Factors of Drug Addiction 2 - Wasted Time and Talent

In the first article of this series we explored how a major factor involved in addiction to drugs or alcohol is the breakdown of communication experienced by the addict when he or she is using drugs.

The next aspect of drug addiction I want to address here is actually profound pair of changes that people using addictive drugs experience in their activities, their lives and the very fiber of what they hope to accomplish in life.

Wasted Time

Spending time on a hobby or in learning a new skill, even a recreational skill is a creative function. But when someone spends every night of the week, and week end days, month after month, watching television show repeats, or sitting in a dark room listening to the same record album, there is no product. That time is not retrievable. Imagine what COULD have been accomplished in that time. Two years of that time could easily earn a college degree. Or build a house!

It is ironic that young people consider their time more dispensable that the time adults have. Probably because they consider there is much more of it. Actually, the reverse is true. Actions taken by the young have far-reaching effects. The directions their lives will take can be changed in one good decision-or bad decision.

Impress upon a young person the importance of this period in their lives. Spending three, four, or five of the most valuable years of their lives being a druggie should be a crime.

Wasted talent

You've heard it said that everyone has some special gift; they just need to find what it is. I believe this to be true. Though not everyone's gift might be as valuable as the next, there will still be a talent, an area where they can shine and stand above the rest. This is something of value, not just to the person possessing the talent, but to society. Discovering this talent and developing it into a marketable skill should be encouraged by parents, teachers and mentors.

Drug abuse can destroy talent. Even while it appears to the addict that the talent is enhanced, it can be wasted.

I am currently counseling a young man who is recovering from heroin addiction. He is in his early twenties and completely threw away a scholarship to a state college by being stoned. He needed to attend a detox rehab center, but refused and so I am counseling him.

He is a sculptor, a good one too. He makes incredible ceramic figures, large, beautiful and shiny. He showed some of them to me. One was a four foot figure of a unicorn, beautiful. Then he became caught up in the heroin.

He blew the scholarship by simply not showing up for classes, and I saw the last piece he was working on-a dark, bloody pair of small elf-creatures. One of them was stabbing the other in the face while laughing. I looked at him and thought, "Man, you need help!" That sculpture was, by the way, only half-finished. Now he is 43 weeks off drugs, but he still has not continued with his craft, still has not picked up one piece of clay.

To have a marketable talent is a gift. To throw that talent away on drugs is criminal. Most people would feel blessed to have such innate ability.

Of course, time and talent are only two of the casualties of drug addiction, but they are incredibly valuable items, and when they are gone, they are gone. Helping someone to overcome addiction cannot retrieve lost time or might not revive a talent, but does end the waste and destruction and allow the addict to start anew.