Sadness

Shortly before heading up to Star Valley yesterday, Lorri and I found out that a friend of ours overdosed and died. Ty is our sixth friend from treatment to OD in the past three years. That's just how it goes in the addict world. It's been over a year since the last death and I've gotten perhaps a little too comfortable, so this really caught me off guard. It still doesn't quite seem real. Oddly enough, Ty is from Star Valley, so we went and visited his mom this morning. We just spent a minute with her but it was kind of surreal. I can't even imagine losing a child. I don't even want to think about it.

Every time another person dies I get angry. Going through rehab you meet all sorts of people and it seems like it's always the best ones who die. It's not the jerks who add absolutely nothing to society; it's the sweet, genuinely kind-hearted ones. It pisses me off that if someone has to go, it seems to always be the good ones.

I also hate that this will never end. There will never come a time when friends will stop dying. I'm only 27; friends aren't supposed to die this often until I'm old. And when I say six people, I'm only counting the ones I actually attended treatment with. If we want to talk about people I know from the program, the numbers shoot way up.

Addiction is such a horrible thing and it is so misunderstood. I don't think you get it unless you've been through it. Too often society seems to blame the addict and assume that they are choosing to use, when in reality, addiction is a disease. And yes, there are things you can do to manage it, but there is no way of curing it. All too often people ask why, when we see the damage we're causing ourselves and those around us, we don't just stop. I really wish we could. If we could just stop using and change the way we think, life would be a whole lot easier. But it just doesn't work that way.

Alright, that's enough sadness for now.