse holes or their little nests or burrows and they go on with their lives.
I heard a speaker talk about this.
I heard a speaker talk about deer in the woods and how they sense danger or they see a person.
Next –
They run to safety and then they go on with their lives, no thinking with prideful ideas of things like, “How dare they do this to me!”
No.
They go back to grazing in a field or eating or whatever it is that deer do throughout their day.
We are indeed far from the superior of the species when it comes to this.
We hold memories and keep the pain deep within us alive and well.
We pick our scabs and prevent ourselves from healing.
Animals run from death
Humans seem to run towards it
I have to say this here and be clear; Yes Stress is a killer!
Our bodies are not meant to run at full tilt or at full speed and therefore, we are not meant to live with constant stress or pressure. We cannot run at full speed or be on high-alert at all times.
Animals know when to rest.
But again, we are the superior of the species
Our body is not meant to keep up with a constant and unhealthy pace because like an engine that revs high and never slows down, we can blow a head gasket the same as the best engine ever made by humankind.
We need relief and so, we seek relief and thus, there are times when relief seems all too impossible
So?
We cheat a little bit.
We take a drink or we take a pill and so, and so on.
Maybe we dig into a plate of food to remember the mind-altering abilities of comfort, like, say, a good hot meal.
We are not meant to live like a high-pressure steam plant; and so, this makes sense to me that there are times when our so-called pot or teakettle is boiling over and thus, we scream like a teapot that needs relief.
Just to clear something up
We do come from generations of excess.
We come from medical journeys.
We come from solving symptoms to alleviate problems.
Symptoms . . . what an interesting idea.
Solve them
not the problem
And then what?
The problems are still there, which means the problem still exist.
This means the symptoms never go away, unless we treat them.
And again; treating symptoms only treats symptoms
And so on and so on and so goes the endless cycles which is endless and ongoing and in the case of substance abuse and in the fields of alcohol related deaths or crutch related deaths, I submit that we have been killing ourselves for generations.
There are more than one form of dependencies.
And there is more than one way to find ourselves living in an uncontrollable nature.
Here is something to think about –
These are not my numbers and forgive me if this seems cold or matter-of-fact.
I have read that the CDC says there are an approximate 70,000 deaths caused by drug overdoses or drug related deaths. I read that the numbers were lower in the year 2025 and to which I argue, but for the sake of this, we will go with these numbers.
We will stick with this as a guideline. However, I believe the numbers are higher and further miscalculated when, say, the stats do not factor the deaths that tally from the drug related wars and the drug trade.
But again, we will go with 70,000
Most people do not realize that more people die from alcohol or alcohol related deaths.
Alcohol induced deaths range from anywhere between 47,000 to 54,000 deaths. However the CDC estimates an approximate number of 178,000 alcohol related deaths per year.
These stats are or the US only.
The number is deadlier and more frightening on a worldwide scale
but for now, let’s go forward
Shall we?
Of course this number is high. Of course, this is tragic.
Absolutely it is.
People cry and scream and they call for awareness and yet, we fail to be aware that there are far more killers than drugs and alcohol
If you added the numbers of these deaths, you will find that more people die from obesity related deaths than from drugs and alcohol. Obesity claims 500,000 people in the US and 2.8 million worldwide.
Someone achieves death by suicide every 43 seconds.
That’s somewhere around 700,000 people a year, worldwide.
(Says the World Health organization)
Cigarettes are still on the leader board when it comes to common killers and still, no one talks about how all of this is self-inflicted.
Am I right or am I wrong?
These deaths are self-induced and all of which are things used to settle our nerves and treat our symptoms.
I remember the epidemic that hit us in the 80’s.
I remember a night when I felt the first hit come through me.
Man . . .|
The high took over my in a lofty way. The top of my spine was relieved from all the pain and worry.
The high itself was brief and the half-life became shorter and shorter but man, that first blast was the carrot they dangle in front of the horse.
I was high and out of my mind.
But more, I was weightless and numb and all was soft.
There was no pain.
There was no shame or thoughts about the fact that I was failing or that I, myself, was, and would always be a failure.
There were no enemies (at first)
I saw my world explode and die in different ways.
I watched the greatest or people become mindless or monsters or eventually, I saw my closest friends lose to a zombie-like approach. And they nodded and they bowed and they swiveled downward and became lifeless and lost until they died.
I took education to realize that we are killing ourselves in more ways than we think.
At the same time, I admit, the USA makes up 4.2% of the world’s population
Yet, we use up to 80% of the world’s opiate supply
Everyone is dying around us.
Everyone is recovering from something.
Imagine what life would be like if we understood the root of this problem
What if we treated the problem rather than treat the symptoms.
Imagine the health of our hearts if we treated the heart attacks before they happen
Not after.
To those who know and to those who know me and still cared to help me and to those who cared to know more.
All I can say is this
Thank you.
Your lifesaving abilities helped more than any of the meds which can be found on the market today.
And this includes the black market, by the way
Then again . . .
All those meds do is treat symptoms
right?
For those who know and stayed
you cared enough to help me treat the problem
to which I am . . .
recovering!
The Written Addiction 