I am a concerned community member of the state of Alaska and wanted to share my thoughts in a short letter. I work with people who are experiencing substance abuse addiction. They come to our facility broken and full of shame because they are stigmatized and thrown away by society. This stigma prevents them from feeling worthy of asking for help so only ten percent of them do.
We are losing one person to opioids every 11 minutes in this country, and it will only get worse. I don’t have all the answers. But I get to know some of these people and, after they do some healing and have someone who cares help them, I get a glimpse into who they truly are and what their potential could be.
I just want to put this out there. Even if it makes one person think and decide to help in some small way, it’s worth it. If we put just 10% of the time we use judging, criticizing, and policing addicts and put that into collective community care for each other and the most marginalized we could make real change.
So the next time you judge someone experiencing a substance addiction, remember we all have our addictions. We all use something to numb our pain, whether it’s an addiction to social media, working, shopping or drugs and alcohol. Collective community care will help those already addicted and prevent more from becoming addicted. You can search online to learn more.
— Simone Smith
Seward
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