In response to some reactions to the article on the people who overdosed and passed out on Main Street:

Labeling is often a step toward determining the help needed. However, labeling any “behavior” as an illness to throw medication at it isn’t going to solve addiction. Negative labeling in any situation, however, is unkind and unhelpful.

Illness or not, addiction is an unhealthy, sub-normal behavioral epidemic which can be found in every walk of life, in every socioeconomic and cultural expression of our society.

Authentic, significant, life controlling/life threatening addiction is anything but a choice. Often there has been trauma of some kind which has adversely affected the decision-making apparatus. In each case something is driving the addict toward that addiction.

Addictions are spiritual, mental, emotional and physical — meaning, they affect the whole person. Attempting to treat them from only one angle is usually detrimental.

Therefore, any real help must involve a balanced combination of spiritual, psychological and physical intervention. Also, it should be duly noted that the only “choice” the victim of addiction is able to make is whether or not he or she will receive help, so trust must be established.

No one trusts a person who is judgmental or negative. Religious, strictly ritualistic, doctrinal paradigms offer no help and tend to compound the shame of addiction. Those, along with antipsychotic medications that simply transfer or offset the addiction from one drug to another, are especially harmful.

Compassion, education and understanding are key, but the only lasting cure I’ve found is the anointing of Yeshua. It was His spirit, the word of God, and the power that comes from the proper knowledge and application of those spiritual entities that saved me from manic depressive disorder and a host of other dysfunctions. He truly is the way, the truth and the life.

— Sandra Carlton Duncan

Salisbury