Addiction

This last year we have had a number of young men staying with us for whom heroin and prescription pain killers have been an addiction. They are not street people, but nice middle class boys whose lives have gone terribly wrong.  I guess for them it started with past trauma, mental illness or both, their homes seem clean cut with church going parents but things in reality were not all that great at home. These kids are smart with plenty of opportunity but they just were not coping due to underlying emotional issues. This story so far applies to many and often turns out just fine, but the medical profession let them down with easy access to opioids, poor counselling, and then the drugs were readily available, cheap and cool. Their friends who took them 'got them' and one bad choice led to another and then to addiction and now here they are, post rehab, emotionally dysfunctional, and on the edge of looking for another quick high.

My heart breaks with the reality that I care for them, share my home with them, but like their parents, I know that there is no guarantee that it will work out. We are doing our best but it is hard to fight for another pesons life when they don't want to fight for it themselves, please pray for us and these boys. We all need it. Here is a great article that describes the problem:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/05/28/316673753/todays-heroin-addict-is-young-white-and-suburban