What war on drugs?

I am an addict. I came out of rehab almost three months ago. I am now clean and sober (yay!). And you know what? It fucking sucks! It sucks that I can’t drink and be silly with my friends. It sucks that my confidence has disappeared. It sucks that I’m ill and I struggle with it every single day. It sucks that I spend my Friday nights in a cold church for my Cocaine Anonymous (CA) meeting. But the thing that hurts me the most is the look on people’s faces when I say those four words - ‘I am an addict.’ That look is fear. People are afraid of who I am. And that’s shit. Because essentially I’m just a normal 23-year-old woman, I just have a story, like everyone else.

My poison was not the cocaine I spent thousands of pounds on. Nor was it the alcohol I binged on till my only friends were the floor and the toilet. Not in the way that many people think. My poison was my anger and my sadness. My poison was not being able to ask for help. And the thing that stopped me using wasn't the threat of being a criminal. It was talking. It was the people I met in rehab and my family and friends who held my hand all the way. 

Addiction is everywhere. It’s that white F surrounded by blue on your phone. It's neatly wrapped in eat-me junk food wrappers. It's a shiny yellow M on a high street. It's sat at the bar. It's on the side of the road. It's sleeping in the cold and the rain. It's running through so many veins. Maybe it's because it's dirty and ugly that we don't want to look at it. Maybe it's because we're all so scared. I'm not sure why we find it so easy to ignore. But it's here and it's not going away. Despite the laws that scream DON'T USE DRUGS OR YOU’LL BE PUNISHED! in the science of addiction, we now know that it can be caused by a stress hormone called Cortisol. I won't go too much into this as I'm not a scientist but this tricky bastard of a hormone sucks every inch of enjoyment out of life. People born with this are so much more likely to turn to addiction. It's a bitch and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once you've made that turn to drugs or alcohol or whatever it may be, your brain gets all excited and it releases dopamine. It’s the part of your brain that tells you to sleep, eat and breathe and it tricks you into thinking you need your 'drug of choice'. That part of your brain is now fucked. It is not a choice. If we look at the way some people view addiction as the chemical hooks in the drugs that make you an addict, we'd have safely identified the millions of people that have been in hospital and had to have a morphine drip addicted to heroin. I'm sure someone you know has had an op but not come out a junkie. We need to change the way we think about drugs. Maybe you’ve even used drugs recreationally or you drink alcohol regularly. What’s the difference between you and an addict? It’s not the substance. It’s the person.

In Portugal they have decriminalised ALL drugs. Sounds like a stupid move, right? Or does it? They now have systems in place that HELP people who suffer with addiction. They help the person to find work and they provide counselling and support. And guess what? It costs a whole lot less that throwing them into prison. By doing this the number of people using drugs in Portugal has dropped massively and so has the number of drug induced deaths. The Portuguese prison population has also declined. I was told in rehab that addiction (alcohol and drug related) causes more deaths than any other illness in the world. Why are we ignoring this? I get it. I’ve been there. Addicts are annoying. We lie, we steal, we’re very difficult to be around but we’re ill. Most of the addicts I’ve met have been so kind-hearted and compassionate and every single one of them has one hell of a story. They’ve been fucked over by life. I’m not asking for sympathy. A lot of the mess and havoc I caused was all my doing. I have taken responsibility for my actions. I’m just asking us to rethink this ‘war on drugs’. To me it is redundant. We cannot fight a substance. But we can fight for each other. We can fight this together. We can fight those demons that tap at the back of the skull of the people we share this beautiful planet with. Our time is always so precious to us, until it's too late. Don’t let it be too late. We need to start talking about mental health. And we need to do it now. 

#weneedtostarttalkingaboutmentalhealth  

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