Drugs Will Destroy You

I wrote this article a few years ago. I don't condemn anyone who uses drugs. I use marijuana to cope with my insanity.

Photo by Pretty Drugthings on Unsplash

The only thing drug addiction leaves in its wake is destruction, pain, loss, heartache, and lost futures. Drugs will swallow you whole, chew you up, and spit you out all broken and lost. This is the heartbreaking account of people whose lives were destroyed by drug abuse.

This is a warning to everyone who thinks about getting involved with the drug world. When you start using drugs, you are getting involved in the evil darkness of killers.

If you don’t want your family and loved ones to find you dead and discarded somewhere from murder, an accidental overdose, or suicide, forget about experimenting with drugs. A heartbroken grandmother in South Africa lost all her savings after drug dealers threatened to kill her grandson if she didn’t pay his debts. They killed him in cold blood, the third time, when she had no money left to save him.

The drug underworld is a merciless and vicious life. You seldom get away from this kind of life if you are already in it. A lot of young people suffer from this fatal illness called addiction. Although there is hope and many do recover from this illness, there are those who don’t recover. Those who try to break this on their own suffer from body aches, vomiting, chills, and an inability to move. These are just a few of the withdrawal symptoms. Many give up the struggle and lose themselves.

The need for drugs becomes so strong that you will do anything to get them. Steal from family and friends, lie, deceive everybody, and the worst of all, sell your body to get the money to be able to buy it. A young lady with a promising career started using crack when she was 20 years old and living on her own with a great job and a promising future ahead of her. She became more and more dependent on her habit and started using money for rent and food to get crack. At one stage, when there was nothing left to sell, she started giving the drug dealers sexual favours as a trade for the drugs she needed so much.

She alternated between euphoria and self-disgust about the way she humiliated herself with the merciless dealers. On more than one occasion, she contemplated suicide because she hated herself so much for what she had become. To be able to sustain her addiction, she stole money from her employer and was found out and threatened with arrest if she didn’t return the money as soon as possible. With the added burden of having to reimburse her employer, she turned to prostitution which made the drug addiction even more severe.

She tried rehabilitation from crack addiction twice, and every time she started using again as soon as she was released. She married a wonderful man and is still trying to kick her addiction. It is a love-hate situation because she wants so desperately to be clean and live a normal life, but the need for the drug overwhelms her at times and she reaches out for it with trepidation and longing. Her biggest fear is being killed by an overdose or by the dealers she braves on her own time and time again.

A young man started using drugs in high school and, because of poor grades finished his high school education through homeschooling. Because of his addiction to cocaine and prescription pain narcotics, he would oversleep and never could keep a job and his life was in disarray most of the time. In 2023 he and his girlfriend were arrested for possession of cocaine. They were sentenced for dealing drugs. His mother never imagined she would ever see her son in prison or shackles. After one year, he was released on probation and had to have regular and random drug tests. During this time, he tested positive for cocaine and was facing another jail sentence.

He was terrified that he would be sentenced yet again, and it worried him so much that he discussed it with his best friend. After his girlfriend tried to get hold of him in late October that year, she drove to his apartment, where she found him hanging by a shoelace from his closet door. Yet another sad and unnecessary death of a promising young man caught in the seductive web of drug abuse.

Street drugs are not the only drugs that can destroy your life. A young woman who was involved in a car accident was prescribed pain medication for the pain the whiplash caused her. After a while, she became addicted to it, and her mother begged her to get help. She did get help, but after a while, she started with street drugs, including crack and methamphetamines. Finally, she started drinking on a huge scale.

After her mother tried everything possible to help her, including taking her to the hospital, where the doctors said she couldn’t be helped unless she admitted to having a problem. She started praying for her daughter. However, after a lot of pain and suffering, she walked onto a busy highway. If this was deliberate or due to inebriation, nobody knows. Two innocent and beautiful children have to grow up without the presence of a mother in their lives.

Drug addiction doesn’t always have to mean a life or death sentence. There is help out there for people who want to escape the web of addiction. The best thing is never to get involved with this evil, destructive poison. However, if you are already caught up in it, go and book yourself into the nearest rehabilitation centre, or seek help from a therapist or a local church organisation. Drug addiction need not be the end of your life.

Namaste