Robin SmithSounds good, right? Mighty adult to be personally responsible. But so many of society’s ills and horrors lie in the fact that many, and in growing numbers, decide to either abandon personal responsibility or make some godlike assumption that the laws of nature and nature’s God don’t apply to them, so, they’ll risk stupid behavior and thrust the outcomes of their bad decisions upon others as a burden.
No, there’s no argument that accidents don’t happen. There’s no defense that we all make mistakes. But thinking adults are equipped to learn from both. There’s also no denying that sometimes bad things just happen to good people or innocents. However, let’s just admit it: So much of what we’re seeing in our culture today is self-inflicted.
Let’s look at a few examples.
Today’s opioid crisis is truly a scourge on our society. Yet pain medicine created to treat the almost 25 million patients devastated by daily, chronic pain from either a life-altering traumatic injury, a degenerative disease or an illness from birth has been hijacked by individuals who choose to misuse prescription medications and turn them into street rot.
One does not have an addiction to a substance until it is used. Dependence involves changes to normal bodily functions by an external chemical over time, either through the adaptation to its presence or through withdrawal syndrome when it is removed. Addiction is a compulsive behavior engaged in or pursued to achieve a certain state of emotion, physical being or feeling through activities, usually in excess, such as gambling, shopping, sex, or substances whether illegal or legal, as in prescription medications.