FEELING SUPERIOR?

I hate to hear the term 'junky'. It dehumanises people with drug addiction problems. Most often these ill people have backgrounds such as mine. I understand all too well why people resort to any method to kill the pain.

It seems very few, if any, of us see the hypocrisy. Even alcoholics look down upon drug addicts! I know of people who work with addicts/offenders who see them as scum! And they expect a good result to come from their involvement with people they have dehumanised? Do they not have brains?

People who smoke and fat people also look down upon them too but really they are no different.

Ahh, I hear you yell, but junkies steal. Well so do smokers and fat people! They steal time and money. Only it isn't so in your face. They steal time and money through days off work. They steal time and money from the medical system. From you and from me.

I don't get it really. Tell people you have anorexia/bulimia and you are sympathised with 'how awful for you' yet it is an addiction and it steals time and money from others. It is a dreadful, painful addiction, just as drug addiction is. Yet one is treated with care and the other with shame.

Sitting and stuffing your face on ice-cream and doughnuts and hamburgers and chips does not just affect you. It affects those around you. It makes you emotionally unavailable. If you have children, you are not giving them what they need. Just like any other drug addict.

Smoking doesn't just affect those who smoke. It costs everyone.

As far as I am concerned, there is no hierarchy of addiction. There are no better than you addicts, no worse than you addicts. Addiction is addiction. It destroys lives. It steals time and money and life.

ALL addicts steal for their fix, whatever their fix is.

Still feel superior?

I don't believe in the power of evil. Just the power of love. I see all around me what the absence of love does.

I think it quite moronic to believe in an Omnipotent God and at the same time believe in the power of Evil or an Evil being.

Recently, two boys were described by the media as 'evil monsters' because they committed evil acts. It was obvious to me that these two boys would come from abused backgrounds. They did as it was later reported.

I think there is a distinction between evil behaviour and being evil. I don't believe in the latter. It is a lie. It suggests that the evil doer can never be any different. It is no shock to note that mostly religious people believe others to be evil despite the contradictions.

While we brand someone as evil, they were born that way, they are not human, we are letting ourselves off the hook. It couldn't possibly be our fault could it? We couldn't possibly, as a society, have any responsibility for what happens it in could we?

We ALLOW children to go unloved. We ALLOW children to be abused. We ALLOW children to go unfed. We ALLOW children to witness all kinds of pain and mayhem and deny it has any effect. In fact we deny that children have any memory. We say children are resilient, they forget. They are not and they don't but it makes us feel better to think so because we don't want to recognize our own role in the lives of others and we don't want to recognize our OWN pain.

We can then wash our hands of the results.