And the Band Plays on – Addiction Complacency / Grace-full Recovery

By: Jana Greene

I just came across a post on my Facebook news feed by a friend who just lost someone she loved to the ravages of addiction. He OD’ed on heroin.

It started like so many, many posts I come across – RIP. Rest in peace.

I’m so tired of people resting in peace before their lives are lived to completion.

I never knew this friend of my friend’s. I’ve never heard his name prior to this event – but my spirit knows his spirit, and I pray his is at peace.

It’s easy to become numb to the loss of life from addiction. We are in the midst of opiate saturation and fatal / ‘functioning’ alcoholism, because the human condition is so confoundedly painful. It just really is.

Behind every story of death via substance abuse, there is a son or daughter. A mother, a father. A friend. A person of great and precious worth.

How does society deal with loss on such a grand scale?

Too often, by accepting the undercurrent of judgement as truth, and denying that addiction is a freaking brain disease.

Another day, another RIP memorial page on Facebook.

One more overdose victim. I guess he had it coming.

One more person who drank herself to death. She asked for it.

Nobody says it out loud, but the sense of exasperation is tangible.

Hey world-at-large – IT’S A DISEASE.

Meanwhile, the rest of us cannot afford to rest.

I’m glad that there are programs that allow participants the luxury of anonymity (and I certainly respect the anonymity of others) but I’m not sure how long we can afford to hide our faces. The faces of addiction, but more importantly – the faces of RECOVERY.

Because not all of us will RIP before our time, but surely stigma enables keeping the disease alive and kicking.

Every overdose should shock the shit out our systems. It should worry us when we start thinking of a lost life ‘just another.’ It should break our hearts.

Karl Marx is quoted as saying ‘religion is the opiate of the masses,’ and I think there is truth in that. But religion as we know it often carries the same numbing properties as any other opiate. Relationship with the living God is what the masses are really craving.

We are all just really jonesing for relationship.

If you can’t justify being compassionate because you believe addiction is solely a moral peril, I challenge you to consider it an act of compassion from one fellow human being in confounding pain to another.

One spirit to another.

The gentleman who died of a heroin overdose, he brought to mind tonight the parable of the lost sheep in the biblical book of Luke.

^“…By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story.

“Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.”

Jesus gets it. He didn’t go after that one sheep to feed it opiates. He went after it because He couldn’t bear missing out on relationship with one who had so much worth.

It’s my honor to show my face and be non-anonymous. I am an alcoholic who did not die of my disease, but who still asks God for help in my recovery journey every single day.

The Temptations got it right with this song….I hope we can get it right, too.

“The sale of pills is at an all time high,
young folks walkin’ ’round with their heads in the sky,
Cities aflame in the summer time,

and the beat goes on.
Eve of destruction, tax deduction,
City inspectors, bill collectors,
Evolution, revolution, gun control, the sound of soul,
Shootin’ rockets to the moon, kids growin’ up too soon.
Politicians say more taxes will solve ev’rything, and the band played on.
Round and round and around we go, where the world’s headed nobody knows.

Ball of confusion,

That’s what the world is today.

Hey hey.” –

The Temptations, “Ball of Confusion”

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2 thoughts on “And the Band Plays on – Addiction Complacency / Grace-full Recovery”

Jana, I loved this! The average person, if there is such a thing, always passes judgement on someone who has overdosed or drinks this self to death. Until they walk in the shoes of any addiction, no judgement should come from them. It is not easy to put down that drink or don’t take that drug, it is a disease! Society really needs to be more educated and less judgemental. Thank you for this.

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