Willingness to Help

I spoke with a person the other day and learned that he was unsympathetic to counseling teen drug addicts. I accidentally got involved in this activity and found it fascinating and worth my time. There were times my work clearly helped someone; a lot of times the outcomes were not visible; and many times lack of success marked the efforts. That has not deterred the work, however.

This person evidently feels helping the self-absorbed drug addict is a waste of time. The patient did this to himself, after all, why spend more time and resources helping a lost cause?

I steered the conversation away from this topic to maintain social civility at the event we were sharing. A birthday party, his. So, I thought, let it go and ponder what this position means to our society and to my own time investment. We spoke too little on this matter to articulate any position worthy of discussion, on his part or mine. I can only go on my own experience.

I work with teen addicts because I know parents appear to be powerless in knowing their kids are going off the tracks, and don’t know how to respond once they do learn this. If this were my kid or grandkid, I know I would want to know someone was willing to get involved and save a budding young life. These kids do not know enough of life to make life and death decisions about themselves. But they do. Every day. To use a drug or not, is the question. To use again later in the same day or tomorrow is also a decision often made. The doing buys them time and space to avoid dealing with the realities of not being under the influence.

Avoiding the hard work of living their lives seems to be the point of the drugs in the first place. Our work is to find a break in that logic and practice, a break long enough and meaningful to help them pull back from the precipice.

As I said, this work is not always successful. It does provide a chance, however, that a patient will struggle through the haze to find purpose in his life worthy of remaining drug free.

For those who make it, they become the counselors of the next generation of youthful drug users. In time we may turn the tide on this curse. Like AIDS, drug use affects an entire generation of kids. If we lose them, we lose more than can be imagined for our society. AIDS only affected a generation of my fellow gay brothers. Yet we labored hard to stem that tide and bring both a cure for AIDS to market, and an avoidance of transmitting the disease as well.

We should want to do this work for teen addicts. The effects of not doing so are frightening to me.

I connected with a woman who is committed to a charitable organization meeting the needs of care givers to elders who cannot fully take care of themselves. The program serves the elders, of course, but it also helps the caregivers who are exhausted and frenzied by their efforts to preserve health and safety of a loved elder family member. The commitment to do this work is huge and necessary if we are to call ourselves a caring society. Asking for donations to keep this program alive is very valuable, indeed. It should make the fundraising easier.

It isn’t, of course. Asking for money is always hard work. However, it demonstrates our willingness to help on many levels. That alone is reward for us all.

Elder or teen ager, help for those in need is the quest and mission. Our lives are more meaningful because of it. This is true even if others don't get it. Yes!

June 13, 2018