DAMAGES
Avoiding pain is natural. In fact, that’s why it’s there. Pain is a signal to the brain letting us know that something is wrong. Through our efforts to avoid the uncomfortable we protect ourselves, our hearts, and sometimes our lives. It’s in this way that most people understand and cope with pain. Whether healthy or unhealthy, these are our coping skills, and everyone has at least one. The list is endless; and includes popular and colorful choices like drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, shopping, lying, exercise, over eating, under eating, music, over sleeping, under sleeping, hurting others, and letting go of reality.
Drugs and alcohol are by far the most popular coping skill. Whether legal or illicit, both are easily acquired. In fact, let’s be very real about the subject: There is no war on drugs, and every time a substance is banned it can be found in every neighborhood, and on most street corners. Why is that: Money of course. The money that comes from drugs, criminalization and incarceration. Out of control drug addiction, and a growing population of drug addicts has been the result.
Most of us know at least one drug addict. Possibly a family member, close friend, or maybe someone from the past. A person no longer associated with, taken off the chess board due to boundary violations, infractions the addict found necessarily justified so that they may continue numbing their pain. Some become overachieving experts at staying numb. Twenty-four seven around the clock machines with with one goal: A never ending drug inventory.
Most addicts are not monsters or creepers. Some of the most amazing people that I’ve known are hardcore drug users. I’m speaking of artists, angels and fantastic people who have a way of connecting with others. Some are practically superheroes, although exhausted from empathy and self-sacrifice, always working to save everyone except themselves. At times it seems like such a waste of talent; but then I remember that great things tend to be hidden behind pain and tragedy, and our pain makes us who we are. It’s more than important: Pain is vital and necessary. Everything we experience and suffer through prepares us for something. We are all damaged.
Joseph Shanklin,
Spring 2019
ShankJoeJoe 
I mean it’s true most people are trying to escape some form of reality, some kind of nightmare. Some people do allow their addictions to turn them into monsters though. I’ve definitely seen that firsthand. It doesn’t even have to be a drug addiction. Just any kind of unhealthy addiction.
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