006: How do you reason with an addict?
A Prayer for the Dying
I have a friend who is dying.
Much like Demi Moore’s character in “The Substance,” they stupidly keep going back to the same well of junk, thinking it’s just one more hit, then they’ll be ok. It’ll make things… better.
They carry around a bag of junk, thinking it a can of Narcan, yet continue to inject and spew more of the same, only different.
They refuse any bit of help.
You can’t reason with them.
I’ve got hundreds of pictures in my house and on my phone that remind me of the great times we once had, the beauty of what was once possible.
It’s hard to watch them, seeing the innocence of their then youth, knowing what they will become because they started running with the wrong crowd who did not have their best interests at heart.
It is not the profiteers I loathe so much as the very members of that crowd who proclaimed freedom of expression and thought were possible with the junk. The crowd promptly, resoundingly, and resolutely eschewed any contradiction or voice of reason. Any semblance of balance was denigrated, belittled, besmirched.
As my friend dies, they continue to maintain their stance, encouraging others to take the junk. “Come with us! We are the light and the truth,” they maintain, “We are the only arbiters of truth!”
In the main, no one believed the crowd and put up with them as kooks, but the inmates now run the asylum. Now, sadly, the crowd won’t be ignored, nor will they go away.
There have been gurus, movements, and cults that have all proclaimed they have a method to help save my friend, but they ignore the junk, saying it is the junk that will make them stronger.
The polarized government will never provide help for anyone at any time.
They look to research that is fundamentally flawed in its initial questions for answers. The gurus proclaim the research “proves” that more junk is what’s needed to save my friend.
But I love my friend!
How do I help them?
How do I save them?
When I sold real estate, I had a trainer say: when trying to sell and logic fails, go to emotion. When emotion fails, go to logic.
That doesn’t help. I don’t want them to die. I liked Worf.
I pray to God for something to help them.
It is then that I realize the futility of prayer.
Will saying the Rosary bring the Blessed Mother’s intercession?
Will novenas to St. Jude, the patron of hopeless causes, help?
Much to the chagrin of all who pray, God is not some magic genie who grants wishes simply because one feebly asks.
The Almighty sees that which I do not. He sees the big picture.
In the end, my hope and prayer for my friend is that they get the help they need. That there are many, many years of big, beautiful pictures, from micro to macro, to cowboy, to full, to anamorphic for us both… and all of us.