You heard me correctly. It has taken me a long time to come to this conclusion, so I understand if it sounds completely foreign, especially if you haven’t seen addiction’s anti-linear path up close.

After all, many crimes announced on the news, are followed with the unspoken tone of: ‘Oh and by the way’; “He {also} was found with 5 gms of heroin/meth/ marijuana” or however drugs are weighed/measured.

Let’s not be mistaken; these ARE two separate ‘facts’- albeit, preliminary.

Yes, addiction CAN lead to crimes. No one can deny that. Just as eating recklessly CAN lead to unfortunate costly events such as a heart attack.

Nicole Labors describes that obsession in her book Addictoholic Deconstructed.

She states that because of the pleasure centers in the brain:

“The addict can’t derive ANY pleasure from ANYTHING else, so they spend every waking minute of every single day seeking out ways to achieve that pleasure.”

So here we are, 6 months later. My son still hasn’t been sentenced. (That I know of). He has warrants out on him and is running scared; horrified of going to prison, yet still stuck in the ravaged cycle of active deep addiction. He has nothing. The company he spent 10 years building, is all gone. Cars, beautiful home, wife, and 2 precious kids — gone. He lives couch to couch doing what odd jobs he can to scrounge some money here and there. He has so much shame and disappointment in himself that he doesn’t see a way to fix everything, let alone anything.

My boy, the hero and go-to guy of the family, now rejected and dejected, not only from family, but soon to be from society too. He will be isolated to an 8 x 10 jail cell as punishment for feeding his cravings. Cravings that all of us have, but some of us were able to control them better. Cravings that every human being partakes of -just for a moment to feel ok.

Since drug addiction is considered a crime in and of itself (for possession) in this country; a human being whose brain becomes hijacked and is caught with it, can get the most severe isolation: Exiled, like the ancient Roman practice, to four cement walls to “think about his crime and what he should have done differently”.

Am I making excuses for his behavior? No. Do I think he had different choices that could of been made? Yes. But I also know that my son is in deep pain. The son I know and love has the biggest, most generous heart and is mortified at what the last few years have brought to our family.

So just like I would never shame my patient for being overweight and causing herself all her extra health problems; I know that shaming my son into recovery isn’t the solution.

My hope is that our jail systems will soon follow the data and see that punishing and banning non- violent offenders into isolation will only further the revolving door that we now have.

Robin Zabeigalski writes this in The Tempest:

“Alcoholics and addicts are not criminals, they are sick people who need treatment. We shouldn’t be focused on locking them up, we should be focused on changing our healthcare system so they can get the help they need. And we should be working on our own understanding of addiction so we can approach addicts with compassion instead of judgement. Doing this will change the state of addiction in this country and prevent thousands of deaths”.

As Gabor mate states in his Video about addiction and the correctional system:

“In my opinion, the correctional system does very little correcting”.[ for the addicted.]

Even though I’m biased, I tend to agree. I will admit, my bias- ness comes from a place of fear. My son has warned me of the gang mentality in prison. I didn’t believe him until I saw the net flix documentary, Big brother. The scene of the reporter standing by the back of the pick- up truck, talking to the “boy” with his cousins confirmed my sons stories.

But, it hardly matters since I have zero control over the outcome. I never have really. But that doesn’t stop this mom from having hope every day that my strong “beautiful boy” will be back soon.