Wasted Time – A Poem About Heroin Addiction

Heroin addiction.  Substance abuse.  Depression.  Mental illness.  Suicide.

STIGMA

Chances are real good that one of the above will affect your life in some way at some time.  Whether it is a parent, a child, a grandchild, niece, nephew, friend, friend’s child, or a co-worker.  No one escapes these afflictions.

If you delve deep enough, there is always, always a back story as to why a person falls into one of the categories that are listed above.  Whether it is a family history of depression, substance abuse, physical or mental abuse, mental disorder; chances are good that the generations before us placed a black veil over it and silence was the golden rule.

Time to lift the stigma veil because there isn’t any one target group here. There’s no more, “No wonder she’s a drug addict, look how screwed up the parents are” or “Hell, he was a freak of nature even in elementary school” or “It’s no wonder….the parents let her have too much freedom.”   There’s ALWAYS an untold story.  There’s ALWAYS a reason a person falls onto one of these paths, and it isn’t necessarily a fault or a weakness.

The mortality rate from Heroin overdose is staggering and still rising.  This is a poem written by a young man presently incarcerated due to drug addiction. Before sharing his full story penned by his own hand, this is a poem he wrote about his journey as a Heroin addict:

The time that I have wasted is my biggest regret,

Spent in these places I will never forget.

Just sitting here thinking about the things I have done,

The crying, the laughing, the hurt and the fun.

Now it’s just me and my hard driven guilt,

Behind a wall of emptiness I allowed to be built.

I’m trapped in my body just wanting to run,

Back to my youth with its laughter and fun.

With reality suddenly right in my face,

I’m scared, alone, and stuck in this place.

Now memories of the past flash through my head,

The pain is obvious by the tears that I’ve shed.

I ask myself why and where I went wrong,

I guess I was weak when I should have been strong.

As I look at my past it’s easy to see,

The fear that I had afraid to be me.

I would pretend to be rugged, so fast and so cool,

when actually I was lost like a blinded old fool.

It’s time that I change and get on with my life,

Fulfilling my dreams for a family and wife.

What the future will hold I really don’t know,

But the years that I have wasted are starting to show.

I just live for the day when I’ll get a new start,

With the dreams I still hold deep in my heart.

I hope I can make it,

I at least have to try,

Because I am heading towards death,

And I don’t want to die.

More to come on all of this………………..