I have been thinking a lot lately about old friends and addiction.
Sadly, I have lost a few who were swept away in the carnage of their demons. I think in particular about the vibrant young girl I knew. She was 18-years-old with light brown hair and light brown eyes, and pretty in a shy sort of way. When I met her she had just graduated high school and was looking forward to college.
There were perhaps some warning signs I saw back then, but I only now realize in hindsight. Already, she was smoking a lot of grass, but I never saw her touch anything harder. Never a drink– not a drop.
A few years moved on, and when I saw her again she had taken up huffing cannabis through a pipe, and was almost perpetually stoned. Her parents had kicked her out, and the sister she lived with, who was no light weight when it came to drinking herself, was even advising her to slow down for her own good.
A few years later, the next I heard of her was she had gone missing. I learned she had graduated from cannabis to meth and fentanyl somewhere along the way. She was about 22 at the time, and already on the streets among the other sad cases of addiction.
Her family did eventually find her again and were trying to do some form of intervention, but the next I heard was about a year later. It was an obituary on her sister’s Facebook page. She had overdosed and died at the age of 23.
The picture they included was from the time when I first knew her– that pretty 18-year-old girl.
I think about this girl a lot because it illustrates two things: how capricious and short life can be, and how addiction has the ability to snuff out any light.
Is there some other lesson to be learned from this story? I listen to people yammer on and on about addiction. I listen to the politicization of the debate about opioids in Alberta, and frankly it just makes me sick. I don’t know what policies are right or wrong. Nor do I care.
What I care about are people like that young girl and the families left behind.
I care, and in many ways I wish I didn’t.
RIP friend.
