The Weirdness that Is Addiction

A couple of unrelated stories from the Dayton area highlight just how nutty things can get when drugs start to take over a life. If there weren’t real people and families involved, they’d be more funny than tragic.

The first tells about a woman who scored her heroin in Dayton, drove to a Kroger in Huber Heights to buy syringes and then passed out in the parking lot after shooting up. Store security became concerned when they saw she was bleeding from her arm and her one-year old twins were in the back seat of the car. Come on.

She woke up and drove off before the police arrived, but store security followed her and directed the police to her car. She was found with a used syringe and heroin in the car. Along with her kids.

Less tragic is another story out of Dayton about a neighbor harassing a family next door. She posted yard-sale type signs informing people that they could get drugs for food stamps at her neighbor’s house. The address was listed with the instructions to “inquire upstairs.”

Righteously indignant, the family who lived at the address mentioned called police. While interviewing them to get more details for the complaint, police asked if they could look around. They did. A marijuana plant was found and the father confessed to owning it. He was taken to jail. No word on whether the complaint about the neighbor is moving forward.

So we have a mother and a father both involved with drugs. Being a parent requires no license and kids get what they get. Sometimes they get a heroin addict. Sometimes they get an amateur marijuana grower. In any case they get a dose of the crazy that comes with drug use and abuse. On the one hand, it may be convenient for police to take whatever idiocy drops criminals in their lap. On the other, the stories highlight what always happens with drugs – they get us to focus so intently on using, we forget everything else. Even those things that should be most important to us.